THE LITTLE SEQUEL THAT WASN'T

OK so first off, the movie was never, ever going to be a true sequel, yet the title was Halloween III from the start. Makes no sense, yet there it is, a baked-in paradox. See, H3 didn't get made because the backers wanted something different, it got made because they wanted John and Debra, wanted them badly enough to accept the fact that our two were all done with babysitters, Michael Myers, the mask, and the knife, and if they were to be involved, it would hafta be something completely different on the subject of Halloween. That's the whole story, and therein lies the contradiction. Looking back, it seems clear to me that had fans of Halloween I & 2 been fully aware of this simple fact, they might've gone along with the new direction, might've even enjoyed what they saw, and we might've made it through OK. Who knows? Without the backlash - "Where the hell's Michael Myers?" - and given H3's late-blooming but evergreen popularity, we might still be cranking out new movies on the "spooky season" year after year, even after all this time.

But that's not what happened...