Trick Or Treats
Director: Gary Graver
Writer: Gary Graver
Starring: Jackelyn Giroux and David Carradine
Body Count: 4
Review: Trick Or Treats opens with a scene of a middle-aged couple at breakfast, sitting in their plush backyard. This scene ends with the husband being carted off to a mental institution, after spending about ten minutes falling in and out of the pool with the orderlies. It seems the woman has seen fit to commit her husband to an asylum...and there he remains until...."Several years later." At that point, the man breaks out of the hospital in probably the most ridiculous escape-scene ever filmed, and proceeds to terrorize the babysitter of his wive's child, looking, it seems, for his wife. Oh yeah, and all this happens on Halloween.
There could obviously be a lot of potential in a plot like this. Hell, the setting of Halloween night alone can be enough to carry a movie...just not this movie. In fact, the Halloween setting really doesn't have a whole lot to do with this flick, which has to be one of the worst slasher flicks I've ever seen.
The action drags and drags and drags throughout the first and second acts, and only finally starts to get going in about the last twenty minutes or so. From that point on, there's plenty of chases (almost nonstop, actually), several killings, and even a twist ending...but all for not. For you see, none of these things are even done very well, so after waiting for so long and only getting minimal payoff....well, it just doesn't work. You end up bored with the story, bored with the acting, and most of all, bored with the deaths. There's just nothing happening.
Not to mention the fact that you can't see what's happening, because the screen is so dark that next to nothing can be seen well. Perhaps this was an accident, or perhaps it was Gary Graver's conscious decision to film his movie in pitch black darkness, for fear of what people might say if they could actually see what a horrible piece of crap it is.
Trivia: 70s sleazy icon Paul Bartel has a bit part as a bum, as does David Carradine as the new husband to the psycho's wife, but both are wasted in these roles, and add almost nothing to the movie at all.
