The movie opens nighttime within a week from Halloween. A man named Harry Grimbridge (played by Al Berry) is seen fleeing from men in suits. He ends up at the hospital. Dr. Daniel Challis (played by Tom Atkins) is the doctor on duty when Harry is admitted to the hospital. Harry is obviously distressed but not injured. He is clutching a Silver Shamrock Halloween mask in his hand. After giving instructions the doctor leaves the hospital to visit with his children. His kids are excited about their Silver Shamrock Halloween masks and the "surprise" that will be revealed on Halloween night after the film Halloween finished airing. While the doctor is away from the hospital, Harry is brutally murdered by one of the guys in suits who then commits suicide by setting himself on fire.
Dr. Challis returns to the hospital and meets a young woman named Ellie Grimbridge (played by Stacie Nelkin). Ellie is Harry's daughter. As it turns out Harry was a distributor of toys and Halloween masks and he had learned something disturbing about Silver Shamrock and their Halloween masks. Ellie tells Dr. Challis that her father had gone to the Silver Shamrock facility prior to his murder. Dr. Challis and Ellie then decide to go investigate what happened at the facility and find out why Harry had been murdered. The horrifying truth puts Ellie and Dr. Challis in a race against time to try to stop the diabolical plans of Silver Shamrock's owner Conal Cochran (played by Dan O'Herlihy).
I wasn't initially sure about this movie because, like many others, I was expecting Michael Myers. Later, I learned that John Carpenter was under contractual obligation to make a third Halloween picture. Apparently, John Carpenter didn't like the direction the Halloween franchise was going and hadn't really intended to do a sequel much less continue the franchise. This film was essentially a big middle finger to the studio in that he technically fulfilled his contractual obligation of doing a "Halloween movie". From then on Moustapha Akkad took over the franchise and ran with it leading to the worst films of the series with the exception of H20,
Once I got over the lack of Michael Myers and decided to appreciate the film just as it is I found that I loved it. This is a great horror movie as well as a great Halloween movie. It is graphic and gory like Halloween II. Some of the deaths in this movie are pretty horrific to me. One of the worst cinematic deaths in my opinion involves a lady investigating a pin on one of the Silver Shamrock masks. Wonderful classic John Carpenter movie.
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