SPOOKIES
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| Rated R
| | Copyright 1985 Miggles Corporation N.V.
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 30 October 2002
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- Peter and Meegan - The two responsible members of the doomed cast. They play it safe and die of old age.
- Duke and Linda - This pair would be the rash and horny couple. He loses his head and she probably dies of old age.
- Richard - Nothing like a funny guy with a hand puppet to set the mood. Despite kicking the bucket early on (a pun, ha!), he survives until a spider demon does what spider demons do to stupid comic relief characters.
- Dave and Adrienne - He is mostly subservant to his stuffy girlfriend (Adrienne), but resents her on the inside. An imp chews on his neck, but she is dispatched by a shambling mound's prehensile something. Flashbacks of Soul Vengeance are normal.
- Lewis and Carol - A sudden gravity flux pulls him underground. She turns into a character straight out of "The Evil Dead."
- Billy - A young boy who ran away from home. Slashed up pretty good, then buried alive.
- Muck Men, Zombies, the Spider Woman, Ghosts, the Grim Reaper, and Imps - Just how many weird creatures can we stuff into one movie?
- The Cat Dude - Now we know why doors are always impossible to open in horror movies. There is a man/cat on the other side, holding the knob with his hook hand and laughing at you.
- Kreon - Preserving the life of his beloved through sorcerous powers and spells blacker than night.
- Isabelle - The girl who, from some angles, looks like Winona Ryder. She hated Kreon so much that she took poison to escape him. Not the best way to avoid marrying a necromancer.
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I am certain that a number of you have played Dungeons & Dragons. Well, have you ever been in a game and realized that the DM was just making it up as he went along? To boot, you knew that he had not slept in thirty hours and probably drank too much Mountain Dew earlier. You will understand exactly what sort of experience I had watching this movie.
Three different threads are introduced in the beginning. The first is Kreon, who is the orator of long soliloquies. During the plot's course, the evil sorcerer will either be found sitting in a chair, contemplating a chessboard, or gazing lovingly down upon Isabelle's motionless face. The second thread is Billy. The youth is running away from home because he feels that his parents do not love him (they forgot his birthday). The last alternate universe, I mean subplot, is where the vast majority of characters are located. Duke and his pals were tossed out of a party for being rowdy. With Peter driving one car and Duke the other, they head out into the night.
Billy finds the old mansion first (it is in the middle of a graveyard, also in the middle of nowhere) and goes inside. In one room a birthday party is prepared, complete with cake and balloons. Mysteriously, the young kid believes that his parents knew he would run away and planned this surprise party on his logical route. In case you failed to notice, Billy is pretty freaking stupid. He is also the second victim of the Cat Dude, the first being another homeless man. In the interim, Duke and the others find the mansion. The old house appears to be the perfect place for a midnight bash.
The heartily partying gang soon stumbles upon an odd Ouija board. Asking questions of the cursed artifact results in the usual ominous portents, like "How old am I?" being answered by, "Twenty-nine." and then "How old will I live to be?" receiving the same response. Kreon chooses to cause even more hate and discontent though. The sorcerer picks up a pawn off of his chessboard; he turns it from white to black. Carol is suddenly ready to swallow her friends' souls. Everyone bails out of the room in confusion, since staying means getting walloped by the possessed girl.
Escaping the grounds proves impossible when an army of shambling dead manifests. The characters, who are disoriented and at each other's throats, decide to split up and explore. The center of the movie chronicles people stumbling through the very dark house. Every so often a creature or ghost menaces the disarrayed cast, but the audience's chief enemy is the lack of lighting. The Cat Dude is ubiquitous here; the doomed victims attempt to flee several times only to find the door is held fast from the other side.
In the wine cellar Duke and Linda start getting hot and heavy (he wants sex, she cannot help but notice how icky the floor feels) when a number of flatulent zombies attack. These horrors are dispatched when Linda hacks open a cask of wine and the crumbling corpses dissolve in the vintage. To give the movie some credit, the foes are identified as "Muck Men." Maybe they were not zombies, just gassy constructs made from swamp mush.
Rich meets a mysterious Asian woman who offers to lead him to safety. That proves to be a ruse. The luckless jester stumbles into a huge web and is held fast. The clear-skinned lady transforms into a misshapen spider before draining Rich dry. Upstairs, Duke and Peter have finally had enough of each other; fists start flying. The bout is interrupted when a statue of Death comes to life and chases the remaining partygoers (minus Duke, he did not duck in time). The possessed version of Carol halts the escape and kills off Meegan, Linda, and Peter. By this time I had thrown my hands up in the air and was bemusedly watching the movie. Too many things were going on for me to keep track.
Concurrent with all the other entropy, a drama has been playing out between Isabelle and Kreon. The reason for the hokey sacrifices is so that the sorcerer can preserve her life, though she is repulsed by her admirer. Isabelle attempts to escape through the catacombs, but is knocked unconscious by a puppet witch (surely the mother of a Nazi elf). The frustrated bride returns to Kreon's chamber; she stabs him in the forehead with an icepick and then climbs out the window. For some reason, leaving the house by a treacherous, vine-covered trellis was preferable to using the stairs and front door. Poor girl was probably confused, just like the rest of us.
The movie is not over yet, but you can discover the endless chase scene and gotcha finale on your own. Good luck; tie a rope around your waist before putting the tape into your VCR.
The primary malfunction of "Spookies" is that it never decides what movie it is trying to ape. At points the film seemed like "Phantasm," then "Night of the Living Dead," then "Ghoulies," and finally, God forbid, "Forever Evil." As you might have guessed from my choice of words, the mixture proved to be royally confusing. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- Burial vaults are made of rubberized concrete.
- Trivial Pursuit is based on an archaic Ouija board design.
- Ironically, quicksand can be found in graveyards.
- Zombies are water soluble.
- Monsters often require braces, especially baby krakens.
- Japanese women are actually arachnids.
- The Grim Reaper is full of nitroglycerin.
- Few things are funnier than a "GOTCHA!" ending.
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- 9 mins - Lots of angry people here. Of course, if I were in this movie I would be agitated too.
- 12 mins - He honestly thinks that his parents planned a surprise birthday party in this deserted mansion?
- 21 mins - Time to admit the truth; I am confused.
- 22 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A DOOR!
- 45 mins - Maybe the evil kid is supposed to be Billy, even though we first saw him before Billy died.
- 46 mins - I am so confused...
- 59 mins - Cobweb must have been 50% off at the theatrical supply store.
- 68 mins - Did that make sense to anyone else? Hello? Anyone?
- 79 mins - Sooner or later this chase scene has to end.
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- Kreon: "I have sacrificed the youths of so many so that you might live."
- Peter: "Hold it!"
Duke: "You get the hell out of my way!"
Peter: "Two seconds ago you weren't so hot to get out there."
Duke: "But they're gone. I can't hear nothing. This is our chance!"
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | spookies1.wav
| Dave: "This doesn't make any sense. I mean, who would build a house in the middle of a graveyard like this?"
Lewis: "Might of been the other way around."
Dave: "Yeah, but still..."
Rich: "Helluva way to fertilize your lawn, eh?"
Peter: "What the hell are we doing in a place like this? We're going to get in trouble if we hang around here. This has got to be private property."
| | spookies2.wav
| Flatulent zombies (or muck men, have it as you like).
| | spookies3.wav
| Meegan: "I wonder if any of the others are still alive?"
Peter: "I don't know."
| | spookies4.wav
| Kreon: "A sorcerer's son must learn to use death to control the force of life. This is the source of our power."
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | spookies1.mpg
- 3.0m
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| Peter, Meegan, Duke, and Linda are all trapped in a room with the Grim Reaper. Try to stay with me here, because Peter and Duke are fighting amongst themselves, while Meegan and Linda are trying to open the door. The Cat Dude is holding the door shut and the suddenly animated Reaper statue quickly ends the boys' argument.
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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