Trick or Treat

For Halloween heres a 80-'s Horror movie

Horrorfanzine Review

Some people lost their minds in the 1980s. For example, you may have heard about the mass hysteria surrounding so-called “Satanic Ritual Abuse” which was kicked off by a book written by some Canadian psychiatrist called Michelle Remembers, and helped along by a criminal trial over supposed sexual abuse at a pre-school. (The book was discredited and the trial concluded at the end of the decade with no convictions and all charges dropped). The Reagan years were filled with reactionary, emotional politics that saw children as perpetually in danger from the evils of the world. Take rock music, the most visible target – the dismay over rock lyrics and heavy metal bands (where AC/DC was accused of being an acronym for “Anti-Christ, Devil’s Child” and KISS for “Knights in Satan’s Service”) reached a fever pitch leading to Tipper Gore founding the PMRC with Susan Baker, because of Prince’s song Darling Nikki of all things. Secret messages in the music – especially backmasking – came under scrutiny, and even though the Beatles did it, nothing made a good scapegoat like heavy metal bands. (Poor Led Zeppelin was even accused of it).

Charles Martin Smith’s Trick or Treat, a “heavy metal horror” film from the middle of the decade, touches on the themes of Satanic backmasking and corruption of the youth by rock’n'roll. Its first funny bit is to cast Marc Price as a loner high school metalhead named Eddie Weinbauer, who goes by the nickname Ragman – Price, you may recall, played Skippy, from Family Ties. Skippy was the nerdy milquetoast who had a crush on Mallory, so it’s an interesting choice to cast Price as the lead and as a headbanger, but in a way it works, since Eddie isn’t exactly assertive either, and is constantly bullied by the obviously-not-of-high-school-age jocks from Lakeridge High (Doug Savant playing the head asshole Tim, who almost drowns Eddie at a pool party). I don’t exactly recall metalheads being so wimpy, but then again I was the geek. (In addition, Price resembles a young Corey Haim here so much in voice and appearance it’s eerie.) Anyway, also in the cool kids group is Leslie (Lisa Orgolini), whom Eddie has a crush on and who is deep down a good girl. Eddie has one friend – the nerdy but down-to-earth Roger, played by Glen Morgan of all people (he directed the Willard remake, the Black Christmas remake, and produced many episodes ofThe X-Files and Millennium).

Full Movie on HDMovie14
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