Movie Review: THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER: PART V & PART I

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 13th, 2023 / 04:05 PM

THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER movie poster | ©2023 Dark Sky Films

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: PART V: Kansas Bowling, Poppy Cunningham, Taylor Smith, Antonio Woodruff, Andrew Wasserburger, Alpha Trivette, Darius Willis; PART I: Darius Willis, KJ Baker, Allison Shrum, Lew Temple, Alpha Trivette
Writer: Jay Burleson
Director: Jay Burleson
Distributor: Dark Sky Films
Release Date: May 5, 2023 (digital and VOD)

The opening crawl for THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER PART V provides the fictional history of the likewise invented THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER franchise. The first film was purportedly released on October 17, 1980, after the success of HALLOWEEN in 1978, but conceived before the release of FRIDAY THE 13^th. It spawned a cult following and a franchise. Got all that?

Well, what we’re seeing to start with is THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER PART V, the fourth sequel, from 1994. THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER PART I is meant to be seen afterwards, so that we’re watching them in reverse order. (According to the lore, PART II, III, and IV have been completely lost.)

Here’s the thing. Director/writer Jay Burleson and his filmmaking colleagues are entirely upfront about what they are doing, which is making a pair of movies that look, respectively, like an average franchise installment and a 1980 attempt to capture the heat of HALLOWEEN. In other words, the THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER films are intentionally unexceptional – which is not to say they are not good examples of what they are.

Both THIRD SATURDAY films are supernatural slashers about the unkillable serial murderer Jackariah Harding (Antonio Woodruff in PART I, mostly Andrew Wassenburger in PART V). In PART I, Harding is buried after a botched Death Row electrocution, but in no time is out of his grave and cutting his way through the small Alabama town of Hackleburg, Alabama.

The timing of the third Saturday in October means the Halloween decorations are already out, but there’s no requirement to name the movie after the upcoming holiday.

In Hackleburg, this is also the day of the annual football game between hometown favorite team, the Alabama-Mobile Seahawks, and their hated rivals, the Tennessee A&M Commonwealth. This means there’s a lot of drunken revelry, with people being less careful than usual.

There’s a smart visual concept for Harding, who has part of his face burned off in the execution, and later obtains a mask that looks at once inexpensive and alarming. One small but welcome innovation here is that his costume, which looks like that of a Quentin Tarantino movie gangster, gets logically bloodier as the films continue (Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees wear outfits so dark that it’s hard to see what is or isn’t on them).

There is also loving recreation by production designers Frank Crafts and Luke Shirley of the period look of 1979 in PART I, down to the green shag carpet in one key location. The costume design by Dru Vaughn for both films is similarly apt.

One almost-unique aspect of THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER films is that the villainous Harding is Black. Apart from the CANDYMAN franchise, this is something we seldom see. Here, it’s something that goes wholly unmentioned.

It’s not that THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER movies are colorblind. PART I has a sequence where Black hero Ricky Dean Logan (Darius Willis, who also serves as the narrator of PART V) must defuse a potentially lethal racist confrontation, and then discusses the meaning of what has just happened with fellow monster hunter Vicki Newton (KJ Baker).

But, as we are continually reminded, Harding is no longer a man, but has instead become a monster. By leaving human traits (including race) entirely out of the conversation about Harding, it adds to the mythology.

Speaking of mythology, it is somewhat disappointing that we don’t get much out of watching PART V first and then seeing how it all started. There are homages to specific shots from HALLOWEEN and THE FOG (among others), but this doesn’t do much to define the difference. If there’s internal commentary here on how sequels reflect on the original, it’s mostly too subtle to register.

THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER PART V and PART I are made with enough fidelity to their respective eras to be welcome to fans of slashers from those decades, or anybody interested in viewing the results when a committed contemporary filmmaker wishes he could have made genre movies back in the day.

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