Monday, October 8, 2018

PRIME EVIL: TRICK OR TREATS (1982) **


Carrie Snodgress has her rich husband (Peter Jason) sent to the loony bin.  Several years later, she attends a costume party on Halloween with her new husband (David Carradine) and hires Jacqueline Giroux to watch her bratty kid (Chris Graver, son of Gary, who also directed).  Throughout the night, the kid terrorizes Giroux by playing practical jokes on her non-stop.  Things get especially hairy for Giroux when Jason escapes from the booby hatch and begins making menacing phone calls.  

Trick or Treats has a promising concept, but the repetitive nature of the kid’s endless stream of practical jokes really started to test my patience after a while.  Your enjoyment of the film may rely solely on your willingness to get jerked around for over an hour as the kid plays prank after prank on Giroux.  I guess this wouldn’t have mattered so much if there was actually a little horror sprinkled throughout the flick.  As it is, you’ve got to wait till the last ten minutes or so to get any treats.   Even then, the so-called “treats” are predictably doled out and the body count is pitifully low.  You’ll be able to spot the last-second twist ending from a mile away, but Gary Graver’s handling of the finale is awkward.  Things end so abruptly that it almost feels like there might’ve been an alternate ending that was cut out, and Graver had nothing to replace it with.

There admittedly isn’t much of a movie here.  The whole thing could’ve played out as a short film and it would’ve worked much better.  Even though Trick or Treats is heavily padded, there are one or two funny asides (like the scene where two women edit a cheesy horror movie and the part when a live newscast is taken over by mental patients) that keep it from completely running out of gas.  

At least the cast is good.  Jason does a fine job as the whack-a-doodle, who sometimes dresses in drag.  Giroux makes for a fetching heroine, and Carradine seems to be having fun as the drunk husband of Snodgress.  Speaking of Snodgress, the whole movie was filmed in her house, so the production must’ve saved a fortune on her accommodations.

AKA:  Don’t Prank the Babysitter!

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