Halloween 3: Season of the Witch has historically been a divisive movie. It’s the one film in the Halloween series that has nothing to do with the rest of the films, with Michael Myers notably absent, in favor of a drunk Tom Atkins breaking into buildings to stop the production of haunted Halloween masks. However, the diehard fans love it, and Halloween 3 has built its own cult following with its own set of fans.
One of these fans is Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener, whose recent fan film PROJECT SHAMROCK does what no one else has done before with the beloved series- connect the story of the Silver Shamrock novelty masks to that of Michael Myers.
“When I first saw Halloween 3, it was surprising that Michael Myers wasn’t in it,” Eisener recalls in conversation with RUE MORGUE. “I thought it was really cool, and it just always had stuck with me. The soundtrack was so cool, I loved the design of the film, how it was shot. The masks had always stuck with me. That film was definitely a big inspiration on my work.”
PROJECT SHAMROCK asks the question- what if Silver Shamrock was responsible for the famous Michael Myers mask? In the four minute short, we see found footage of experiments done by the Silver Shamrock company, the villainous Halloween mask company that utilizes witchcraft to melt children’s heads while wearing them. We’re given access to the inner workings of Silver Shamrock industries, and how their mask eventually turned Michael Myers into a murderous child.
Eisener was inspired to create this fan film after obtaining an 8 mm home movie from the 1960’s of a young child being given a clown mask for Halloween. It was a random find as the director was collecting film reels, but when he showed the reel to others, they were convinced that it belonged smack dab in the middle of the Halloween series, as though it was Michael Myers’ origin story. To maintain the aesthetic, Eisener shot PROJECT SHAMROCK entirely on 16 and 8 mm film, a challenge in of itself, especially since the entire short was shot in four days.
“I always had the theory that maybe the clown mask that Michael had at the beginning of Halloween could’ve been a mask created by Silver Shamrock,” says Eisener. “And that being something that triggered his first kill. I just started dreaming up this idea that those could be connected, and then making a Silver Shamrock internal video that showed the experiments that they were doing and the prototypes they were testing.”
The short film fits like a jigsaw puzzle right where it’s supposed to in the Halloween series, with very little retconning. But Eisener was still nervous about the reception of the film- horror fans hold their favorite movies near and dear to them, and Halloween fans are no different. Eisener is also protective of the series, and felt that because it was a fan film and not something canon to Michael Myers, that he could still play with the lore a little bit.
“This is just an idea, a fun fan idea. To me, it wasn’t very much different than if I were to just have my own film idea. We just got our friends together to make this, and that’s what I would do if I was making any of my short films. We did it over the course of two and a half days, and we shot it all on film.”
The real challenge of the filmmaking process for PROJECT SHAMROCK was committing to shooting on film, rather than digital. It’s shot as though Silver Shamrock was making their own internal, top secret videos of their various experiments, and the short creates a vibe similar to a found footage movie. Shooting on film is not easy to do- you only have a limited amount of film to use for every shot, meaning you have to rehearse and rehearse beforehand to make sure the shot is perfect, so the team doesn’t lose any film unnecessarily. It’s ultimately worth it in the end, as PROJECT SHAMROCK looks beautiful and haunting, exactly as it should.
PROJECT SHAMROCK also does a good job of not retconning too much, aside from the additional side effects of the Silver Shamrock masks. Eisener ultimately does a great job expanding the world of Silver Shamrock, creating a strong story that fits right into the admittedly complicated Michael Myers cinematic universe.
“I didn’t want to retcon anything,” says Eisener. “I wanted to stay all within the lore of it all. The only thing I really added was that we created a new town. Instead of placing it in Santa Mira, we placed it in this town called Shamrock. The idea there was that this was a town that they created as a company town, where they could do their experiments.”
Eisener really set out to expand the world of Halloween 3, especially since the film ends on a cliffhanger. We never see the effects of the Silver Shamrock masks, and we don’t know if they are successful in murdering all of the children who are wearing them. PROJECT SHAMROCK sets out to fill in the blanks, showing you what would happen if that were the case. The story follows a janitor, played by David Brunt, who witnessed the events of that fateful Halloween, with Silver Shamrock employees interviewing him to see how much he knows.
Ultimately, PROJECT SHAMROCK is a fan film made with a lot of love by an experienced horror director, who is simply setting out to connect the worlds of his favorite horror series. Whether you love Halloween 3 or hate it, the premise for this film alone is enough to intrigue any diehard Michael Myers fan.
“[The Halloween series] is what helped teach me how to make movies, in a way, and start to tell stories with a camera. It’s my favorite horror series, and this idea has been something that’s been spinning around for over a year. It’s one of those nagging things, and I wanted to try to follow through with it. I see it as almost this miracle.”
PROJECT SHAMROCK is available to stream for free on YouTube.
