Thursday, October 30, 2008

Trash or Treasure Thursday

Trick or Treat (1986)

Acquired at:
Giant Tiger
Cost: $4.99

When I saw this movie for $4.99, I was like "Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons? Score!" But they're barely in the movie. Ozzy is a minister against rock music and it only shows him in a brief clip where he's interviewed on T.V. Gene is DJ at the local radio station. It's unfair that they put both of them on the cover to sell more DVDs, but I guess it works.

Trick or Treat is about a high school outcast, Eddie, who loves metal music, especially Sammi Curr. When his idol dies in a hotel fire, Eddie is devastated and goes to his friend Nuke (Gene Simmons), the local DJ, for comfort. Nuke gives him the only copy of Sammi Curr's last, unreleased album. When the record starts skipping, he notices something strange about the words. Eddie plays it backwards and Sammi Curr speaks to him from beyond the grave, telling him how to get even with some bullies. When Sammi's plans turn sour, Eddie wants to stop talking to him. But when he spills his pop on the record, an electrical surge brings him back to life - sort of. He can only travel through electronics. When Sammi travels to the school's Halloween dance, it's up to Eddie to stop him.

This movie wasn't scary at all, but it wasn't bad enough to be so-bad-it's-good either. It was interesting up until the point where he came back to life. After he started jumping around through electronics it became stupid and boring. The premise was so good: playing a record backwards to raise your favourite dead rock star from the dead to help you get revenge on your enemies. Sounds interesting, but the execution was disappointing.

I give this movie a 3/5. It's not an amazing treasure, but I wouldn't call it trash either.

Rating: 3/5

1 comment:

venoms5 said...

I saw this in the theater back in '86. I was 11 at the time and had read about it in Fangoria. Interestingly, there was a pic in tha magazine from a dream sequence that was omitted from the movie. I haven't seen it in years, but I remember it was made during the height of that whole religious scandal where all these evangelists were claiming metal music was turning the youth into satanists. This review just brought back an hilarious memory, too!