Nothing divides horror fans quite like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the undisputed black sheep of the franchise. Not until Blumhouse’s Halloween trilogy has any single film in this beloved series been more controversial than Halloween III. Why, Hell, Resurrection gets more love than this one, and that movie is pure stupidity.

I’ve liked this movie since I was a kid, although that’s mostly because (at the time) I didn’t know much about Michael Myers. I remember snooping through my parents’ tape collection and running across something they recorded called Halloween, so I had to watch it! The only scene that struck me was that bratty kid’s head melting into a swarm of creepy crawlies all oozing from the mask he wore.

Holy GOD! What did I just see? That single scene blew my mind. It was sick! It was twisted! It was also disgusting, everything I love, and was the most extreme thing I’d seen at the ripe old age of FIVE! I was totally ok with seeing monsters ripping people to shreds and masked killers stabbing teenagers. I was not prepared for a Halloween mask killing a kid! That felt forbidden. To me, I might as well have just watched a snuff film, and I admit it scared me. I really thought that was the point of the Halloween movies.

I had no clue it was so polarizing. You know this already, but the divide among fans comes down to one point: Michael Myers is not in it. Shhh, we all know he secretly appears on TV, but ignore that for the sake of argument, ok? Many fans have given this movie shit for not fitting into the bulk of the lore.

Now, thanks to director Jason Eisener (Dark Side of the Ring, Hobo With A Shotgun), this brilliant little fan film dares to go back in time and tie the Myers family directly to the dark experimentations of the Silver Shamrock company, a clandestine organization we all know is secretly run by old-world occultists driven by blood sacrifices.

This ambitious short film not only connects Season of the Witch back to Carpenter’s original Boogeyman stalker, but also ties the silent and mysterious Hat Man directly to the origins.

If you’re a fan of past videos like The Confession of Fred Krueger or Krueger: Tales From Elm Street, both brilliant works in my opinion, you’re gonna love this one. Fan-made projects like these and Don’t Hike Alone breathe much-needed fresh life into beloved franchises. Now Project Shamrock joins their ranks and proves how fan projects beat the shit out of big-budget works where studios meddle and screw with what we love.

So, Happy Halloween, Nasties, and enjoy the show!

Manic out!