Trick or Treat
Eddie “Ragman” Wienbauer lives in a world of darkness in his upstairs room filled with hard rock posters and his precious collection of vinyl, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, Anthrax, and above them all Sammi Curr, ten years his senior and having left Lakeridge High School long before Ragman attended, a survivor who made his mark in the world of music and was to play a homecoming Hallowe’en concert until he was banned.
Too violent, too provocative, too obscene, Sammi is the light that guides Ragman through his troubles, an outsider who is bullied and assaulted at school even though his friend, rock DJ Nuke who knew the man back in the day, suggests his worship may be misguided, Ragman’s grief inconsolable when Sammi dies in a fire, his last gift to the world the acetate copy of Songs in the Key of Death which Nuke is to broadcast at midnight on 31st October.
The debut feature of Charles Martin Swift who over a decade later would direct Welcome to the Hellmouth, the opening episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, his first high school horror Trick or Treat walked many of the same corridors, Marc Price playing a teenager who exists in shadows, raised by a single mother who doesn’t understand him and an outsider in his school, the faculty seemingly absent as he is daily bullied by the jocks.
Turning the volume up and filling his mind with noise to push out all the pain he carries, Sammi’s death opens a gateway to all the fears of the Satanic panic moral majority family values brigade of the era, power beyond the grave corrupting the impressionable youth, black magic chants in vinyl records played backwards, while clean-cut Tim Hainey (Firefly’s Doug Savant) is the far greater monster, Trick or Treat a Rocktober surprise which, mad as it becomes as it escalates, is always played straight by the cast.
With Lisa Orgolini as Leslie Graham, the only sympathetic girl in school, and guest appearances by Gene Simmons as Nuke, Ozzy Osbourne as televangelist Aaron Gilstrom and Pee Wee’s “Large Marge” Alice Nunn as crusader Mrs Sylvia Cavell, it is to dancer Tony Fields the film belongs in his dynamic frontman performance as Sammi, ultimate rock showman channelling darkness, danger, energy and a bit of Frank N Furter and Beef, taking the stage and lipsynching to the soundtrack performed by Fastway.
Restored as one of the first titles from Toy Robot, their new edition of Trick or Treat is supported by a commentary with Smith, interviews with writers Michael S Murphey and Rhet Topham, moderated by Michael Felsher, a conversation with Satanic Panic authors Paul Corupe and Allison Lang, features covering the production, the locations and the career of Fields, the After Midnight music video, a gallery accompanied by an interview with photographer Phillip V Caruso and trailers and TV spots.
