Review #272: Spookies (1986)

This review was originally written in October 2023.

Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #26 - Spookies (1986)

So, I have a strong suspicion about this movie that could probably be verified by checking the IMDB trivia, but I'm purposely waiting until after I've written the bulk of my review before I do so.

Spookies is a film about a group of... teens? (And someone's dad?) driving to... a party? (I think?) who end up stopping at a big spooky mansion along the way. Once there, they discover a haunted Ouija board, and one of them gets possessed. Meanwhile, the house is also inhabited by some kind of ghoul or vampire or something that is trying to resurrect his dead wife, and to that end he summons a bunch of monsters to terrorize the... (teens?) because somehow that will resurrect his wife. The... (teens?) split up and some are killed by monsters but most aren't, the dead wife gets resurrected but then tries to escape and fights off a bunch of zombies but then gets caught by her husband's servant. Then the movie ends.

Here's my suspicion: I suspect that this movie was either two movies that they filmed on the same set and decided to combine into one movie, or it was one movie that ended up having so many issues and/or was thirty minutes too short so they shot a bunch of additional, unrelated footage and through "clever" editing tried to make it seem like it was happening concurrently. The side of the plot involving the husband resurrecting his dead wife struck me as very odd, because at no point in the entire film do the husband, the wife, the husband's servant, or the husband's... (child?) ever appear on-screen with any of the... (teens?). There's plenty of times where a door won't open and there'll be a shot of the servant on the other side holding it closed, or a monster will be attacking a... (teen?) and it'll be intercut with the servant watching from outside, and after one of the... (teens?) gets possessed, she speaks with the ghoul/vampire husband's voice, but all of these could have easily been added in after-the-fact. There's even a moment when the... (teens?) are searching the house and they find a portrait of the husband, but it was only visible in its own shot- and the camerawork looked noticeably different on that shot than the rest of the scene. (In addition to all of this, there's a five-minute subplot at the start of the film about a boy running away from home, encountering a drifter, and then stumbling across the spooky mansion before getting killed, and this too seemed completely unconnected to the rest of the film, so I'm assuming the same about that.)

Even aside from the fact that it seems to be two completely unrelated movies, the movie/s we got are pretty terrible. I don't understand what any of the characters are doing at any given moment, the premise of them driving to a... (party?) makes no sense, and the dialogue is just awful and it honestly feels like the script had every line drawn randomly out of a hat. It's established very early on that the front door to the mansion is unlocked and the characters could leave whenever they want, but they don't want to because there seem to be monsters outside and they're afraid they'll be killed if they do. And yet, they spend the rest of the movie ostensibly trying to find an exit, seemingly forgetting that they already have one. And the entire story with the... (teens?) gets resolved when one of them throws a glass bottle at the one who got possessed, at which point we cut away from them mid-climax and never see or hear from any of them again (with the actual climax instead involving the resurrected bride trying to escape and being attacked by zombies). As far as we know, the... (teens?) are still inside the mansion to this day.

So, this was a bad movie with some so-bad-it's-good moments. One of the... (teens?) has some hilariously bad lines ("Ouija? Sounds stupid." and "Leave me alone. I don't wanna do nothin'." were standouts) and I still don't understand why someone brought their dad along, so it's good for a laugh but not much else.

Oh, and I've now checked the IMDB trivia, and I was mostly right- this was filmed as a production titled Twisted Souls, but during editing, creative and legal issues came up, so the producers hired a new director/editor who cut out much of the film and re-shot new scenes to fill out its runtime, eventually resulting in the mess that is Spookies.

Overall Rating: 4/10 Farting Muck Men

Additional Recommendation: If you like Full-Motion Video computer games, there's one called The Spectre Files: Deathstalker that has a very similar vibe and setting to this film. Most of its footage was shot in the 80s to be a spoof of contemporary FMV horror games, but it was never released until 2016 when the Illinois-based Galloping Ghost arcade bought the footage and proceeded to finish and release the game. It's available on Steam, and it's one of the few games my wife will play! If you enjoyed Spookies (or even if you didn't) I highly recommend checking out The Spectre Files: Deathstalker.