Trick or Treat

Get ready for plenty of tricks and treats during HALLOWEEN IN HELL Month at Mondo Mondays, featuring a flurry of freaky films set on everyone’s favorite spooky holiday!

“What Are You Afraid Of? It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll …” Thanks to the magic of backward masking, a metal-loving nerd accidentally unleashes a hard-rocking demon on his high school Halloween party, and things are going to get real cheesy, real fast, in this power chord teen shocker featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons! In Trick or Treat, bullied teenager Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price, “Skippy” from Family Ties) is devastated after the hotel fire death of his heavy metal idol, Sammi Curr. A broken Eddie goes to see a disc jockey named Nuke (Gene Simmons) who knew Sammi, and he gives Eddie the only copy of Sammi’s last, unreleased album. Looking for hidden lyrics, Eddie, like any metal-loving ’80s teen, plays the album backwards and hears Sammi instructing him to get revenge on the bullies who are harassing him at school. When the revenge escalates to a murder plot, Eddie tries to cut off his contact with Sammi, but the devilish dead rocker is about to give a spectacular comeback performance at Eddie’s high school Halloween party, and there’s going to be hell to pay and hot tunes to play when trick or treating turns into pure heavy metal horror! A highly entertaining Halloween fright flick that turns it up to “11,” featuring music by ‘80s metal band Fastway and Ozzy Osborne as an uptight evangelist! (Dir. by Charles Martin Smith, 1986, USA, 98 mins., Rated R)