Review: Spookies (1986)

Directed by: Brendan Faulkner, Thomas Doran, Eugenie Joseph
Starring: Felix Ward, Dan Scott, Alec Nemser
Written by: Thomas Doran, Brendan Faulkner, Frank Farel, Ann Burgund
Music by: Kenneth Higgins, James Calabrese
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Vinegar Syndrome)
IMDb

I’ve put off officially reviewing the glorious disaster that is Spookies because I have so, so much love for this film, and I didn’t want that clouding my “analysis.” But then I realized nothing I ever write on this site is remotely unbiased or even consistent. My ratings system flutters to fit that day’s stupid whims. I assign incomprehensible, chaotic garbage like Winterbeast 8.5 stars, but a well-made, professional, though slightly dull movie like The House That Drips Blood gets 6. It’s ridiculous, man. But spoiler: Spookies is a 9. From the perspective of someone who’s seen thousands of horror movies, many of them just trying to ape the last thing that remotely succeeded at the box office, this movie is a unique cornucopia of everything I love about the genre.

The movie’s plot, to the degree one actually exists, concerns a group of folks in search of a party who find a decrepit mansion in the middle of a graveyard. They end up as part of a cosmic game of sorts being played by dusty old man and his were-cat man-servant who plan to use the souls of these party people to raise his dead wife from the grave. People much more interesting than me have written extensively about the insanely troubled production of this movie, but to summarize: one group of filmmakers completed about 75% of the movie (then titled Twisted Souls) under increasingly shitty circumstances that ultimately led to their firing, and a new group of filmmakers were hired to film new stuff with a new cast at the same location. These two disparate movies were haphazardly edited together and Spookies was wondrously born unto our undeserving eyeballs and earholes.

The stuff added during the second round of filming (which consists primarily of the geriatric sorcerer and his catman) doesn’t need to be there, but I appreciate the odd second layer of narrative, as extraneous as it is, and I actually think the story works kind of okay as a whole considering its ludicrous genesis. But the Twisted Souls portion of the movie is where the good, good stuff’s at. The evil old man’s cosmic game involves a Ouija board thingie that appears to bring the partiers’ fears to life, which serves as a great device for throwing so, so many crazy, ambitious monsters into the fray that represent just about every type of creepy-crawly you might find in horror movies. There are zombies, farting mud-monsters, a spider-woman who sucks men dry, a large-mouthed hag that spews energy balls, a grim reaper with glowing red eyes who explodes when he falls from sufficient height, a deadite-inspired ghoul, some small reptilian rascals, a tentacled and amphibious Lovecraftian nightmare that can channel electrical bolts that melt faces, etc. And all of these fabulous monsters kill in equally ambitious and slimy, gory ways. The special effects in Spookies are the most pure joy that can be found in this universe, and a lot of it was created by Gabe Bartalos, who was just 16 years old at the time. And 16-year-old me would have been yelling, “That’s fucking awesome!” every 5 minutes.

Take all those rubber monsters, add in a great synth score; amateur actors trying their very best to be decent, all the while making the weirdest possible choices; an eerie setting that, strangely, was the home of the United States’ first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; excessive use of fake smoke to create some lovely old-school atmosphere; and awesome poster and box art by Richard Corben, and you’ve got the recipe for something serendipitously unique. Plenty of people find Spookies boring and gratingly nonsensical; plenty of people are miserable fucking grumps, too. If you had a love affair with monsters as a kid that continues into adulthood, there’s no reason this flick shouldn’t spark some happiness in your macabre soul.

Overall rating: 9 out of 10