Spookies (1986)
Uuuuuuhh, look at me: I’m Duke, the horny ghost
Directed by Brendan Faulkner, Thomas Doran and staring amongst others Felix Ward, Maria Pechukas and Dan Scott the film starts with a young boy who has run away from home who meets a drifter that gets himself killed after the boy runs off.
The boy finds a house and ventures inside only to find a severed head. Running off he is also killed by a cat like human with a hook on one hand.
Next we meet our motley crew. Leading them is the cocky, arrogant Duke with his very loyal and sweet girlfriend Linda. Dave and his stuck up bitch of a Girlfriend Adrienne, Meegan and I’m guessing her boyfriend Peter.
I don’t get this relationship. He’s much older than her and doesn’t seem to know anyone there. Is he a teacher of hers and that’s how they started dating? however they met at least he isn’t afraid to stand up to Duke and knows how to give a left uppercut.
But it isn’t just their relationship I don’t understand. I don’t get how any of the couples in this group are friends with the others at all. No-one seems like they would know each other in real life apart from Duke, Linda and comic relief Richard.
There are more to this group but they cop it early on so don’t matter.
They find, with a bit of help from necromancer Kreon, a ouija board that takes no time in possessing one of the don’t matters. Then it is your standard fare with a group of idiots trapped in a house trying to get out whilst driving each other up the wall but this is the 80s so despite the fact you have seen it all before there’s a charm to this low budget mess you can’t help but enjoy.
Along the way they are picked of by such eclectic minions sent by Kreon such as a Spider woman, Demon Girl, some Snake demons even the Grim Reaper but the best of a bad bunch has to be the Muck men.
I’ll leave this here because words cannot do the films real stars justice
Originally called Twisted Souls, problems due to legal issues between the directors and financial backers meant the film was put on hiatus during the editing and post production stage. The financial backer then hired another director to film new footage with a different cast to tie in the footage already filmed for Twisted Souls which became Spookies.
I’m a bit biased here. This isn’t a good film. At best entertaining but it seems to be a mess…
A wonderful mess.
I love these bad 80s films. I love how bad they are and how it seems everyone involved didn’t give a toss especially the film-makers themselves.
The story is seen it all before and there for no other reason than to link the more surreal moments together.
Perhaps that’s a result of the problems during filming.
Kreon needs to kill them to bring back to life his love who killed herself to get away from him.
Not smart when the bloke is a necromancer but wait til you she the child she gave birth to when she was dead.
A script as bad as the plot as bad as the effects as bad as the acting and it is good.
Everything works for me but I probably shouldn’t recommend it unless you like 80s schlock.
