Trick or Treat (1986) Movie Review

This movie is about a high school kid named Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price) that is bullied (sadly I can relate) but he’s also a hard rock/heavy metal music fan (I can happily relate).  

His biggest musical hero is a fictional rock star named Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), who ends up dying in a hotel fire.  However, he leaves behind one more recording that a DJ named Nuke (Gene Simmons of KISS) is going to play at midnight on Halloween.

Eddie just happens to be a friend of Nuke’s and so he gives Eddie a copy of this recording to listen to before the broadcast.

Well, spoiler alert:  when the record is played backwards, Sammi Curr is actually speaking to Eddie telling him things like how to exact revenge on the people bullying him and how he is going to wreak havoc on the town. 

Sammi ends up coming back alive with supernatural powers and causes trouble, to say the least.

One of my great friends let me borrow this movie many years ago because two of our mutual favorite singers/musicians, Gene Simmons of KISS and Ozzy Osbourne, were in it.

Judging by the DVD box, it looks like they are the leads in it.

Misleading because they are barely in it.

Still, I wanted to check it out.

It took me until recently to finally buy it because frankly, I just wasn’t wild about it when I initially watched it.

But since I’ve slowly become a horror movie fan, I wanted to give it another watch, and this time, I enjoyed it more.

It’s just a fun low budget horror movie, and being such a music fan, I love seeing all the cool posters the lead has in his room, and seeing Gene and Ozzy in a movie is always cool in my book.

And Ozzy is hilarious because he’s playing a Reverend on a TV screen saying that Heavy Metal is bad for the kids.  Considering Ozzy is one of the creators of it with his band Black Sabbath and that he was attacked for subliminal messages (not true), I find this so ironic and hilarious.

And Gene is cool as the DJ Nuke.

Speaking of messages, this movie touches on what was going on in the 1980s when music like metal was considered bad for kids, which I disagree with wholeheartedly.

It’s music just like any other form.  You either like it or you don’t.  I happen to love it and always will.

Charles Martin Smith (Toad in the American Graffiti movies, one of The Untouchables in that movie, and many more projects) directed this movie and has a brief part in it during a high school dance scene.

OK in short, I enjoyed this movie, and if you are a hard rock/metal fan like I am, or just want to see a fun horror movie, then this is for you.

It’s nothing super special, but it’s fun.