Trick or Treats (

1982

) ½

Obviously, Halloween (1978) is a great film. It's a classic of the genre that has been copied innumerable times, to the point where its killer and its heroine have effectively become cultural archetypes. Seriously, how many movies have you seen where a mute, masked killer is stalking a virginal schoolgirl? Probably a lot if you're the type that reads my reviews. Yet, if we're being completely honest, there is one serious flaw with the film's premise that is seldom addressed by critics: Who the hell hires a babysitter for Halloween night? I understand that some more neglectful parents would rather go to their own Halloween party than cart their kids around town Trick or Treating, but even for them, it is easy enough to foist your kids off to one of their friends and have their parents handle it. I certainly remember trick or treating in big groups like that when I was growing up and I doubt that it was any different in the 1970s. Yet in Halloween (1978) it seems like half the parents in town need babysitters on October 31st. This is because Halloween (1978) was originally envisioned as a “babysitter” movie and the idea of having it set on Halloween only came later when the filmmakers realized that there had never been a horror movie with that obvious setting and name. Don't misunderstand me, this is very much a minor nitpick and does little to undermine all of Halloween's considerable charms. It is just a minor absurdity in the premise that curiously never seems to be addressed in all the scholarship and criticism around the film.

Yet today's film proves that I'm not the only one who noticed this issue though, apparently Gary Graver had a similar complaint because he goes to great lengths to explain why his deadbeat parents need a babysitter on Halloween night. They are jet setting off to Las Vegas for a big party, and their oafish son, Christopher, is such an insufferable brat that I doubt he has any peer willing to put up with him for the evening. The boyfriend of our lead babysitter even comments on how unusual the arrangement is, further underscoring the criticism. Too bad that Graver manages to make several more bizarre choices about what his characters do late night on Halloween, like the one girl who goes to get her hair done at what seems to be 9:00 at night. Alas, it's the classic case of our own flaws being far easier to recognize in others than in ourselves.

I'm getting ahead of myself though, the film opens several years earlier with a singularly odd and amusing scene. Malcolm O'Keefe, a middle-aged businessman is eating breakfast in the backyard when a pair of orderlies from the loony bin turn up to stuff him into a straight jacket and haul him away. As it turns out his wife is having him involuntarily committed because he's kind of a jerk and she would like to keep living in the big house they own jointly. Though I guess that Malcolm must be a little bit crazy because rather than demanding a lawyer and an independent psychiatric evaluation, he tries to fight off the orderlies in a very long and very strange brawl that sees him climb a tree and jump into his swimming pool. The orderlies are only able to finally subdue him in the pool itself with all three participants soaking wet. I'll confess, I enjoyed this turn of events more than almost anything in the rest of the movie, in that I found it mildly amusing. This should let you know that we're in for quite a slog ahead.

We're introduced to our main character, the babysitter Linda, taking a shower on Halloween night when she gets a phone call from her babysitting agency telling her that she needs to work that night. Bafflingly, this blurry shot of her behind foggy glass will be the film's only concession to cheesecake which is doubly odd when you peruse Graver's oeuvre and see it littered with such luminaries as Erika's Hot Summer (1971), And When She was Bad... (1973), and Sexual Roulette (1997). Surely a smut peddler like Graver would understand that T&A is part of the slasher genre, but as we shall see he has trouble grasping that murder is part of the genre too, so maybe I'm asking too much from him.

Upon arriving at the house, which the audience will recognize as the same place that Malcolm O'Keefe was hauled out a few years back, Linda is introduced to the negligent mother in question Joan, her new boy-toy Richard, and her bratty fat-ass son Christopher. Richard, played by David Carradine who probably showed up for a day to give the film a big name to put on the VHS box, makes a half-hearted pass at Linda and then leaves for Vegas with Joan. All this is as tedious to watch as it is to write about, but by this point, I was still in mildly good spirits about the film. Sure it was cheap and all the characters were annoying but I was still operating under the impression that this was a traditional slasher and that an eccentric killer would show up soon and start butchering people. Little did I realize that the movie would almost be over before I got an honest-to-goodness murder.

Instead, we're going to spend the next seventy-odd minutes watching as Christopher plays prank after prank on Linda, each time pretending to be maimed or murdered to have a cheap laugh at her expense. He pretends to chop his head off with a trick guillotine, slice off his fingers with the kitchen knife, and in one notable instance pretends to drown in the pool so he can give Linda the Wendy Peffercorn treatment. Despite this happening at least five times, Linda never catches on and each time reacts sincerely as if the boy has really injured himself. It's called "pattern recognition" Linda, do you have it? Also, for some reason, Christopher's room is painted like the flag of Bolivia. If there's a political message here it's either way too subtle or way too insane for me to be able to decipher.

Meanwhile, Malcolm breaks out of the loony bin by stealing his nurse's clothes (did Ed Wood guest direct these scenes) and impersonating her until he's off the grounds. It hardly seems like the disguise is necessary as Malcolm easily knock out anybody that gets suspicious. Indeed security around the asylum is so lax that I'm amazed it took him so long to bust out. Amazingly, the woman's clothes, including the brazier and panties, fit the much larger, heavier, and taller man. Though obviously he can't come home dressed as a lady to kill his cheating whore of a wife, that would be unseemly. So he robs a couple of bums and takes their clothes instead. Along the way back home he stops, seemingly every half hour to call home and threaten Linda whom he's convinced is Joan.

In-between getting pranked by Christopher, Linda will either answer the door to give candy to trick-or-treaters, answer the phone to talk to her boyfriend, or receive obscene phone calls from Malcolm. This constitutes the bulk of the movie, and I'm sure the more astute readers have already guess the problem here: Not only are all these activities boring, they're also obviously filler. Indeed, all of Christopher's pranks could be classified as filler as well, as they are essentially fake-out scares on-par with a spring-loaded cat (indeed Linda does get a cat chucked at her at one point as well). All this combined means that the film is about 90% filler. The filler is so bad here I'm tempted to say that Trick or Treats isn't just a bad movie, it might not qualify as a movie at all.

It's not hard to make a slasher that I'll enjoy. Just have a few inventive murders, have the actresses get their tits out now and again, and add in some familiar archetypes so I know who is going to get killed-off when. I'm not looking for a film that carves out bold new territory or is elevated by peerless directorial flourishes, though that's fine when it happens. All I want is a bloody spectacle, which is why it's a not inconsiderable problem when Trick of Treats doesn't have a single murder until 70 minutes into a feature-length run-time! Indeed, as time ground on with no deaths and more and more corny jokes I began to wonder if I really had selected a horror movie. Could it be that this was supposed to be an outright comedy? Or is it an X-rated film with all the sex scenes edited out? The former was impossible, because the film is about as funny as a cancer ward and the latter is just as impossible given the film's already considerable run-time.

It does eventually get around to being a horror movie once Malcolm finally makes his way to the house after a cross-town journey and several obscene phone calls. He doesn't start slashing immediately, mind you, but instead hides out in the attic and hypes himself up a bit. Indeed, his actions are less murder spree and more plain murder because he only manages to kill one minor character. This is an extremely low body count for a 1980s slasher, hell this would be a low body count for a movie from the 1960s! The short supply of corpses makes it somewhat awkward when the film tries to mimic the sequence from the end of Friday the 13th (1980) where the protagonist finds all the bodies of the other victims.

There is, buried at the heart of this film a sliver of a good idea. Christopher is an annoying little shit who is always faking his own death with his variety of makeup and magic tricks. He even continues to do it after Linda tells him the story of the boy who cried wolf. It seems like the film is building towards a final act twist when Linda will find his dead body, assume it's just another prank, and not realize that a killer is loose in the house. The film even sets this up, with Linda finding Christopher with his neck apparently slashed and ignoring him, thinking it's just another ghoulish prank. However, the film spoils this by quickly revealing that Christopher was just sleeping, not dead. Then it has him go full Tommy Jarvis after helping Linda kill Malcolm and turn into a berserk killer himself. Seriously, what the fuck? This film had one obvious moment that it was building to. How do you manage to screw that up so completely?

I'm sure that out there, there are a few people who could potentially derive some minor enjoyment from Trick or Treats. Indeed, I'm sure that there are even some cretinous troglodytes living in a sewer somewhere that would find it “funny” (after all, there were plenty of people who thought Knives Out (2019) was hilarious). However, if you want a good Halloween themed horror movie, just rewatch Halloween (1978) or one of its sequels. Even the worst entries in the series are better than this garbage.