HALLOWEEN HORRORS (cont.)

For the 2024 FALL SEASON!

NIGHT of the DEMONS (1988)

Night of the Demons dropped for the HALLOWEEN, 1988 season - on the heels of the peak of the HORROR boom. 1988 saw Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Phantasm II, The Blob, Pumpkinhead, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers, Hellraiser II, Child’s Play, Maniac Cop, Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and an entire slew of OTHER horror films hit theatres!

To say there was a glut of HORROR movies playing in theatres in SUMMER/FALL ‘88 would be a gross understatement. And it was GLORIOUS for the 7th Grade version of me. But NoTD stood out (and HOLDS UP) even aside stiff competition.

NoTD opens with what is hands down the DOPEST ‘ween and horror themed traditional animation this side of Night on Bald Mountain. A dude and his old lady I knew would throw an annual HALLOWEEN party - and they had a couple flat screens that would just play the intro on set interval/REPEAT for the first couple hours as guests arrived. Its THAT good.

The film itself is a pretty straightforward, ‘‘MONSTER SIEGE’’ movie - the teenaged PROTAG and VICTIMS are holed up in a disused mortuary - that they have been invited to by slutty GOTH chick/BAUHAUS fanatic, ‘‘Angela’’ (played by Amelia Kinkade). Luanna Quigley - who played ‘‘TRASH’’ in Return of the Living Dead - also stars, playing he typical awesome, naked self.

Turns out that Angela isn’t just a much derided misfit - she’s in fact a total dickhead who has been doing really gross and bad things - like invoking demons by way of Satanic rituals. Her choice of the mortuary owes to fact the location has been fouled by the blood of ancient sacrificial victims, and her party guests end up as FOOD for the aforementioned demons.

Practical effects, DOPE optics, weird AF body horror, and violent gore abound. Its glorious.

There is a subset of ‘‘DEMON’’ themed films - which absolutely SMOKE the totally overdone and played out, ‘‘ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE’’ genre. THIS flick, DEMONI and DEMONI 2, DEMON KNIGHT, and a few others are in this genre as I think of it. Check out NIGHT of the DEMONS on ‘WEEN NIGHT proper. It does NOT disappoint - weird guys like me watch this flick on Halloween like normies watch A CHRISTMAS STORY on CHRISTMAS.

GHOST TOWN (1988)

1988’s GHOST TOWN dropped in the earliest days of, DIRECT-To-VIDEO features - which early on, featured a disproportionate number of WAR and HORROR MOVIES. Many of them were shit, but many were inspired efforts that would have been DRIVE-IN features in the decade prior before VHS became ubiquitous.

GHOST TOWN is an ODD lil movie - which makes it great. Its basically just a WESTERN where an erstwhile cop needs to overcome his own demons, terrors to fight a gang of killers and badmen - except in the film, the Flatfoot in question is a desert Sherriff from the (then) present 1988 who finds himself swept into a kind of interdimensional eddy - whereby an outlaw badman has somehow acquired a sort of Hellish immortality. The soul of this antagonist, as well as his rappies and the townspeople he victimized, are doomed to relive the events that led to their collective demise over and over again.

Sherriff Langley (played by Frank Luz) squares off against demonic apparition ‘‘Devlin’’ (played to the hilt by Jimmie Skaggs), with the help of an Excalibur like, Colt 45 Peacemaker (given to him by a barmaid played by Penelope Windlust in the role of Old West Lady of the Lake) that can kill the cursed, undead outlaws.

This movie is basically a straightforward Western - almost like the original 3:10 to Yuma, except its about ‘‘GHOSTS’’. This was one of the final efforts put out by the late Charles Band, and his production firm, Empire Pictures. Nostalgia addicts and Wild West fanatics will dig.

TRICK or TREAT (1986)

Satan-worshipping, heavy metal frontman Sammy Curr (played by Tony Fields) dies in a bizarre fire that some fans and haters alike speculate is suicide. Superfan Eddie Weinbauer (played by Marc Price) finds himself subsequently rudderless and emotionally devastated. Teenaged Eddie is a bullied outcast who loves Sammy Curr more than he does his own miserable life, having taken to writing him worshipful letters over years.

Local dickhead radio DJ, ‘‘NUKE’’ - played by a greaseball Gene Simmons back before he became convinced he was a serious, ‘‘artist’’ - pities Eddie, gifting him the single, promotional copy in existence of Sammy Curr’s final, unreleased album - titled, Music in the Key of Death.

Eddie plays the record - quickly discovering that when played backwards, an incantation is discoverable that facilitates Sammi Curr’s return as some sort of malevolent being that can alter physical reality, manipulate Eddie into becoming a Demoniac, and ultimately, manifest himself physically in our world from beyond the grave.

Young peoples will find this corny - but in 1986, moral panic was focused on Heavy Metal music and ‘‘Satanism’’. As I have written and broadcast about before, ‘‘Satanic Panic’’ WAS in fact a moral panic. It was also derived from the fact that sick fucks, alienated people, and susceptible persons all and sundry WERE killing people, offering sacrifices, committing violent crimes in the name of old gods and Satan himself. This was an actual, ‘‘thing’’. Trick or Treat hit theatres at the PEAK of this phenomena, and it was viewed as a freaky movie for that reason.

The context of course of this movie is now ancient - but it remains a dope period piece, and Sammy Curr is just fuckin COO. ‘‘You should be loyal to your heroes…they can TURN on you’’, demon version of Sammy informs Eddie after emerging in Eddie’s bedroom one night out of ball lightning and cold wind. The subtext is, ‘‘YOU chose ME - I didn’t choose YOU’’. Which is exactly what the Devil issues forth as the terms of his ‘bargains’ .

Rock n Roll never DIES - and it WAS created BELOW. Believe THAT.

*MORE to COME!