Trick or Treat (1986)

Title: Trick or Treat (1986)

Director: Charles Martin Smith

Cast: Marc Price, Gene Simmons, Ozzy Osbourne

During the 80’s heavy metal was king, and so, a series of heavy metal horror movies emerged. This small group of films are beloved by horror fans and heavy metal fans alike. Basically, if you loved bands like Anthrax, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and Twisted Sister and loved hearing your stereo system loud enough for your ears to bleed, if you loved those deep bass lines, wearing jean jackets, torn jeans, headbands, band t-shirts, spiked belts and wrist bands, leather pants, and took your cassette player and headphones everywhere you went, chances are you were a heavy metal geek and you probably loved movies like Trick or Treat (1986). The list of heavy metal horror films goes something like this: Rocktober Blood (1984), Hard Rock Zombies (1985), Rock and Roll Nightmare (1987), Black Roses (1988), and Shock ‘Em Dead (1991), which I think ended the whole shebang. But if you ask me, out of all these, the best one is the one I’ll be reviewing today, Trick or Treat, not to be confused with the quintessential Halloween movie with a similar title, Trick R’ Treat (2007).

On this film we meet Eddie Weinbauer, a heavy metal geek of the highest caliber. He worships his favorite heavy metal singer, a guy called Sammi Curr. Eddie is the kind of fan who writes letters to his favorite band, and addresses them like they were his best friends, nay, even brothers! You know, he’s  the kind of fan that takes the music just a little too seriously. Eddie gets laughed at by the bullies at school, gets ignored by the girls and essentially hates high school because of it; but listening to Sammy  Curr makes it all go away. Whenever Eddie listens to Sammy, well, then everything is alright. Unfortunately one day Sammy Curr dies, and its all gloom and doom for Eddie. Still, there’s one guy that gets Eddie’s pain and it’s the local hard rock dj, a guy called  ‘Nuke’, played by none other than KISS front man Gene Simmons, and what’s cooler than having Gene Simmons playing a dj in your heavy metal movie? Nothing, your movie is instantly cooler. So anyhow, Nuke gives Eddie the last unreleased recording made by Sammi Curr! Of course, Eddie quickly runs home to listen to it. Of course he plays the records backwards, because as you all know, there are satanic messages in all heavy metal records. Especially if you play them in reverse! So once Eddie does this, the spirit of Curr talks to him and tells him what to do! It’s not long before everyone who ever made fun or wronged Eddie in some way starts to pay the price.

Basically, what we got here is one of those “the worm turns” movies, where the geeky nerdy guy gets picked on by everyone in school, and then by some supernatural happenstance the hunted becomes the hunter. I’ve seen this formula played out many times in films like Evil Speak (1981), Hunk (1987) and 976-EVIL (1988). In these movies the nerdy guy goes in cahoots with Satan to get sweet revenge on all those who wronged him. This being a movie from the 80’s it makes all the sense in the world because this type of story was very common back then. In these movies the quintessential 80’s bullies always went too far with their pranks and jokes in order to torture the nerdy guy. Why is it that in all of these movies the bullies always act surprised when the people they pick on suddenly snap and strike back? Look at what happened in Columbine. Interesting how this seemingly cheesy, b-movie exemplifies this type of situation perfectly, and in that sense can help us understand the dangers of pushing someone just a little too far, suddenly this silly movie suddenly becomes relevant  in a strange way.  

I like how the film addresses that bullshit idea about ‘satanic’ messages in heavy metal records when you play them backwards. Sure, maybe bands did it, but the only did it to spike up their sales and create controversy, there was nothing satanic about it, they was just messing with people. It was all about the money. But films like Trick or Treat exploited that angle and made the fantasy a reality. It reminded me of The Gate (1987), which also had a similar premise. On that one two best friends open the gate to hell in their backyard by playing a heavy metal record backwards, amongst other things. They also used this idea in Amityville 2: The Possession (1982). On that one, a teenager gets possessed by demons while listening to heavy metal music and then proceeds to murder his whole family! So yeah, this idea was running rampant in the collective consciousness of people back then. Actually, religious zealots probably still believe in this.   

Of course Heavy Metal has always gotten a bad rap. Rock and Roll by nature is rebellious, what heavy metal did was take it to next level. It was angrier, sexier. It’s an amplified version of Rock and Roll, which is why it’s associated with rebellious behavior. The idea that listening to angry music will turn you into a killer is debated as much as the idea that watching violent horror movies will turn you into a violent person. This film explores these themes, but indirectly, I’m sure this is not what the filmmakers where purposely trying to talk about. Let's face it, parents have always been horrified at heavy metal, for example, there's  scene in which Eddie's mom takes a look at her sons heavy metal record collection and is horrified by the covers, then she accidentally sets off the stereo and starts hearing heavy metal. Her face says it all! It’s a hilarious scene, I thought “lady, it’s just music, take a chill pill” or lower the volume, but she instantly goes nuts and seems to forget how to turn down the volume. I think it's funny how heavy metal horrifies some people in the same way that horror movies do, some people just can’t take it. My advice is, you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Promotional material for Trick or Treat with Ozzy vs. Sammi Curr

In terms of effects, this film is just fun. I mean, I love the idea of Sammi Curr somehow materializing himself through the stereo system. The whole thing with the purple electricity that surrounds Sammi Curr was so old school, yet it made for cool visuals. On this one there’s lots of cheesy lightning effects and I just love those, they remind me this movie is from the 80’s. There’s this cool scene where green smoke oozes out of these head phones as some hot teenage chick is listening to heavy metal and the green smoke undresses her, then the mist turns into some cheesy ass monster puppet thing, I love that stuff! Another plus is there are lot’s of inside jokes for heavy metal fans, like for example Ozzy Osbourne playing a televangelist talking about “Rock Pornography”. Ha! Ozzy Osbourne playing a televangelist talking against heavy metal? Hilarious! Also, this movie is perfect for Halloween watching. Aside from the fact that it’s all about demonic things coming out of your speaker system, Eddie lives in a house with these two giant Halloween pumpkins on the front steps, he looks like he lives in Halloween Land. And so I highly recommend watching this one come Halloween night.  

Final words is that after watching this cheesy heavy metal movie for a while, I started to realize that this movie is actually kind of awesome. I mean, the idea that an evil heavy metal god comes back from the afterlife through your speaker system is just so rock and roll, so metal. Of course the protagonists name is Eddie…like Eddie Van Halen or that character from the Iron Maiden album covers? So, as you can see, there’s lots of heavy metal references everywhere. Finally, the ending was awesome, a heavy metal concert in a High School Halloween Party! Sweet! The kids all dig the heavy metal, but suddenly bam! It all turns against them and Curr starts blowing kids away with supernatural electricity coming out of his guitar? I thought it was strange how he lives for rock and roll but then blasts away his audience? That didn’t make much sense to me, but whatever, logic was never in the cards while watching this movie. This is definitely the best of all these heavy metal horror movies! Glad I finally got to watch it. Highly recommend it if you want to go back to the 80’s, heavy metal style! By the way, I didn't know this until I watched this movie, but toilette water is deadly for evil demonic heavy metal singers, thought you might want to know that. This movie is hilarious, had a blast with it.

Rating: 4  out of 5

Runaway (1984)

Title: Runaway (1984)

Director/Writer: Michael Crichton

Cast: Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Gene Simmons, Kirstie Alley  

             

Michael Crichton was best known for having written Jurassic Park (1993) but few know that he was already a prolific filmmaker/writer long before that. For example, he’d written and directed films like the sci-fi western mash-up Westworld (1973) and the sci-fi thriller Coma (1978). When we get down to it, he was more of a writer than he was a director, directing wise, in my opinion, he never really had a style, you couldn’t tell his films apart by the direction, rather, you could tell them apart because they had a clever concept, an idea with an often times real life scientific explanation behind them. However farfetched Jurassic Park might seem, Crichton’s books were based research he made about cloning experiments that went on in the real world. And like the best science fiction, Crichton often times tried predicting the future. In Runaway Crichton imagined a world in which robots are common place in society. How did Crichton’s concept play out on film?

In Runaway we meet Jack Ramsay, a police officer who specializes in capturing “Runaway” robots that malfunction and start doing crazy things, like killing people. You see, in this future robots do all sorts of jobs like cook, clean, take care of the children...and even hard labor like construction work. But when robots malfunction and become dangerous, that’s when the Runaway Units comes into play. You see, Runaway Units are these police officers that specialize in dealing with these robots gone awry. When a series of robots start going berserk for no apparent reason, Ramsay discovers a plot to turn robots into killers by installing a special chip on them; can he stop the bad guys from achieving their goals?

Michael Crichton’s films always dealt with technology failing somehow, technology going evil. For example, in Crichton’s Westworld we are presented with the idea of an amusement park that’s made to duplicate the experience of living in the Old West, right down to having real cowboys, cantinas, horses and guns. The only difference is that the cowboys are lifelike robots! At one point, one of the robots goes rogue and starts killing the guests! As you can probably infer, Westworld was actually the precursor to Crichton's own Jurassic Park, which plays with a similar premise, but with dinosaurs. So as you can see, at the center of Crichton’s films there was always this idea that technology can’t be trusted; same thing with Runaway, a film in which robots are turned evil by none other than Gene Simmons from KISS, who plays the villain named Luther. One look at Simmons’s face in this film, and it’s obvious he relishes playing bad guys, he’s evil stare says it all.

The Runaway Division plays out a lot like the premise for BladeRunner (1984), with police officers assigned to stop the rebel robots, only Crichton delivers the whole idea in a cheesier fashion, because while Blade Runner uses the premise of chasing evil robots to explore existentialism, Runaway is all about Ramsay conquering his fear of heights, that's about as deep as this one goes. It's cheesy because while this movie is supposed to take place in "the future" nothing in this movie looks very futuristic at all; everything looks like its 1984, only with clunky looking robots doing things. By the way, the robots in this movie look like the retarded brothers of R2-D2. Even cheesier is the fact that all these cops have to do is turn off a switch on the robots? I mean, it kind of makes you think why people can’t do this job themselves? Why do they have to call a cop to do it? But part of the fun of watching this particular movie is how dated technology is, how everyone is amazed at things that are common place today, like hacking into a computer system. At one point Gene Simmons hacks into the police departments cameras and he’s like “I bet you’re wondering how I did that?” So yeah, technology is completely out dated on this one, which makes it kind of funny.

A promotional still for Runaway, and a sample of the clunky robots in the film

And the film is so incredibly 80’s, starting by how the cops have cars and uniforms that don’t look futuristic at all, they look like cops from T.J. Hooker or C.H.I.P.S? Anybody remember those cop shows from the 80’s? So anyhow, lots of things make Runaway oh so very 80’s, starting by the fact that Kirstie Alley looks really hot on this movie, so that dates the movie as well, this movie was shot well before she turned into the poster girl for overweight women; but on this movie? She’s hotter than Georgia Asphalt! There’s this whole sequence in which Kirstie Alley having to strip in order to locate a bug on her body? So sleazy! Then we have Tom Selleck and his intimidating monster moustache which is just like awe inspiringly huge on this film. And then there’s all these nonsensical things that could only happen in a film from the 80’s, like this scene in which a robot spider shoots acid on Ramsay’s face and it’s like, no big deal, he only gets a mild wound when his whole face should have melted off? Or when all Gene Simmons’s has to do in order to infiltrate a police station is dress like a cop? Doesn’t anybody notice this guy doesn’t work here? And he does this to hack the police files! Then, in order to break into the computer he uses someone’s eyeball (it’s never explained whose eyeball it is or how he got it) in order to break the police computers retinal eye scan code…nobody gives a flying flip that this guy has a detached eyeball in his hand!? This movie is hilarious as only a film from the 80’s can be.

"Kiss me, never mind the acid on my face!" 

But then it’s got some cool things about it, like this whole chase sequence in which the good guys are chased down a highway by these little remote control robots that blow up, that was cool. There’s this whole plot line about Gene Simmons selling these black market guns that shoot heat seeking bullets. When shot, we get these cool bullet POV shots that reminded me of something Sam Raimi would have done in his Evil Dead movies. Then there’s this whole ending sequence that takes place in a construction site, high up, it’s such an extended sequence, goes on forever, but it has some cool vertigo inducing sequences. At the end of the day, this isn’t the greatest film in the world, but it’s also kinda entertaining, and I have to admit it has an original premise. It just feels like it needed a bit more money to make it a bit more futuristic and a bit less like an 80’s television show.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5