1986 film, Trick or Treat, imagines the most nightmarish of all scenarios: A world where Tipper Gore was right!
The 80’s were turbulent times, with the Cold War, the AIDs crisis and the growing crack epidemic all looming in the American consciousness. Yet, that didn’t stop cultural watchdogs of the time from inventing a couple of totally new societal ills to rail against: Dungeons & Dragons and Rock Music. In the latter’s case, it certainly wasn’t the first or last time that “stuff teenagers listen to” was used as a convenient scapegoat for whatever issues that grumpy oldsters had with the way the world was changing, but in the 80’s the presumed dangers of rock had graduated from Elvis’s gyrating hips prematurely sending an entire generation into puberty to androgynous leather-daddies turning America’s children to Satan. As far as I can tell, the evidence for this grand Satanic conspiracy boiled down to the fact that hair metal bands frequently subscribed to the use of pentagrams and anarchy signs. Looking back, it’s a lot less likely that a band such as Motley Crue was a cabal of devil worshippers and far more likely that they had an affinity for symbols involving circles that look boss when etched on a bass drum. This confusion could have been alleviated with even a cursory perusal of lyrical themes of the time, which mainly fell into two categories: 1. Groupies, and 2. Some vague anti-authoritarianism that typically manifested in giving your parents and teachers a hard time for trying to tell you what to do. If Satan’s grand scheme was to pre-dispose kids against wanting to do homework, I’ve got some good news for him.
All of which brings us to Trick or Treat, a film which wonders what would happen if a rock star really did have some type of pact with the unholy. In case you’re wondering which side the film was on, you will probably be tipped off by the great cameos by Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons, as well as the lampooning of the recent (at the time) congressional hearings which featured Dee Snider and Frank Zappa defending their chosen art form.
Eddie is a teenage outcast, a pariah at school whose only joy in life comes from heavy metal, and particularly the music of Sammi Curr. Unfortunately, Curr dies in a hotel fire and Eddie is forced to cope with the bullies at school without the reassuring knowledge that his rock hero is still out there, rocking. Or perhaps not. It turns out that Sammi left behind a single unreleased album of which Eddie is able to score a copy, and that allows him to communicate with the deceased rocker when he… (dunh dunh dunh) plays the record backwards! Again, this is clearly a parody of the Satanic message hysteria where people thought that musicians were backmasking subliminal messages for kids to start killing themselves or sacrificing goats or something. There were real adults that actually believed this! (Another great nod to the silliness surrounding heavy metal was a play on the rumor that Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the head off a bat during his shows. In the Trick or Treat version, Sammi is shown biting the head off a python on stage. My favorite of those urban legends is that Ozzy used to throw a bag of live puppies off the stage, and refuse to start playing until they were all dead. I can just see the PMRC meeting where they cooked up that bit of propaganda to make him seem like history’s biggest monster.)
Sammi uses his ill-defined ghost powers to help his young protégé get the best of the school jocks, and things seem to be looking up for Eddie. Soon, however, Sammi starts looking to expand the revenge plans in both scope and severity, and it dawns on Eddie that Curr is going to be dangerous. There’s some other stuff with a girl and Eddie’s best friend and the head jock who looks like Johnny from The Karate Kid and blah blah, who cares, the first two thirds of this movie are irrelevant because when Sammi Curr comes all-the-way back from the dead at the start of the final act, SHIT GETS REAL. Curr quickly gets the best of Eddie and heads out to the school’s Halloween dance to channel his inner Carrie. Up to this point in the film, the mayhem had been shockingly low, and the movie’s internal logic had mostly held water. Prepare for an abrupt reversal of both instances.
At the dance, a local rock group takes the stage to start playing, when Sammi’s hand shoots out of a speaker and explodes the lead singer’s head! In one of the most beautiful shots in all of cinema history, the dead rocker’s guitar flies through the air and lands firmly in the hand of a hideously scarred Sammi Curr in all of his backlit and wind-blown glory. Remarkably, no one calls the cops or runs for the door. The most intense reaction to the combination murder/demon appearance is a “whoo, rock n’ roll!” catcall from the back of the gymnasium. Even the band appears somewhat nonplussed, and they immediately start backing Sammi up when he kicks into the song that shares its name with the film. Reactions finally shift to the appropriate level of terror when Curr starts disintegrating motherfuckers in the crowd with ROCK N’ ROLL MAGIC! The poor drummer even gets obliterated, in what must be a nod to This is Spinal Tap. Aw, he was singing back-up vocals and everything, and you guys didn’t even practice!
Eventually, Eddie, girl and best friend are able to shut down the school’s power and seemingly destroy Sammi, but it’s not over yet. Eddie’s radio DJ buddy is supposed to play the cursed record at midnight, and that will apparently bring Curr back again. They are unable to get through on the phone, and the DJ conveniently plays the first track backwards as some kind of tribute to the slain Curr. How is ruining the song by playing it backwards a tribute? Why is Eddie’s plan to drive his mom’s car to the station when Curr has already demonstrated the ability to possess automobiles? What exactly does Sammi hope to accomplish by electrifying everyone he comes in contact with? None of these questions are deemed important enough to answer, but it doesn’t really matter because the pace has finally accelerated to a fever pitch by this point.
It’s easy to pick fun at Trick or Treat, and it is gloriously stupid at times, but I found it incredibly charming all the same. Sammi Curr was never going to be a horror icon on the level of Freddy Krueger, but actor Tony Fields definitely had enough magnetism to make a believable rock star/demon lord. If you are looking for scares, there are none to be found here. It’s literally the least scary movie I’ve watched this Halloween season, and that includes watching R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour with my kids. It’s also mostly bloodless, though there is a pretty gross scene where a pair of headphones melts through a topless girl’s ears (ROCK N’ ROLL MAGIC!) The acting is above-par, though, and the skewering of the anti-rock movement that was swirling around the nation was fantastic. If you are a fan of 80’s rock and metal you can’t help but enjoy this loving ode to the genre.
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