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| Release: Oct 24th, 1986 Rating: R Run time: 98 min Starring: Marc Price, Tony Fields Director: Charles Martin Smith Official Trailer: Trick or Treat |
I am loving this October. Watching all these Halloween themed movies, is just driving my horror brain into ecstasy, even if the movies aren’t all that great, case in point, today’s review, Trick or Treat, an 80s movie, about a rock legend coming back from the dead, to raise a little hell on Halloween.
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: Sammi Curr was a famous, devil-worshiping rock star who died under
mysterious circumstances. Now he wants to come back to life. Doing so
requires possessing radio wave & automobiles and making a few human
sacrifices.
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| Tony Fields as the rocking Sammi Curr. |
Eddie is the quintessential 80s teen, that loves heavy metal, mopes under the stairs at school, is picked on by the cool kids and dreams of a better, rocking life. Eddie adores rock legend Sammi Curr, who grew up in his hometown and went on to do bigger and better things in the music industry. Unfortunately, the big life comes with problems and Sammi dies in a horrible fire and Eddie is distraught, saddened and even more mopey than normal. Thankfully local DJ, Nuke (played by real rock legend, Gene Simmons), gives Eddie, Sammi’s last record, which was never released, or heard before.
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| Ozzy Osbourne makes a cameo as Rev. Aaron Gilstrom, a bible thumping preacher, who is against rock music. |
Eddie goes home to listen to the rocking music and notices that there is a message on the record, that when played backwards (this was all the rage of the devil music back in the 80s), relays a message specifically for Eddie. Eddie follows the message and notices that his life is getting better. He stands up to the bullies and everything is going great, until the messages start getting darker and people start getting hurt. Eddie starts to revolt against the voice, but this only goes to anger the demon and release it, in all its rocking, undead Sammi glory!
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| Eddie (Marc Price), the 80s emo kid. |
Trick or Treat is an okay movie, but it takes too long to get to the good stuff. We go through most of the movies 98 min run time, without Sammi showing up. Once he does, he goes on a little rampage, which is honestly the best part of the movie. Sadly, everything before that , is kinda blah and it doesn’t help that it’s based around Halloween, but doesn’t have any sort of Halloween feeling to it. Also, there are times where it is very hard to make out exactly what the evil Sammi is trying to say to Eddie, forcing me to strain my ears to understand the garbled voice.
Even though the voice sounds could’ve had some work done on them, the movie still “rocks” in the musical category, with Fastway performing the songs and Christopher Young preforming the instrumental music. I’m a big fan of Young’s work since Hellraiser, but with Trick or Treat, his work is a little underplayed and not as grandiose, which is okay in Trick or Treat’s case, as the movie has more vocal songs than instrumental.
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| Sammi Curr and his lightning shooting electrical guitar. |
Trick or Treat is a product of the 80s, where rock was the devil and anyone that listened to it was going to hell, or raise a demon rock god, who would go on to torture and murder people with his lightning shooting electric guitar. Unfortunately, Trick or Treat doesn’t grab that hilarious notion by the balls and go all the way with the violence and fun times. Instead, it plays it safe for the most part and only effectively uses the main baddie near the end, lightning shooting electric guitar included.
Verdict: Trick or Treat is more tricks than treats, with a played down Halloween theme and missing the mayhem that Sammi Curr so rightfully deserved.
Rating:
