SPOOKIES

1987

Written and directed by Eugine Joseph, Thomas Doran, Brendan Faulkner, Ann Burgund, AND Frank M. Farel

A.K.A. "Hey, I know Special Effects!" "Let's make a movie!" "We can use my dad's house!"

Plot After the movie "Gremlins" came out, everyone and their brother tried to make lightning strike twice with their own li'l' monsters with cute names. There were films that focused on the critter like Munchies or Ghoulies, some that were less monster themed, like Troll, and then we have films whose title alone was clearly used to market on the grmlins craze, such as "The Spookies". One of the clues what to expect from this film is the crazy-large ammount of directors, not to mention the even larger ammount of writers. I'm sure that its not a case of shared inspiration, nearly as much as a case of shared opportunity. The film is presented vignette style, and the special effects vary based upon which SFX team is responsible, all of which contain directors of the film. Upon researching the film, I learned that initially the film was entitled "Twisted Souls" and was unfinished, then more crewpeople came on board, shot additional footage (that does not at all connect with the stuff seen on screen) and called it "Spookies". Okay, here's the deal. There's this evil undead magic guy living in a rather large underground tomb with his mostly-dead wife. His big scheme is to use monsters to sacrifice unwitting victims to the end of bringing his beloved back to beautiful life. By the way, the beloved killed herself to get away from her creepy evil husband. Yeah... First he sends his number one henchman, zombie-pirate monkey-boy after a pre-teen runaway and the "cool" guy h runs into along the way. You can tell the guy is cool, because he's wearing sunglassess at night. Eat your Hart out Corey. Get used to monkey-boy, he hangs around most of the scenes, not really doing much. Next, two cars come along, filled with friends that were dejected from a party, and looking for a new place to crash. I use the term "friends" liberally, as these people are pretty varied in archetype. There's the yuppie couple, a greaser-dude, and even a (not) "funny" guy, who comes complete with matching ventroliquist dummy. They get along about as well as you'd expect. During their squatter party, they find an odd thing not unlike a ouija board. This one has like, monsters and stuff on it. One of the girls starts using it, and evil dude puts the whammy on her, so she starts summoning monsters, starting with zombies that surround the house, trapping the gang inside. One by one, the people start getting attacked by different monsters. These include such stalwart creations as mudmen that fart as they walk, spiderwomen, frog-monsters, something I assume to be a doppelganger (as it looks and acts exactly like the descriptions from the old D&D monster manual) and even the Grim Reaper himself. Meanwhile, the bride eventually awakens, only to immediately revert back to hating her husband. Dang, what a See-You-Next-Tuesday. We then get the twist of meeting their son, an 8-year-old with the flimsiest child makeup I've seen since my 8th halloween costume when I went as a vampire. He takes after his dear old papa apparently. This all too much for mommy dearest to take, so she runs off to face the monsters too... Man, is this movie disjointed. Even the special effects are completely uneven. For example, the spiderwoman and the doppelpoppolus thing look great, while Grim and some vampire-thingie both look like stick-puppets. Most of the effects are luckily higher than that in quality (most, but unfortunately not all.) Now if only the scrpit was more coherent, this might be a forgotten gem. As it stands, it's just a highlight of weirdness.

Rating I give Spookies: Two Rotting Shambling Corpses out of Five. Mediocre is a good word to describe this film.

Go Back or Go Home