Gene Simmons

Trick or Treat (1986)

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.

Extract (2009)

Extract (2009)

(In theatres, September 2009) This risqué yet generally amiable comedy by Mike Judge has little of the cubicle universality of Office Space of the striking conceptual strength of Idiocy.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does limit its appeal and give it little memetic traction.  In less pretentious terms, Extract is easily forgettable even if it’s not unpleasant to watch.  A good chunk of this appeal rests on the shoulders of the capable cast headlining the ensemble comedy.  The lead character of the piece, a harried chemist turned businessman now hitting a mid-life crisis pretty hard, wouldn’t be half as sympathetic if he wasn’t played with the good-boy charm of Jason Bateman.  Gene Simmons pops up as an intense ambulance-chasing lawyer, whereas J.K. Simmons is a bit wasted as a voice of reason in the middle of so much low-key craziness.  Extract’s plot scatters in multiple directions, with a number of small twists when characters don’t behave as they usually do in other comedies.  If the actual execution of the plot is hit-and-miss, Judge’s portrait of American working-class banality is just off-the-wall enough to keep viewers interested.  Time will tell if the film ends up producing as many catchphrases as the writer/director’s previous efforts, but a first glance suggests that this won’t be the case.  On the other hand, Extract does manage to hits its own targets consistently, and if a little more ambition (or class awareness) wouldn’t have hurt, at least there’s something to be said for decent entertainment.