Lousy Lottery 22: Halloween is time for Trick or Treats!
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 22! You picked a strange one this time, 1982’s Trick or Treats! What better way to kick off the spooky season with some Halloween themed goodness, eh?
It’s Halloween night and it seems kids celebrating is secondary to adults getting down in spooky town. Since Halloween in 1982 LA was all about adults partying, who is gonna watch the kids? Well, if you’re the O’Keefe’s anyone will do! Ms. O’Keefe really needs a break because this is the first Halloween since her husband was institutionalized and her son is a goddamn nightmare. So, she does what any of us would do, she hires a local actress she doesn’t know who is roughly her age. Yeah, sure, why not? While she and her hot date, played by David Carradine (Kill Bill, Kung Fu), are getting down with shoulder pads and coke lines, her crazy ex has broken out of the institution and is headed home!
This movie paints with some VERY broad strokes and the scenes around this guy’s mental health are steeped in stereotypes and overgeneralizations. The depiction of the mentally ill from start to finish is annoying at best and very harmful at its worst moments. Here’s just one tiny example. The escapee basically escapes by dressing up like a nurse. Of course, the nurse is female, of course everyone treats him like he’s an actual woman refusing to even acknowledge that there’s an option other than cis male or female and of course we’re all supposed to be scared of him once he’s out because there’s simply nothing more frightening than a deranged cross dresser, right?
Back at the house, the little kid O’Keefe pulls one magic trick and prank after another. They’re all pretty awesome and I’m kind of in love with this kid, although I fear for the well-being of the actor who played him for reasons you’ll read in a moment. Does the babysitter embrace his weirdness and bond? Does she stick together with him and thwart psycho-dad when he arrives? Nope. She just belittles him, calls him a pain in the ass and shuns him the whole time. Ah, the ‘80s. I want a whole movie based on this kid.
Flash forward and psycho-dad has arrived home only to find his wife isn’t there and learns she’s out on a date. He goes, well, crazy and starts trying to kill everyone. It appears the filmmakers forgot about the kids and the mom, as they just seem to disappear from the story. Will Linda, the babysitter, survive the attack? Well, honestly, I don’t know because they freeze frame just before he is seemingly about to stab her and the credits roll.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to say about this movie. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t scary, it just sort of happened. I have a theory that this movie was some sort of money laundering for people in the adult film industry. That and I believe it was a sort of excuse for friends who run in the wilder parts of LA to get together, do some blow and make a little cash. Everyone involved in this movie seems to have been in some level of drug abuse or just general hot water. Here are just a handful of examples.
The writer/producer/director/editor/cinematographer, Gary Graver, was a porn director who had friends in the very peak echelons of Hollywood. One of those friends, Orson Welles, was in the process of suing Graver when Graver took this job.
Why was the iconic Orson Welles suing Graver? Because he had handed Graver his Oscar for Citizen Kane at a wrap party on another film and Graver had taken it and sold it. That, well, didn’t sit well with ol’ Orson and the Oscar remains missing to this day, whereabouts unknown. So, this piece of shit decides out of the blue to sink $30k of his own money into a random b-movie that had a budget of $20k to begin with and I’m not going to get suspicious? Yeah right. Now, add to the mix the fact that he is on paper as doing nearly every filmmaking role in the picture and had control of the books and, yeah, something’s fishy.
They cut corners everywhere too. The mom of the O’Keefe clan was played by Carrie Snodgrass. She wasn’t really much of an actor and was one of those beautiful women from the ‘60s and ‘70s who was tons of rocker’s muse. In fact, she had a kid with Neil Young and, you guessed it, was in a very expensive legal battle with him over child support arrears when she took on this movie. To make a little extra dough, she helped them cut corners by letting them film the whole movie at her house! So, we have a porn director hiring a rock and roll muse as the lead in a movie that he’s cooking the books on. Yeah, sounds about right. The rest of the cast have similar backstories at the time. For example, David Carradine was in debt and rehab for all sorts of shit. Likewise, Drew Barrymore’s brother John Barrymore was billed in the movie as ‘Mad Doctor,’ and surely got paid, but I swear I couldn’t find him in the movie. Oh, and that babysitter? Yeah, she wasn’t an actor at all, but was the wife of one of the producers and, you probably guessed, was also listed as a ‘producer’ for credit.
Add all this together and you get why I’m shocked there was an actual child in the primary cast. I can’t imagine the stories this kid has from this set. I bet it would fill a memoir. Remember that guy who played the husband on that show Medium? His dad was one of the producers of the Rolling Stone’s album Exile on Main Street. The band recorded that album while partying at a villa in the countryside and they brought along that kid, despite the fact that he was, like, 10 at the time. He later wrote a book about it. I swear, this kid from this movie should do the same thing. I can’t imagine what a fucking mess this set was.
So, look, is it worth a watch? Meh, I guess so. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I supposed it’d be worth a go if you’re super into watching trainwrecks from the ‘80s. I mean, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but it certainly ain’t the best. Ok, before I go, wanna hear some titles from Graver’s porn movies? Yeah, you do. His illustrious works include: The Dirty Dolls, Attack of the 50 Foot Centerfold, Filthy Othello, Moby’s Dick, Heads or Tails, Femalian 2, Bikini Traffic School, Virgins of Sherwood Forest and my personal favorite 13 Erotic Ghosts. So, put on your Halloween mask, do a bump of sweet lady cocaine, aquanet your hair up big and check out Trick or Treats on either Prime or Tubi.
Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 23! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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