Loved researching and writing this article on Nigel Kneale’s original screenplay for Halloween III – and the different kinds of folk horror this film ultimately encompassed.

1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, produced by John Carpenter and Debra Hill and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, stands as an anomaly in the Halloween franchise, the slasher canon and 1980s horror film more generally. Its anomalous status emerges from Carpenter’s decision to bring the British screenwriter Nigel Kneale on board to craft a script that would expressly depart from the first two films in the franchise. The project did not go well, and Kneale eventually insisted that his name never be associated with the film. Kneale’s role in Halloween III is documented in his papers in the Manx National Heritage Library. Drawing on these papers, I argue that Kneale crafted Halloween III as a folk horror narrative, but that his conception of the film was ultimately eroded not only by the pressure to conform to franchise and slasher conventions but also by the choice of filming location. In the end, while the theatrical version of Halloween III was not the folk horror Kneale intended, it did become – completely unintentionally – a striking example of a different and distinctly American folk horror.

The article is here: “Forms of Folk Horror in Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” Journal of American Culture 45.4 (December 2022), pp. 373-85.