As the opening credits of Halloween II reveal, there's something beneath the jack o'lantern that's ancient and evil, something beyond human comprehension that has no purpose but to senselessly slaughter and destroy. How could he when he was preoccupied breaking into hardware stores, defacing the chalkboard of the local school and snacking on freshly killed dog, not to mention his staring-past-the-wall, post-killing downtime? The night he came home was a busy one for the big guy, and I doubt he had time to leave wicked surprises for credulous kids who, like trusting Tommy Doyle, were under the naïve impression that Halloween was all doorbells and sugar daddies. Michael Myers didn't put the razor blade in that little boy's candy.

Tears were streaming down his cheeks and blood percolated out of his open mouth. SEASON OF THE WITCH jack martin (a.k.a dennis etchison), 1982 * I'll try to scatter those across the series as I address a question nobody's ever cared enough to ask: is there any kind of value to be found in movie novelizations? HALLOWEEN III: I've always been fascinated by these disreputable cash-in media oddities, ever since my days as a movie-starved youngster who would read and re-read the paperback versions of favorite films in the months between their theatrical debut and home video release (I remember specifically reading Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of The Last Starfighte three times during one interminable science fair.) I won't take time in this introduction to relate the many pleasures of the novelization, several of them discussed in Grady Hendrix's great article in Film Comment. Well I've been threatening to do this for a while now, so here it is: the launching of my new series on movie novelizations.

Halloween II by Jack Martin