Spookies is another 80’s horror movie that I didn’t get to see at the time (in my defence I was quite young at the time). Another chance find on ye old VHS format. This one was a bit grainy, but i thought “fuck it” I’ll persist and see how this one turns out. Fingers crossed.
THE PLOT
Plot wise, this follows young Billy, it’s Billy’s birthday. I had a bit of trouble figuring out what was going on, but he turns up to his party and nobody is there. Food is laid out, decorations hung, the whole nine yards. Just no people. He goes to hang out in and old mansion and meets a fine assortment of characters who have come to party. Again I was young in the 80’s so I can neither confirm or deny if people just showed. up to random mansions to party. Either way they did here. The inhabitants of said mansion were waiting for them. A bunch of older teenagers / young adults and who decide to party in a haunted house.
Random shit keeps happening and billy is chased through the suburbs by some sort of zombie, undead type creature and buried in an open grave. Shits getting weird in this film, but I can’t work out whats going on.
THE VERDICT
Spookies is pure 80’s kitch. Some cool horror effects but nothing to be taken too seriously. This is great fun, if only for the great 80’s hairstyles and 80s practicalities about it. It is not the best of movies by any stretch. In fact it’s pretty god damned crappy. I looked it up on wikipedia and apparantly it only garnered $17k at the box office? How the f–k does a movie only make $17k? Hopefully it did better on the secondary VHS market in the 80s. This actually bothers me a lot, because the creatures look great, I just had no idea what I was looking at. If you spend this much time making a movie look good, why not make the movie good?
But it is great fun. I don’t know why, I couldn’t follow what was going on and there was no boobies in this film. Horror effects are rubbery as shit, but that added to its charm for me. Probably 80’s nostalgia. It’s corny as fuck, and the plot made no sense to me. But for some reason I had a great time watching it. If you liked “Return of the Living Dead” there’s a good chance you’ll like this.
So what happened to Billy? I got no idea.
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