Review of Trick or Treat (2014) by Jeff L — 10 Jul 2004

You kids may think you know how to rock now with your Darknesses and your Marilyn Mantan, but back and the '80s, we did more than rock. We ROOOOOOOOOOOCCCCKKKKED! We pranced around with giant hairdos, eye make-up and pink spandex and NOBODY THOUGHT ANYTHING WAS THE LEAST BIT GAY ABOUT IT. That's rock'n'roll to me.

In fact, we were so rockin' back then, we had movies about how horrible rock music was for the easily-influenced teenage brain. You think anyone's out there making a movie about how Slipknot will turn you into a flesh-eating, satan-worshipping zombie? No. We had a whole genre of 'em--TERROR ON TOUR, ROCK'N'ROLL NIGHTMARE, BLACK ROSES and the mother of all crappy evil metal movies, TRICK OR TREAT.

The movie even features two genuine rockers. Ozzy Osborne--you know him, the guy on TV that grunts a lot in incomprehensible English that everyone's sick of? Well, he plays a televangelist. A TELEVANGELIST! How ROCKIN' is THAT? Plus, there's Gene Simmons, you know, that guy that yelled at Terry Gross and put out that magazine nobody bought, playing a DJ. Yeah, a DJ, the ULTIMATE rockin' job! Woooooooo!

And for the leads there's....

...um...

...well, there's Marc Price, the guy who played "Skippy" on "Family Ties.".

Skippy, er, I mean Marc Price, plays Eddie, a metalhead whose jock peers don't understand him and are constantly playing tricks on him, including leaving him naked in the girls' gym class. A naked Skippy! How rockin' is... umm...

Anyway, Eddie gets all forlorn when he discovers that his favorite rockin' metal star, Sammi Curr, has been killed in a fire. Distressed, he begins to play Sammi's latest record backwards, and Sammi talks to him, telling him at first to simply do things that will improve his stature around school, then demonically coming to life in the form of electricity and wreaking havoc everywhere.

Electricity! Like an ELECTRIC GUITAR FROM HELL or something! (*loud KA-RRRAAAANG sounds*).

Anyway, it all sort of climaxes at the school, when the doors are sealed and Eddie has to save the girl he loves from Curr, who's come back from the dead to perform a concert at a high school Halloween dance.

Yeah, a high school dance! You can't get more rockin' than... uh...

The film pretty much stops making sense entirely at this point, but it can't stop the rockin'. Gene Simmons shows up again, and Sammi Curr (played by one of the stars of A CHORUS LINE: THE MOVIE... ROCK AND ROOOOOOLLLL!) bops all over the place SHOCKER-style, but sometimes seems to be confined to physical space. Eventually it ends and credits roll. Metal music plays.

TRICK OR TREAT appears to be written randomly by a team of writers that each did a page, looking only at the previous page for continuity. It's dumb, senseless, and completely cornball, leaping leisurely from one CARRIE rip-off cliche to another whether or not it makes sense.

It's totally entertaining, too, provided you keep a six-pack handy. Everything is so over the top and nonsensical that you can't really help but to be dragged along for the ride. The casting of Marc Price is so wrongheadedly inspired that you don't dare look away--especially the moment when the hardcore metalhead leaves his lady love with a foppish "ciao!" Director Charles Martin Smith (!) just injects everything with all the urgency in the world, and for some reason it works, almost managing to come off as a satire.

In short, it's must viewing for an evening a sheer stupid fun. You can almost feel one hand curling into devil horns as you watch it as your other brings an "Old Milwaukee" to your lips.

ROCK AND ROOOOOOLLLLLLLL!!!