Spookies (1986)

This not a 5. That is just overrating it. This is 1. It is not scary. The story line is awful. The acting is awful. The ending is awful. I do not know why people like this movie. It is just an awful movie. The Evil dead is a very scary movie. And this is awful. Do not wast your time. Do not wast your money. Do not see this movie. It is a pooh movie. It should been called the poopies. Because it is pooh. If you want to get scared see Evil dead II. This is crappy crappy pooh. Why did it get a 5 I will never know. It is supposed to be funny?. It is not. It is a big pile of pooh pooh.

Spookies has enough weaknesses for two movies, which is fitting given that it is really two movies edited together into one. Although the resulting "film" is far from the worst example of this type of project (e.g. anything by Godfrey Ho), it highlights the weakest aspect of both films.One plot line follows a group of friends who get caught in a haunted house populated by nightmarish demons. This plot thread is the better of the two, as it boasts some impressive make up effects and creature puppetry. A spider creature represents a particular highlight.However, none of the characters are really fleshed out, and no protagonist emerges. Furthermore, the characters are so disparate that it is hard to imagine why they associate with one another. The group boasts a middle aged man and what appears to be a fifties juvenile delinquent.The second plot, tangentially related to the first through some dialogue, but never intersecting, involves a sorcerer trying to resurrect his wife with the help of his werecat and some human sacrifices. The special effects in these segments are much weaker, with make up on the level of a children's Halloween costume.The overall product is also weakened by mostly failed attempts at comedy, mostly consisting of the characters acting even more stupid than the typical horror victim. The film is worth watching, if at all, for some of the more interesting creature effects.

So this film was a low budget project that was shelved and patched up by someone else with additional footage. The acting is standard, the effects are old school but you know what it has atmosphere and its weird as hell. So I like it, even more than all those crappy Michael Bay remakes, even better than the Paranormal Activities and the Paranormal Entities and the Devil Insides etc.The story is sparse to say the least, also it doesn't make much sense. Think Phantasm or City of the Living Dead and you get the idea. A kid is alone in the woods, its his birthday and his parents forgot so he has run away from home. He talks to a weirdo who hangs around in trees, once the boy goes the man is murdered by what appears to be some sort of blue cat man in a strange dinner suit, who proceeds to follow the boy. The basic plot revolves around an old man who lives in an old house in the woods, trying to revive his dead wife with people souls, only to find when she wakes up, she doesn't want him. What a bitch! ha So then we meet a motley crew of people looking to party pull up outside an old house, why these people decided to hang out together I have no idea, they are so random.So the boy finds the house and finds a room set out as a party for him for his birthday, he is delighted but finds a head in the cake box and runs off to the woods, only for the blue cat thing to catch him and bury him alive... weird and a little disturbing. So we are left with these party goers who don't really have a party. What follows is a series of set pieces that are weird, funny and not at all predictable. There's the mud men in the basement, a disgusting mutant that fires electric currents, the witch in the caverns, the little vampire kid and most memorable, the spider lady. So if you like some old school 80s weirdness I would recommend.

Someone recently added a trivia comment which says, "Actually comprised of two separate, unfinished films and edited together." This is completely untrue. I wish people would actually read the message board notes before bothering to make such comments. Spookies is comprised of the original Twisted Souls (finished save for some post production work), and new footage added months later (which was NOT from an unfinished, separate film at all, but was footage shot to add into Twisted Souls). I know some of the people who made this film and visited the set many, many times so I know what I am talking about. Where do people come up with these things? I know it has a confusing history, but read the comments from myself and others, it will help clarify matters.