TRICK OR TREATS (1982)

TRICK OR TREATS (1982)

Tagline: ...when Halloween night stopped being fun!

(Horror, Magic, Adventures In Babysitting) [R]

You're cute. Are you the babysitter?

Oh man, in this one a man named Malcolm ends up being wrongfully committed to a mental institution by his wife Joan. She then shacks up with another dude named Richard. The two of them are really supportive of Joan’s son Christopher’s fascination with magic and the macabre, but when they leave him for Halloween night with a babysitter named Linda, all hell breaks loose. Not only is Christopher a conniving maniac, but his father Malcolm has also escaped from the mental hospital and wants revenge on Joan. 

So when you start looking into a decent-sized stack of movies that are not in the “Halloween” series but take place on Halloween, you end up with a list of over 200 flicks. So far, at least 4 of those have the word “Trick” in them. This is the first and likely the worst of that batch. I say likely because I haven’t seen 2 of the 4, but if this thing isn’t the worst of the 4, God help us all.  

First off, when you read the premise for this thing it actually sounds like it could be good if it was well executed, but unfortunately, it wasn’t. The main kid pulling all these pranks is extremely annoying and the actress playing the babysitter (played by Jacqueline Giroux) looks like she’s 35 rather than 16 or whatever the normal age for a babysitter would be. Oh, yeah, she actually was 35 when she did this role so there you go. I am guessing maybe they were just trying to get someone that could act for the role? I am not ripping on her, she actually does a pretty good job here in spite of being miscast. 

Speaking of being miscast, this movie really didn’t play out anything like a comedy, but it feels like Peter Jason (THEY LIVE), who plays the angered father Malcolm O’Keefe is trying to get the audience to laugh the entire time he’s on screen. They have him cross-dressing and just wandering around aimlessly for most of this movie. It’s one of the huge problems with this thing because there is a giant chunk of about 80 minutes they could have cut out of this 91-minute movie and people would have been just fine. Instead, we have a few janky scenes with David Carradine (who plays Richard), Carrie Snodgress (who plays Joan), and lots of Chris Graver (who plays Christopher) just being a jerk. It pretty much sucks. Most of the movie was literally shot at the real home of Carrie Snodgrass. 

If this movie did anything right it was sticking some magic elements in here. Even though it’s all pretty amateur, it does at least play on the “Trick” part of the title. While the kill count is above 0, you would probably find more horror and tension taking the city bus into downtown Boston on a Saturday night. Yes, this thing is that rough. The saddest part perhaps for horror fans is that if this concept had been competently handled we might have gotten a series out of this because there was talk of a part II at one point. 

Overall I have to give this one a 1 out of 7. I pretty much couldn’t stand it and it’s certainly not worth your time or attention even if you walked into it, wanting to like it like I did. In case you were curious about the other 4 movies centered around Halloween with the word “Trick” in them, we’ve got this one TRICK OR TREATS (1982), TRICK OR TREAT (1986), TRICK ‘R TREAT (2007), and TRICK (2019). There is a movie out there called TRICK OR TREAT that came out in (2019), but its affiliation with horror or Halloween I can’t really vouch for. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF GARY GRAVER PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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