Trick or Treat (1986)

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, October 2019) I first saw bits and pieces of Trick or Treat in the mid-eighties at a party at a friend’s house, but I say “bits and pieces” because I was a young teenager at the time, and I had no tolerance for horror movies at all — the entire thing felt too horrifying to watch (I peeked in between other things and remember the shop class scene fakeout to this day) except for the part where the girl gets undressed by the demonic music which was like the best thing ever for a twelve-year-old. Middle-aged me remembered exactly two things about the film (the shop class and the girl), which is not too bad over three decades. Of course, middle-aged me is incredibly jaded toward the horror genre, and my main takeaway from Trick or Treat now is that it’s not funny enough. Let me explain: Made following the rock music moral panic of the 1980s, it’s a film that sort-of-tried to lampoon the cultural obsession of the time (as the bullied protagonist gathers the help of a dead rock star through playing his last album backwards) but at the same time fully going all-in on the idea of a rock star being brought back to life to commit murderous mayhem. (And also, not to forget the finer things, to undress girls.) It feels a bit uncommitted in between the humour and the horror, eventually deciding to invest more in the horror. Which, being jaded, I’ve seen countless times. It doesn’t help that Trick or Treat has very few rules to follow for itself, bouncing around from one weird thing to another. Gene Simmons has a small role (so does Ozzy Osborne, apparently, but not in the French-language version I watched) in between many unknowns. Still, the film is at its best when it gives us a glimpse into the high school experience of eighties metalheads, often bullied and misunderstood by people around them. It does remain a very 1980s movie for better or for worse, although the musical aspect does make it a bit more memorable than other movies of the time. As I can testify.