3 Decades of TRICK OR TREAT: Pure ’80s Horror Madness

What will remain after Ozzy Osbourne is not only music, but also several excellent film episodes, especially the one from Trick or Treat.

An appearance in a film with such a title might suggest that Ozzy will fully display his madness – bite the head off a bat, pour dozens of buckets of water over the heads of fans and prove that the nickname Prince of Darkness is not exaggerated.

The leader of Black Sabbath (although someone will surely object at once that the leader is Tony Iommi) shows here, however, his second, comic face and appears as an elegant television expert speaking on the subject of rock pornography. Of course, perversely, he is its hardened opponent and calls for singing about pure, delicate love and for stopping the satanic machine that is rock’n’roll.

On the opposite side stands a star typical of poodle metal (also called hair metal), who delights in dragging all kinds of taboos onto the stage and demoralizing the youth (at least that is how it seems to parents). Sammi Curr, however, dies prematurely in a hotel fire, which causes Eddie, his uncritical admirer, to break down. A stroke of luck makes it so that, for consolation, he receives a vinyl record with yet unpublished songs of his idol, but playing it brings a cruel demon into the world… Does it sound familiar?

If you have watched the New Zealand Deathgasm, you will certainly quickly realize how many elements the crew from the Antipodes borrowed precisely from Trick or Treat. In both cases the main protagonist is a teenager hated by the school environment, a fan of metal (although in the 1986 film this is a very conventional term, the music we hear is decidedly hard rock); in both the object of adoration turns out to be the villain and in both an innocent girl, after putting on headphones, crosses over to the metal side of the force.

However, whereas Deathgasm quickly transforms into charming gore, Trick or Treat is a textbook example of a videocassette production from the 1980s. Tony Fields in the role of the performer of the titular trick was presented exactly in the way a street hooligan was seen three decades ago. He resembles an exaggerated character from the music video for Bad by Michael Jackson and, interestingly, he actually had the opportunity to collaborate with the King of Pop – he was one of the dancers on the set of another clip, the legendary Thriller.

His mane, leather outfits and contemptuous glances make him indeed associated with musicians of groups such as Mötley Crüe, and not merely with an actor playing one of them. Unfortunately, fate turned out to be even less merciful to Fields than to his character; he died at the age of thirty-five, suffering simultaneously from cancer and AIDS.

The colorful, extremely unreal Sammi Curr stands opposite a completely ordinary teenager and although Eddie is doomed to defeat in a clash of charisma, Marc Price (known in fact only from this film) credibly portrays a young metalhead who is not as bad as many people demonizing metal music might think.

The plot is simple, the screenplay does not abound in macabre moments (the best is pulling a television presenter straight out of the screen and immediately charring her), and there is actually nothing here to be afraid of, nevertheless the atmosphere of the film compensates for all shortcomings.

A young viewer who reaches for Trick or Treat today may find it strange where such a numerous audience at the concert of a crude rock band came from, which, unlike the record-breaking in popularity Night Lover, treats itself quite seriously.

Charles Martin Smith’s film, apart from being a horror, is also a document of a specific decade. Sammi Curr’s fame is not a fantasy; Poison, Def Leppard or Ratt truly had their five minutes of fame, but today – similarly to VHS tapes – they are relics of the past, which an increasing part of pop culture audiences never experienced in their years of glory. Trick or Treat is the essence of the second face of the 1980s, the naughty one, having nothing in common with Stranger Things and synthpop.

It therefore fits into the current trend of returning to that era, and at the same time stands in opposition to it, and although I do not at all long for teased hair or squeaky voices, the nearly one-hundred-minute retrospection evokes ghosts of the past that envelop in a friendly embrace full of nostalgia and memories. If you remember Ozzy Osbourne from before the reality show broadcast on the MTV channel, you absolutely must reach for this cassette. Just do not play it backwards.