31 days of Horror: Day Ten-Spookies

Spookies (1986)

Holy shit! We're Troll 2 territory here.

From what I can tell Spookies was pieced together from an earlier unfinished film called Twisted Souls. There wasn't enough usable footage for a feature length film, and the original actors wouldn't take part, so a new script involving new actors was shot, ant the two were spliced together. The results are nowhere near seamless.

Billy is running away from home, because his parents forgot his birthday. in the woods he meets some dude and explains his motivations for doing things. after he leaves the dude is killed by a monster cat creature dressed like a disco pirate. Meanwhile a group of not very young, young people are driving down a lonely road looking for a place to party. The leader of the group is wearing a leather jacket thing with a yellow stripe running diagonally across it, and leather pants. for some reason there's a guy wearing a suit following behind in another car going to the same party. At first I thought this was the dad of one of the characters. The comic relief character has a puppet he sometimes talks through. he's also wearing a t-shirt with his own face on it. One of the girls in the group has what sounds like a fake British accent. Her being British never comes up as a plot point so I'm not sure why they did that. Maybe it's because she's stuck up?

Billy goes in to an old mansion and finds a birthday party set up with balloons, and a cake. He assumes that his parents have thrown him a surprise party. when he opens a present there is a screaming head inside. He runs away and is killed by the cat creature. Meanwhile the party seekers find the mansion which is in the middle of a graveyard, and decide to party there. Also there's this evil pasty dude who hangs out with the cat creature and can see everything all the characters are doing and comments on it. Pretty soon a ouija board is found, and Demons are unleashed.

The acting is beyond terrible, and the story never approaches making sense, but things move along at a steady pace and the make up, and monster effects are fantastic. The monsters include the already mentioned cat creature, a spider woman, little gremlin like things, a skull faced grim reaper with red glowing eyes, a murderous little boy in a druid cloak, and zombies that could have walked right off an Iron Maiden album cover.

If you get some beer, and invite some friends over Spookies could be a hell of a time.