MOVIE REVIEW: Spookies (1986)
Eighties horror movies were weird, as they focused less on actually scary things but substituted with sex and gore and jump-scares. Nothing’s wrong with that, because it packed movie theaters for years and made millions of dollars. Not every horror movie got the recognition it deserved because it would often get shunted into the Thriller or Science Fiction genres, chiefly because it’s not bloody enough or even worse — it doesn’t have a bogeyman character like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Spookies, a 1986 independent horror film, is one of the latter of the unrecognized. While the production team tried their best, the results are on film for all of us to see.
Alive for over 150 years, the occultist called Kreon (Felix Ward) cheated death and wants the same for his wife Isabelle (Maria Pechukas, Do You Like Women? [1992], Carmilla [1998]) and their son Korda (A.J. Lowenthal). While he was able to preserve himself and turn Korda into an undead abomination, Isabelle died. Kreon dedicated the rest of his un-life to bringing his wife back through dark magic using human sacrifice. He even has a dapper werecat minion with a hook-hand (Dan Scott, “Adam-12” [TV-NBC]) to look for victims.
The occultist’s first victim is Billy the runaway (Alec Nemser, Phantom Jesus:: Crucify Reality [2020]), part of the child runaway and street child epidemic in 1980s and 1990s America. Young Billy finds himself at the mercy of the werecat, which chases Billy into an open grave and buries the child alive. This child’s death goes to feed the sacrifice of human souls needed to revive Isabelle, but more souls are needed. Kreon likes to collect them through an ornate Ouija board…but who will he get to fill the sacrificed soul quota? Simple: he waits for stupid people to show up.
Like clockwork, our party-hards arrive in 2 cars. Our first has:
- Duke (Nick Gionta, Street Trash [1987], Killer Dead [1992]), the leather-clad macho jerk with a Jersey accent who’s driving
- Linda (Joan Ellen Delaney, Dead End [1985]), the voluptuous redhead in an abusive relationship with Duke
- Richard (Peter Iasillo Jr., Top Five [2014], HellBilly 58 [2009]), a geek who always includes his hand-puppet Moog
- Carol (Lisa Freide, Dangerous Love [1988]), who looks like a mash-up of actress Carrie Fisher and vocalist Stevie Nicks
- Lewis (visual effects artist Al Magliochetti, Kraa! the Sea Monster [1998], Waterworld [1995]), Canadian tuxedo aficionado and Carol’s boyfriend
…while our second following car has:
- Meegan (Kim Merrill, “TerrorVision” [TV-Lifetime]), giving off “Final Girl” energy in a sweater vest
- Peter (Peter Dain, Igor and the Lunatics [1985]), Meegan’s much-older dad-like boyfriend that dislikes Duke and bears a striking resemblance to actor Sam Waterston
- Adrienne (Charlotte Alexandra, Emmanuelle 3 [1977], “Tandoori Nights” [TV-Channel 4], the high-class Brit who’s never far away from a cigarette
- Dave (Anthony Valbiro), a guy who dislikes Duke who’s Adrienne’s cuckold
Everyone thinks Duke gotten them lost while looking for a new party, despite claiming to know these back roads. Duke is insecure and doesn’t want them to think he got them lost, so he picks the first place he can find on the road: an abandoned mansion in the middle of a graveyard. It’s not-so abandoned, as the lights are still running. The party-seekers bring in their booze and avail themselves of the furniture décor, only for Duke to find yet another sign they should leave: a desiccated corpse in a locked closet clutching an ornate Ouija board. It comes without a pointer, but Carol and Duke find it on a nearby shelf and soon they’re falling into Kreon’s plans by asking dumb questions that quickly sum up their futures — they’re never getting any older, never going home again, and never leaving the house alive. Lives are lost, friends betrayed, there’s even some sex play, but then they do the one thing you should NEVER do in a horror movie: THEY SPLIT UP. Kreon is entertained at the deaths in his haunted mansion as these idiots practically line up to die for his beloved’s resurrection, so how are our protagonists supposed to leave? What fresh horrors await them at the threshold of escape?
It goes without saying that Spookies was a product of its time, but it also had me convinced this was either a Spanish or Italian horror film based on quality alone. It’s very much like a tasty citrus-based pastry: juicy practical effects with a vision for gory makeup, laid over and contained inside a paper thin excuse for a plot…but with a few surprisingly tangy third-act twists that make you want more. Even if the gore and creature makeup wasn’t the best (most of the zombies look like they’re from the House of the Dead video game), nearly every attempt on screen looks like a high-effort moonshot. The actors with their limited ability try their damnedest to sell the situations, and the production teams (both on-set and post) did their best to make it look realistic via rotoscoping animation, stop-motion effects, lots of texture, and very little lighting. Despite the effort, the distributor’s limited release over one month (and a short stint in Hong Kong) doomed this film to near obscurity. I always saw this in stock at my local video store, which says so much, but since those are mostly gone I was able to watch on Tubi. Understandably Spookies might not be for everyone, so take it for what it is.
CHOICE CUTS <<SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT>>:
- OK, time to talk about the main attraction in the special effects department: Estrella the spider-woman. Played by Soo Paek (her only acting credit), this character looks Asian, so naturally the sound team plays the “Shakuhachi” sampler when she shows up. Both of her spider forms make her look ridiculously Mongoloid (thanks to the exaggerated size of the bottom eyelids). That all gets forgotten when the gigantic spider legs come out of her body. The head merges and spreads to become the abdomen and thorax, while the eyes seem to be mounted in weird places. You cannot look away, because even though the arachnid anatomy is wrong, they did it so right.
- Shoutout to Adrienne for her survival skills…right up until she meets the open-hearted tentacle monster.
- Billy’s birthday scene. For what it’s worth, it does set up how weird this haunted house is.
- Farting mummies in the haunted basement that dissolve in water/wine; to quote the Martin Scorsese meme, “this is cinema”.
- PROTIP: If you see a Ouija board surrounded by Satanic imagery and red lighting, leave the area. If you find a book riddled with Satanic imagery and occult Latin writing, leave it alone. Thank me later.
- Billy walks by his own gravestone — blank of his name for the moment, but bearing the current year and his birth year. Considering he just shared with a random strange man how old he is exactly, this pays off.
- Both Korda and the werecat were wasted. Don’t think I forgot about the drifter at the beginning (played by Pat Wesley Bryan); he was wasted also.
- Carol, that Ouija pointer moved on its own outside of the confines of the Ouija board to point at YOU. You don’t think that’s weird?
- The pyrotechnic tombstone for Lewis was pretty cool, as does the awesome Grim Reaper statue with the glowing red eyes.
- This was Maria Pechukas’ first acting role.
- I am reminded of Cabin on the Woods and Evil Dead as these people probably would not have died if they had truly known where they were going from the start.
- PRICELESS QUOTE: Linda’s an idiot when she says to Meegan about Duke: “I’ll be alright. He’s taken good care of me up until now.” Linda, he’s abusing you and has been abusive from the first frame.
- PRICELESS QUOTE: Kreon’s cold-hearted assessment of his prisoner breaks down like this: “But I do have you. I control your past, your present, and your future.”
- SHYAMALAN TWIST: Isabelle wanted to die AND she hates Kreon. Turns out Kreon used black magic to imprison his wife in eternal sleep and youth for 70 years. She used poison to escape him in death before, and Kreon’s ritual is to rejuvenate her body permanently so she can be with him AND their son Korda, transformed by Kreon into a ghoul.
- Pretty sure the director’s into zombie porn…or something worse, given Isabelle’s extended clothes-ripping scene via zombie horde.
