Halloween Die-ary: October 8, 2018

One item for you on this drizzly October night: Trick or Treats. The movie. No, not the 2007 Trick ‘r Treat. That’s the one with the burlap-headed creature named Sam. No, not the 1986 Trick or Treat. That’s the one with the ghost rock star named Sammi Curr. I'm talking about the 1982 flick by Gary Graver.

Maybe you’ve seen it on Amazon Prime, the poster thumbnail a trick-or-treat sack with a decapitated head trailing blood across the poster through a rip in its side. The tagline: "…When Halloween Night Stopped Being Fun!" I’ve had this movie in my queue since the summer in case I needed an emergency Halloween movie.

I needed it tonight. I forewent anything else after we put the kids to bed, and just dropped onto the couch to watch something, anything Halloween that I hadn't seen before. I chose this movie.

It's about a boy terrorizing his babysitter with various harmless but mean-spirited tricks, while his father has escaped an insane asylum dressed as a woman and is on his way to the old house to take revenge on the wife who committed him. It’s low budget and bad in just about every way. Tonally, visually, the dialogue, the acting. And it certainly lives up to its tagline.

But it does take place on Halloween, which means basically that every once in a while the babysitter is interrupted by trick-or-treaters and an obvious man dressed as a woman can cross town only somewhat molested.

But I’m impressed with anybody that can make a movie, and, according to IMDb, it was made for a mere $55,000. So anybody that can make a movie in 1982 for $55,000 dollars gets at least three stars from me, although my stars are admittedly worth less than most people’s. But especially when it cameos John Carradine and Steve Railsback (whom I will forever know as Duane Berry from Season 5 of The X-Files).

In the end, it was awful. But it was enough Halloween for me to call it an October night.

This has been my worst die-ary entry so far, I think.