Two spoiled sisters Regina (Clancey McCauley) and Carla (Launa Kane) keep begging their rich dad (Sal Longo) for money and he bluntly tells them to get a job. Meanwhile, an enterprising criminal (director Gary Whitson) plans on kidnapping the girls on Halloween night and holding them for ransom. After he captures them and puts them in his makeshift dungeon, he waits for the money to roll in.
Since this is a W.A.V.E. Production, that means there are scenes of women being chloroformed, held in bondage, strangled, put in stocks, tied to the rack, placed in a noose, and getting knocked out and having their unconscious body dragged around. One novel bit comes when McCauley is tied up and suffocates in a sealed airtight coffin. The gimmick of having the events take place on Halloween is also unique as it gives the film a good excuse to dress the ladies in the cast in sexy costumes like Little Red Riding Hood, a Greek goddess, and a cat from the Broadway musical Cats.
There’s not much in the way of T & A here aside from a couple of nip slips. I think the appeal is supposed to come from the prolonged scenes of helpless women struggling against their restraints. If that is the sort of thing that gets your motor running, then add an extra star to the overall rating.
Even though Longo gives a solid performance, the scenes of him sitting around the phone, negotiating with Whitson, and trying to raise the ransom money are easily the weakest part of the movie. The stuff with Whitson tormenting the girls in his dungeon don’t rank among W.A.V.E.’s best stuff, but they get the job done. I particularly liked the part where he tortured the girls by playing one of those “Spooky Sounds of Halloween” tapes.
Halloween Horrors is less than an hour long, and because of that, it goes down smooth enough. If you’ve never seen a W.A.V.E. movie before, this probably isn’t the best one to start with. (If you want to see a deranged piece of outlaw art, check out Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge.) However, if you’re jonesing for a quick hit of Whitson’s singular brand of cinematic oddities, this is liable to scratch the itch.
