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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