Video Scripts: The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, Maximum Overdrive
Cody wrote three more videos for the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered
Below, you can see three more videos that I have written the scripts for.
For the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about the 1987 creature feature The Monster Squad - which has been a favorite of mine since childhood, but unfortunately it managed to slip past a lot of horror fans.
The Monster Squad script:
If you’re a horror fan over a certain age, chances are you’re already very familiar with Fred Dekker’s 1987 film The Monster Squad. Maybe you grew up watching it; maybe you caught up with it later. Either way, most of us older fans have seen it by now. But there are generations behind us who haven’t even been told about this awesome movie yet. So, this video is primarily for you younger fans out there who need to know about The Monster Squad, which is the best horror movie you never saw.
In 1987, moviegoers were introduced to the brilliance of Shane Black‘s writing with the March release of the buddy cop classic Lethal Weapon. But a little later in the year, another Shane Black project came and went without many people noticing: The Monster Squad, which Black wrote with director Fred Dekker.
Dekker had the initial idea for The Monster Squad when he was preparing to go into production on his feature directorial debut, the 1986 release Night of the Creeps. It was an idea inspired by his love for both classic comedies and the Universal Monsters. He enjoyed when those worlds collided in films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and wanted to do something along those lines. When he pitched The Monster Squad to his college friend Black as something they could write together, he referred to the concept as “The Little Rascals meet Universal Monsters.”
The story Black and Dekker crafted together features several of the famous monsters Universal thrilled the world with in the ’30s through the ’50s, dropping them into 1980s America. Count Dracula, played in the film by Duncan Regehr, has come to America in search of an amulet that is said to be made of concentrated good, which by its very existence helps keep evil from taking over the world. But once every 100 years, this indestructible amulet becomes vulnerable, and if it’s destroyed, the creatures of the night will take control of the planet. That idea sounds really good to Dracula, and he’s recruited a mummy, a wolfman, a gill-man, Frankenstein’s monster, and three vampire brides to assist him in his search-and-destroy-the-amulet mission.
The only thing standing in the way of these monsters is a group of young kids who have formed a monster club, soon to be known as the Monster Squad. That’s Andre Gower as club leader Sean Crenshaw; Robbie Kiger as his right-hand man Patrick; Brent Chalem as the bullied Horace; Michael Faustino as little Eugene, who is usually accompanied by his dog Pete; and Ryan Lambert as the newly inducted Rudy, a slightly older badass who stands up to bullies and is rumored to have killed his dad. He’s the coolest kid to ever pair a leather jacket and fingerless gloves with penny loafers. Sean’s little sister Phoebe, played by Ashley Bank, is always hanging out with the club members as well, though they’re reluctant to let her into their treehouse headquarters simply because she’s a girl.
They know a lot about these monsters that have invaded their town, and thanks to the fact that Sean has acquired the journal of the legendary monster hunter Abraham Van Helsing, they also have all the information they need on the amulet and how to thwart Dracula’s plan. Problem is, the journal was written in German—a language none of them knows—so they have to seek the help of a local they’ve been calling “Scary German Guy,” played by Leonardo Cimino, and hope he’s not the creep they suspected him to be.
Since Sean and Phoebe’s dad, Del, played by Stephen Macht, is a local police detective, he also gets mixed up in the monster action while investigating the very strange things occurring in their town. As the climactic showdown approaches, this squad also seeks the assistance of Patrick’s older sister, played by Lisa Fuller.
If the part about an amulet made of concentrated good sounds silly to you, don’t worry about that too much. The amulet stuff barely matters; it’s just what Alfred Hitchcock would refer to as the MacGuffin. The movie is really about how much fun it is to watch these kid heroes interact with each other and deal with the monster threat, and to see very cool versions of famous monsters running around in 1980s America.
Black wrote most of the first draft of the script by himself while Night of the Creeps was in production. The way he and Dekker approached the writing of the script was to write new material on their own and rewrite each other’s work. They only wrote a single scene—the one in which The Monster Squad is approaching the crumbling old mansion where the amulet has been hidden—together in the same room.
Dekker has said that the scope of the first draft was too large; using Van Helsing’s 19th-century assault on Dracula’s castle at the beginning of the movie as an example of how that draft would have been way too expensive to shoot. According to Dekker, Black’s vision of that sequence involved Van Helsing riding in on a zeppelin that was equipped with machine guns and taking on 40 vampire brides on horseback. Through the rewriting process, they were able to scale it down to something that could be made for a budget that was reportedly around $12 million.
He got the script into the hands of Jonathan Zimbert, who worked for director Peter Hyams. Hyams was told he could help the project get made by putting his name on it, so he took an executive producer credit on The Monster Squad while Zimbert was the main producer. With the backing of Zimbert and Hyams, along with Taft Entertainment Pictures and Keith Barish Productions, The Monster Squad began filming in late ’86, just weeks after Night of the Creeps reached a small number of theaters.
The logical home for The Monster Squad would have been Universal Pictures, thus allowing the film to be an official entry in the Universal Monsters franchise—a true follow-up to their classic films. The project was pitched to them, but they passed. Since they weren’t interested, the special effects crew, led by Stan Winston, were tasked with giving the monsters redesigns that would keep the film from infringing upon Universal’s copyrights. They did a great job with this, creating their own unique takes on the monsters while keeping them recognizable at the same time. These designs would have been perfect for the characters even if the movie was an official Universal movie.
The film didn’t run into any trouble with Universal, but the production didn’t go entirely smoothly. In fact, Dekker has said that he was in danger of being fired from his own movie after the first week of filming, because he and Hyams didn’t see eye to eye on all of the creative decisions. Hyams didn’t just stamp his name on The Monster Squad and let Dekker go off and do his own thing; he was heavily involved throughout the entire production, taking on what he described as a kind of “godfather” position. He wrote the text crawl that the movie starts with, did some second-unit directing, and disagreed with some of Dekker’s directing choices. Dekker has said that Hyams demanded he shoot what Dekker described as “boring masters” and “boring coverage” for every scene. To keep the executive producer “godfather” satisfied, he started doing so. The director would later come to understand why Hyams was so hands-on. Since he was an established pro who had agreed to put his name on this movie from a 27-year-old fledgling director, he wanted to make sure it would turn out well. Dekker has also said that Hyams came to trust him more as filming went on.
TriStar Pictures released The Monster Squad on August 14, 1987, one week shy of the one-year anniversary of their underwhelming release of Night of the Creeps. And The Monster Squad wasn’t the hit it deserved to be either. Its box office haul came in just under $4 million, so it didn’t even make back one-third of its budget. Part of its failure was due to the fact that it was overshadowed by The Lost Boys, which had been released just two weeks earlier.
The Monster Squad would start developing a cult following very soon, but many of its fans didn’t discover it until it was available to rent on home video or airing on cable. The film’s cult following continued to grow over the decades, but it was so under the radar that Dekker and his cast weren’t fully aware of it until some of them were invited to an Alamo Drafthouse screening in 2006. Dekker has even said he had no clue people liked his movie until that screening 19 years later, after the film’s release.
After that screening, Lionsgate took on the challenge of meeting fan demand for a DVD release of The Monster Squad, and they did a hell of a job with it, delivering a two-disc special edition packed with bonus features, including a feature-length documentary and two audio commentaries. That 2007 DVD release not only won awards, but it was also the highest-selling catalog title for Lionsgate that year. Now, the size of The Monster Squad‘s cult following was really becoming obvious. Further home video releases and a lot more revival screenings have followed since then, so the following is still continuing to grow.
In 2018, Andre Gower directed a documentary named after the film’s most iconic line, “Wolfman’s got nards!”, as a way to turn the spotlight back around on the film’s fans and explore their love for this film that at first appeared to be a failure but has become an enduring classic. Universal truly would have been lucky to have The Monster Squad as an official entry in their monsters franchise and might have been able to market it to success in 1987. Even though the movie ended up being released by different companies, it’s worthy of being counted among the Universal monster classics as it’s an incredible tribute to those films. It brings great versions of all the most popular monsters together in one story and puts them all on screen together—something that Universal didn’t even accomplish in their days of making monster mash movies.
Duncan Regehr, who stayed in character while he was on set, plays one of the most evil and intimidating Draculas of all time, threatening a five-year-old girl, tossing dynamite into a treehouse he thinks has a bunch of kids in it, and plotting the apocalypse. The runner-up for the Dracula role was Liam Neeson, who is said to have given a brilliant audition, but they went with Regehr because he was more terrifying. It was the right choice, as his Dracula would rank up there among the best of them—if only more people had seen the movie he’s in.
Another actor who stayed in character was Tom Noonan, who gives a very touching and endearing performance as Frankenstein’s monster. This soft-hearted fellow isn’t into the evil plans his master Dracula tries to force him to participate in, and when he’s sent to retrieve Van Helsing’s journal from the Monster Squad, he befriends the kids and stays with them. He has a particularly strong bond with little Phoebe, and many Monster Squad fans have shed tears over the final moments Phoebe and Frankenstein’s monster have with each other. The actors who play the Monster Squad members never met Tom Noonan while they were making the movie with him; he was so dedicated to not breaking character that they only met and worked with Frankenstein’s monster.
We got a shambling, bandage-wrapped mummy along the lines of the Kharis mummy Tom Tyler and Lon Chaney Jr. played in The Mummy sequels, and the Gill Man gets a couple of moments to shine. There are some terrific moments involving the Wolf Man—not just the one where Horace is shocked to find that kicking him in the nards is an effective method of defense. When the Wolf Man is in human form, he is desperate to be stopped; he’s even credited as “The Desperate Man.” Jon Gries gives an intense performance as this man who wants to be locked up or killed before he can “wolf out” again. The scene where he calls Del to warn him that Dracula is going to kill his son is really chilling.
Opposite all those cool monsters, we get some of the best child characters to ever appear in a movie—characters that a lot of horror fans can relate to. If you had the opportunity and inclination to watch horror movies at a young age, chances are you were a lot like the Monster Squad kids, obsessed with monsters, always talking about creatures and horror with friends, and excited to check out the latest genre release. What’s also great about these kids is when they find out there are monsters carrying out an evil plot in their town, they take it upon themselves to save the world and dive right into a plan to thwart the monsters.
Although The Monster Squad is a movie for monster kids of all ages, Dekker didn’t feel the need to blunt the edges or pander to any age group. There are dark and scary scenes, moments of violence, and the monsters are a serious threat. Dracula even calls a little girl a bitch. The scenes with the kids are so well-written that even viewers old enough to be their parents or grandparents could still enjoy them. If you love the classic monsters, you’ll love this movie. And if you’re just getting started watching horror, The Monster Squad is definitely a great gateway movie. With a running time of 82 minutes, this film moves through its story at the speed of a silver bullet, and much of the second half is packed with action. The kids know they have to get their hands on the amulet and perform a ritual involving German lines spoken by a female virgin, which will open an evil-swallowing vortex much like the one at the end of Evil Dead 2. As they prepare to carry out their plan, we get a wonderfully 80s montage set to the sounds of a song about dancing until your heart stops and your feet fall off. It’s silly, but it’s also perfect, and it’s a lot of fun to see things like Rudy making wooden stakes and silver bullets in shop class while we listen to this goofball tune. Dekker thinks the song is awful, but it’s not likely that many fans of the movie would want to trade it for anything else.
Some of the best scenes in the movie involve Frankenstein’s monster and the bond he forms with the Monster Squad. He has a memorable introduction to the boys, who run in fear while Phoebe stands there holding his hand. Though they run and hide in that scene, the members of the Monster Squad do better handling future encounters with the monsters. Even the unlikely Horace gets multiple chances to be a hero and, in the end, looks like a badass in front of the bullies who were picking on him earlier.
The mummy gets a good scene where he sneaks into Eugene’s house and becomes the actual monster in the closet. And a Wolf Man scene that’s even better than when he gets kicked in the nards is when we find out what would happen if a creature that can only be killed with a silver bullet were to be blown up with dynamite. What happens is awesome.
Fred Dekker has a difficult relationship with The Monster Squad because its box office failure sort of killed his career for a while. But then, decades later, he found out it’s actually the most popular movie he’s ever made. In the Wolfman’s Got Nards documentary, he says, “I think it’s my best movie. I think it’s reached the widest audience of anything that I’ve done as a director. I think it’s probably going to be on my gravestone, and I’m ambivalent about that. The analogy I make is you do a piano concerto in front of an audience and a couple of people applaud, and then they leave. And then 20 years later, somebody comes up to you in the street and goes, ‘I saw that piano concerto you did—it was incredible.’ There’s such a disconnect from what you did to the response that is really hard to codify emotionally. It’s like shooting a basket in 1987 and then it doesn’t go in until 2006. That’s weird, and that’s really hard for me to kind of make sense of. I don’t mean to downplay it, I just have a very personal relationship with it because I put my heart and soul into it, and nobody noticed for 20 years.”
Hopefully, Dekker is able to take some solace from the fact that people do appreciate his work today—better late than never in a sort of way. But it’s not true that nobody noticed how good The Monster Squad was until 20 years later. A lot of fans had already noticed by the end of the ’80s; it just took 20 years until Dekker realized it had such a large cult following, and that following is growing every day.
Before we wrap up here, I’d like to pay tribute to the Monster Squad stars we’ve lost over the years, including Jack Willem, who played Van Helsing and passed away in 2001; “Scary German Guy” himself, Leonardo Cimino, who passed away in 2012; Mary Ellen Trainor, who played Sean’s mother, passed away in 2015; and squad member Horace, Brent Chalem, who tragically passed away in 1997 at the age of just 22. We send our heartfelt condolences out to their family, friends, and fans, and thank them for their contributions to the greatness that is The Monster Squad.
The next Best Horror Movie You Never Saw script I wrote was on another movie I have been a fan of since childhood, a movie I watch every October, the 1986 rock 'n roll horror classic Trick or Treat:
Trick or Treat script:
The 1980s. MTV ruled the airwaves, bringing a steady stream of music into the homes of impressionable young viewers, and a lot of parents were freaking out. Satanic panic was at its peak, with some fearing that the so-called “devil’s music”—rock and roll—would ruin lives and drive youngsters to do terrible things. Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were being accused of encouraging fans to commit suicide. The Parents Music Resource Center compiled a list of objectionable songs and demanded that the music industry set standards that musicians would have to abide by, a movement that led to Dee Snider, Frank Zappa, and John Denver having to testify at a Senate hearing. All of this madness helped inspire one of the greatest underseen horror movies of the decade, the 1986 release Trick or Treat, which we’re looking at in this episode of The Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
Directed by Charles Martin Smith from a screenplay by Rhett Topham and producers Michael Murphy and Joel Soisson, Trick or Treat stars Marc Price, who at the time was playing the nerdy character Skippy on the classic sitcom Family Ties, as bullied metalhead teen Eddie Weinbauer. There are only two things that get Eddie through his miserable existence: his unrequited crush on the nice, popular girl Leslie, played by Lisa Orgolini, and his fandom for rock star Sammi Curr, who has such a wild stage show—which includes biting the head off a snake and playing with its blood—he even had to defend himself at a Senate hearing. Sammi Curr is from Eddie’s hometown, went to the same high school, and Eddie idolizes him because he rose above it all. Under the pen name “Ragman,” Eddie sends Sammi letters pouring his heart out to his hero.
Real rock stars Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne are in the film’s cast, but in supporting roles. Simmons pays homage to Wolfman Jack with his character, radio DJ Nuke, while Osbourne is cast very much against type as a clean-cut anti-rock evangelist. The role of Sammi went to Solid Gold and A Chorus Line dancer Tony Fields, who was advised to hang out with musicians and study rock stars to emulate their style and attitude. Of course, that means someone else had to provide the songs performed by Sammi, and the band chosen for his music was Fastway, with Sammi’s singing voice provided by Dave King, who later formed the band Flogging Molly.
Sammi was planning to play the high school Halloween dance, but the town council blocked his appearance. It didn’t matter in the long run, as Sammi doesn’t live to see Halloween, falling victim to a hotel fire. He leaves behind one last unreleased album called Songs in the Key of Death, and the only copy is a studio demo on an acetate disc sent to Nuke, with instructions for it to be played on his radio station at midnight on Halloween night. Nuke makes a tape copy and gives the acetate disc to Sammi’s biggest fan, Eddie.
The film enters horror territory when Eddie realizes there are backmask messages hidden on the album. By playing the record backwards, he can communicate with Sammi from beyond the grave. At first, this is positive for him, as Sammi’s advice and encouragement help him stand up to his bullies, led by Doug Savant as preppy jerk Tim, and get back at them for their torment. But Sammi soon takes things too far, and Eddie realizes he’s dangerous. When Eddie tries to cut off communication, the spirit of Sammi emerges through his stereo system, revealing himself to be more powerful and a bigger threat than Eddie imagined. Sammi is exactly the kind of rock star parents of the 80s were so concerned about. He practiced the occult, made a deal with the devil, and his evil spirit lives on through the music recorded for Songs in the Key of Death. When the album is played over the radio on Halloween night, he will have the power to emerge through any radio in town and kill anyone he encounters. He’s out to raise hell in his hometown and first plans to wreak havoc at the Halloween dance.
The initial idea for Trick or Treat came from legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, but at this point, it didn’t have anything to do with rock music. De Laurentiis was apparently one of the few people who had been impressed by A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge when it was released in 1985, so he approached the film’s line producers, Michael Murphy and Joel Swasson, with the project that would be titled Trick or Treat, needed to be ready for theatrical release on October 24th, 1986, and could possibly be about a killer who goes door to door on Halloween night while wearing a pumpkin on his head. Murphy and Swasson were on board to have a movie called Trick or Treat ready for a Halloween ’86 release, but they weren’t interested in making a slasher movie like De Laurentiis had pitched to them. That idea sounded like De Laurentiis was trying to cash in on Halloween, which would make sense since he was involved with Halloween III: Season of the Witch. But what he was saying from the start was that he wanted a movie that would feature the next Freddy Krueger, not the next Michael Myers. That’s why he went to the Freddy’s Revenge guys.
So, Murphy and Swasson convinced him to ditch the simple slasher idea and go with something that had a supernatural angle to it, and that’s when writer Rhett Topham came in with a pitch that blended the supernatural with rock and roll. Topham originally envisioned a film that would be much darker than the one that was made in the end, although the first name he had in mind for the evil rock star was Chilly Willy, just like the cartoon penguin. He imagined his story would be the next Exorcist, but then Trick or Treat evolved into something campier and more satirical. But this wasn’t a case of a story being taken away from the writer and turned into something they didn’t approve of. Topham was totally on board with the tone of the finished film, even if it wasn’t as dark as he first imagined. As he said in an interview 20 years later, “One day the producers convinced me that the spirit of this movie was more about kicking back, grabbing a six-pack, maybe a bong, and watching Eddie scramble to re-cork the genie’s bottle he ultimately unleashed. With Sammi Curr morphing out of stereo speakers and shooting death rays from his guitar, could it be anything else?”
Also playing into the film’s lighter tone is the fact that director Charles Martin Smith wasn’t a big horror fan. He had enjoyed the genre when he was younger, but The Exorcist scared him so badly it put him off watching horror for the next decade. Murphy and Swasson had already looked at over 40 different potential directors for Trick or Treat before they heard that Smith, who is best known for his acting roles in films like American Graffiti and The Untouchables and had about 15 years of screen credits to his name at that point, was also interested in directing. They set up a meeting, and during their conversation, they were convinced that Smith was a match for what they had in mind for Trick or Treat. The actor was hired to make his feature directorial debut with this film. He wasn’t a genre fan, but he wasn’t getting any other directing offers, so he took the job. Smith has continued to direct film and television since, but aside from directing the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he has stayed away from horror. He’s even shied away from calling Trick or Treat a horror movie, but he also didn’t want to call it a comedy. His description for the film: “This is a rock and roll monster movie.”
The producers did approach actual rock stars about playing Sammi Curr, but as Soisson has said, “We got very negative feedback from these people. They read this whole satanic rock star thing as very negative, and that wasn’t what we wanted to do. So we went back and clarified our own personal beliefs. What comes out of the story is not to go along with the blind hero worship and also to be cautious about the very, very dangerous situation of the PMRC-type mentality.”
Once the filmmakers made it clear that Trick or Treat wouldn’t be a condemnation of rock and roll, they were able to get Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne involved. Simmons already had acting experience, so he was able to come in and perform his scripted lines like any other actor in the cast. The situation was different for Ozzy’s cameo. This was something new for him to be doing, so Smith didn’t even give him a script. He just brought Ozzy onto set and had him ad-lib his lines as an anti-rock evangelist. Ozzy really got into it and gave Smith about 45 minutes of material to work with, which was whittled down substantially for his appearance in the film.
Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. was reportedly interested in playing Sammi Curr until he found out that Fastway had already been hired to provide the music for the character, and he didn’t want to lip-sync to another band’s songs. In the end, the producers felt it would have been too distracting to have a musician the audience was already familiar with in the role of Sammi anyway. Viewers would know an established rock star was just goofing around and having fun playing the character, but they would be able to buy Tony Fields as the character without any baggage getting in the way. Fields was so convincing with his rockstar act, he even impressed the real rock stars in the cast. He told Fangoria: “Ozzy and Gene never saw my work, but they were very, very supportive of what they saw as my look. I did a photo session with both of them, and I got nothing but compliments on how authentic I looked and how I handled the guitar and myself as a rock star.”
Marc Price has said that his competition for the role of Eddie Weinbauer included Keanu Reeves, which seems logical since the producers would go on to cast Reeves as another music-obsessed teen in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure a few years later. But Swasson said he never met Reeves until the audition for Bill and Ted, so someone is mistaken about when Reeves entered the picture. But either way, Price and Reeves were both perfectly cast in the two movies. Rhett Topham wrote the Eddie character as a reflection of himself. Eddie is Topham’s middle name, and Price was dressed and groomed just like him.
While Eddie looked like the writer, the actor who played his best friend, Roger, actually was a writer on the film. When Murphy and Swasson wanted to punch up the dialogue in the script, they turned to the writing duo of Glen Morgan and James Wong, who they had worked with on a great thriller called The Boys Next Door the previous year. Then they went a step further and suggested that Morgan audition for a part in the movie, and he ended up being cast as Roger, without Smith knowing that he was friends with the producers or had worked on the script. Morgan didn’t pursue an acting career after this, but he later described his time on the set of Trick or Treat as the best six weeks of his life. He and Wong went on to work on The X-Files, Final Destination, and Final Destination 3 together, and Morgan himself directed the 2003 version of Willard and the 2006 Black Christmas remake.
Trick or Treat seemed to enjoy a relatively smooth production. Smith said making the movie was a hoot, even if working with all the special effects would occasionally get exhausting. Made on a budget of $3.5 million, the film was ready for its October 24th, 1986 release date and ended up pulling in just under $7 million at the box office. Then came more money from the VHS rentals. Smith told HollywoodChicago.com that De Laurentiis “really loved the movie because it turned a profit. He would come up to me and say, ‘Charlie, bravo, bravo.'”
Trick or Treat had some success in the second half of the ’80s and developed a cult following, but it has largely faded into obscurity over time. This is probably because it has never gotten a great DVD or Blu-ray release. When it did reach the DVD format, it was in full screen on a bare-bones disc. It has been put on Blu-ray in a few countries, but even then, it wasn’t the special edition packed with bonus features that the movie deserves. Fans are holding on to the hope that we’ll see an awesome release of Trick or Treat someday, one with the interviews, documentaries, commentaries, and maybe that deleted scene of Eddie daydreaming that he’s Conan/Frank Frazetta-style barbarian, which we only know about because a picture from the scene was published in an issue of Fangoria.
Trick or Treat deserves the special edition treatment because it’s an incredibly entertaining film propelled forward by a fun ’80s rock soundtrack. It starts out like a coming-of-age drama. The script, Smith’s direction, and Marc Price’s terrific performance work together effectively to get us to care about Eddie Weinbauer and to root for him to stand up against his bullies and end up with Leslie. But there’s a dark edge to it all, and Eddie’s beyond-the-grave interactions with Sammi get creepier and creepier as the film goes on. Then, when Sammi has reached peak creepiness and re-entered the world of the living as a burn-scarred homicidal maniac, the movie goes completely nuts in the second half. When Topham talked about Sammi morphing out of speakers and shooting death rays out of his guitar, that was an accurate description of what happens in the second half of the movie. While this is over the top compared to the approach taken in the first half, it doesn’t feel out of place because the movie has a sense of humor about itself every step of the way. As Smith said, he shied away from going too dark with the material; though his hesitancy to get too scary and intense, he did end up striking a good balance of laughs and unease before just letting the movie go wild.
Some viewers may prefer the tone of one half of Trick or Treat over the other, but as a whole, it works. The movie is a blast to watch—a rock-and-roller coaster ride. One of the craziest and best scenes in the movie involves a demon called Skeezix, who is Sammi Curr’s mascot, much like Iron Maiden has a mascot called Eddie the Head. The appearance of Skeezix seems to come out of nowhere for some viewers because the movie doesn’t do the best job of establishing him as Sammi’s mascot, even though Sammi does have a tattoo of the creature on his chest. But whether or not you’ve taken note of the demon before, the scene where it emerges into our world is certainly unforgettable. Eddie has made a tape copy of Songs in the Key of Death for Tim, calling it a peace offering. But the person who ends up listening to the tape is Tim’s status-obsessed girlfriend, Genie, played by Elise Richards. At first, this seems to be quite a pleasurable experience for her, but it’s just Sammi and the forces of evil messing with her, seducing her into a trance before putting Skeezix in her face and melting her ears to her headphones.
Trick or Treat is packed with really great sequences, including the scenes where Eddie stands up to Tim and his lackeys, a moment where Sammi, speaking through Eddie’s stereo system, tries to lure Eddie’s mom (played by Elaine Joyce) into entering the room—which would not be good for her—those Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne cameos, and all the action packed into the second half. The action begins with Sammi taking the stage at the high school Halloween dance for a deadly performance of his song, the title track, “Trick or Treat.“
Trick or Treat (1986) is worth watching again and again, especially during the Halloween season, and it deserves to have a lot more horror fans checking it out on an annual basis. Hopefully, it’ll receive the Blu-ray release it deserves before much longer so it can reach a whole new set of fans, and so the fans it already has can celebrate it to a higher degree than ever before. If you’re a fan of ’80s horror rock and roll, it’s highly recommended that you seek out Trick or Treat as soon as possible. And if you’re worried that it plays into the concerns of satanic-panic PMRC parents too much, let Charles Martin Smith assure you when he says, “The point we’re trying to make in this movie is that rock and roll is not bad, and that although Sammi may have become an insane, demented demon back from the dead out to kill people, that doesn’t mean Eddie should stop listening to heavy metal.”
And as Rhett Topham told SammiCurr.com, “This movie is not the typical horror flick, so it’s really ours, just for us metalheads, rock’s chosen warriors, and there’s no other like it.”
And for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series, I took a look into the making of legendary author Stephen King's only directorial effort, a crazy movie from 1986 that was fueled by cocaine and AC/DC, Maximum Overdrive:
Maximum Overdrive script:
There have been many films based on the works of author Stephen King, and King has even written the screenplays for some of them – but he has only ever directed one of the films, the 1986 box office disappointment Maximum Overdrive. When you hear that King, one of the greatest horror writers of all time, directed an adaptation of one of his own stories, you might guess that the result would be a very scary movie, a chiller that gets under your skin just like the most unsettling moments from his books. But that’s not what Maximum Overdrive is. What King actually made is one of the silliest movies based on one of his stories, a film that is more likely to make you laugh at its ridiculous characters and dialogue than it is to scare you. King himself directed one of the least popular Stephen King movies, so in this video we’re going to try to figure out What the F*ck Happened to This Horror Movie.
The saga of Maximum Overdrive begins in the 1970s, when Stephen King wrote a short story called Trucks, about semi trucks and other large vehicles taking on a mind of their own for reasons that aren’t explained, setting out to run down any humans that get in their way. This story was first published in the pages of the magazine Cavalier, and was later included in King’s short story collection Night Shift, which also features many other stories that have received adaptations over the years, like Children of the Corn, Graveyard Shift, and Sometimes They Come Back, among others. Producer Milton Subotsky, co-founder of the British production company Amicus, picked up the rights to bring three Night Shift stories to the screen: Trucks, The Mangler, and The Lawnmower Man. Subotsky wanted to make another King anthology like Cat’s Eye, which he had co-produced and consisted of adaptations of two Night Shift stories, along with a third story King wrote for the film. Since Trucks, The Mangler, and The Lawnmower Man were about killer trucks, a possessed laundry press, and death by lawnmower, respectively, Subotsky’s idea was to combine them into an anthology called The Machines. Edward and Valerie Abraham, who had previously written the anthology film The Monster Club for Subotsky, were hired to write the screenplay – but the producer was dealing with financial and legal issues, so he ended up scrapping The Machines and passing the rights to the King stories over to legendary De Laurentiis Entertainment Group producer Dino De Laurentiis, who also produced Cat’s Eye.
Since King had written the screenplay for Cat’s Eye, De Laurentiis figured he should do the same for an adaptation of Trucks – but King turned down the offer and suggested a different writer for the job. The treatment this other writer turned in didn’t go over well, so De Laurentiis went back to King… and while the author was reluctant to take the job, he would later admit that an idea for how to approach the material had occurred to him when De Laurentiis had first asked him to write the script, and it was becoming more interesting to him as time went by. The idea was to expand the threat; to start with Earth passing through the tail of a comet, and something about this comet causes all machinery on the planet to go crazy, not just trucks and large vehicles. King said he had a very clear image of technology having totally overrun our ability to control it, so he finally agreed to write the script for De Laurentiis; and it turned out that his vision of this story was so clear that he specified more than a thousand camera shots within his screenplay. Writers including camera direction in their script is generally frowned upon, but in this case it inspired De Laurenttis to ask King to direct the movie as well. King told Fangoria magazine that this was another task he was reluctant to take on, but he eventually agreed to make his directorial debut on Maximum Overdrive, under the condition that De Laurentiis would replace him if he felt he wasn’t doing a good job.
Of course, De Laurentiis wasn’t likely to remove King from the project regardless of what he felt about the footage the director was getting, because the producer and director were both fully aware that having a Stephen King movie directed by the author himself was a great marketing hook. So in an attempt to make sure there wouldn’t be any issues, De Laurentiis brought on veteran cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, who had been working on sets for forty years and had around a hundred credits to his name, the idea being that Nannuzzi’s filmmaking knowledge would make up for King’s lack of experience.
The biggest example of De Laurentiis not going along with King’s vision came during the casting process: when writing the script, King was imagining that the lead character would be played by Bruce Springsteen in his first acting role. De Laurentiis wasn’t interested in making Springsteen a movie star, he wanted someone who was already established. So the role went to Emilio Estevez, the son of Martin Sheen, who had previously been in the De Laurentiis-produced King adaptations The Dead Zone and Firestarter. At the time, Estevez was coming straight off of working on The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and That Was Then… This Is Now back-to-back, and he was wanting to do something that was more action-oriented, less talky. Something that would allow him to play a Clint Eastwood-type character, as he put it. He was also a fan of King’s, so he was glad to take on the role of Maximum Overdrive hero Bill Robinson, a paroled convict who’s working as a cook at a truck stop called the Dixie Boy when the world’s machinery goes mad. Decades later, Estevez would single out Maximum Overdrive as the film he most regrets making, calling it “a terrible movie”.
De Laurentiis also disagreed with the way King was presenting the female lead, Laura Harrington as a hitchhiker named Brett Graham, who ends up trapped in the Dixie Boy with Bill and a handful of other characters. When Brett is first introduced, she’s wearing jeans, a hat, and three layers of tops, including a jacket. The producer was appalled and made sure that the character underwent a wardrobe change as quickly as possible, putting her in a short skirt and removing a couple layers.
Some of the other characters who have a bad time at the Dixie Boy truck stop are played by the likes of Pat Hingle, Yeardley Smith, John Short, Ellen McElduff, Frankie Faison, Christopher Murney, Pat Miller, and Holter Graham, with Giancarlo Esposito showing up briefly to have a bad run-in with an arcade machine. There are several more people who aren’t given much to do other than hang out in the background while an army of trucks drives in circles around the truck stop, then get picked off one-by-one when the machines attack. King has openly admitted that he wasn’t concerned with exploring character in this film, saying he wrote some passable characterization in the script, but that he was more interested in keeping the story moving at a good pace. Perhaps that’s why he filled the movie with character actor types who make an impression just by being present. He did seem to have a lot of fun writing for Hingle’s character, the sort of unpleasant, antagonistic person who shows up in a lot of his stories. Hingle plays Dixie Boy owner Bubba Hendershot, who calls everyone around him by his own name and keeps an arsenal of weapons in the cellar.
Even the lead truck circling the Dixie Boy, the Happy Toyz truck, comes off as more of a character than some of the people inside the truck stop, and that’s largely because King had the idea to put the face of Spider-Man villain Green Goblin on the front of the vehicle.
King has said that he agreed to direct Maximum Overdrive because he was curious to find out if he could translate whatever was in his heart and brain – the stuff that’s between the lines in the books – onto film… but other quotes make it clear that this was never supposed to be something that should be taken seriously. He said he went into production with the idea that he was going to make what he called “a moron movie” and “a goof”, something that would simply be entertaining. This is clear in the tone of the movie, which always feels like it’s laughing at itself. It starts off with King making a cameo as a man who gets called an asshole by an ATM machine, and rarely ever gets any more serious than that moment. As soon as the movie was finished, King joked that he may have made the modern version of Plan 9 from Outer Space, which has been called one of the worst movies ever made.
The moron movie description can be used to brush away any logic questions that may arise as the story plays out. Why don’t the cars driven by characters turn against them while the trucks and electrical devices around them are going haywire? How can a gun fire itself simply because it’s mounted on a vehicle? How can a speaker in a fast food drive-thru talk on its own? It doesn’t matter, because the film’s own director called it a moron movie. Still, there does seem to be something odd about the movie, and Laura Harrington has said that the cast and crew already had that feeling when they were on set. She told the website Slash Film, “There was definitely a point where we all kind of knew what this movie was going to be, because the script was what it was. Everything just felt a bit off. None of us really felt like we got the story. I don’t think there was anybody that had the feeling that this was going to work.”
Interviews conducted when the movie was about to be released make it sound like the production went smoothly, despite King saying that he didn’t expect filmmaking to be so grueling and that he didn’t realize he knew so little about the mechanics and the politics of making a movie. The director told Fangoria that he brought the movie in ahead of schedule and under budget. But there were some bumps along the way, like when Hurricane Gloria blew through the production’s home base of Wilmington, North Carolina. That didn’t disrupt filming, since they were filming on stage during the storm – but filming was disrupted when a tragic accident occurred that caused cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi to lose one of his eyes.
Maximum Overdrive couldn’t have been a simple movie to make your directorial debut on, as it’s packed with stunts, explosions, and special effects. It’s not surprising to hear there was an accident, but it is somewhat surprising that the accident happened while filming something relatively simple; a shot of a lawnmower, which the FX team was operating by remote control, appearing to push itself toward a character. Crew members have said that Nannuzzi advised King to have the blade taken off of the lawnmower, since it can’t be seen in the shot, but he insisted that the blade remain for the sake of authenticity. So when communication issues between King and the FX team caused the lawnmower to get too close to the camera, the spinning blade of the machine hit a piece of wood that was wedged beneath the camera, sending splinters into Nannuzzi’s right eye. Nannuzzi was rushed to the hospital, but his eye couldn’t be saved. Production shut down while the cinematographer went through this ordeal – but two weeks after the accident, Nannuzzi returned to work wearing an eyepatch and finished the movie. He continued to work as a cinematographer for twelve more years.
Beyond disagreements over casting and how to dress the female lead, King and De Laurentiis also disagreed on how bloody a film should be. De Laurentiis wasn’t a fan of gore, but as far as King was concerned, the bloodier the better. The producer kept telling King there was too much blood in the movie, but King just kept it pouring. This caused some trouble with the ratings board at the end of the day, as they cited ten different moments that could earn the film an X rating. Some of that blood King wanted in the movie had to be trimmed out.
MGM was aiming to have Maximum Overdrive in theatres in March of 1986, just five months after filming wrapped. At King’s request, the studio shifted the release schedule and made the movie a summer release… but that strategy didn’t work out very well. Movie-goers had been expected to show up for a Stephen King movie directed by King himself, but apparently they weren’t interested in seeing the goofball movie this master of horror had actually made. Shot on a budget of around ten million dollars, the film made just over seven million at the box office.
To this day, Maximum Overdrive doesn’t have a great reputation, as it’s just too weird and dopey for a lot of viewers. But it has gained a strong cult following over the decades, as its wild tone, humorous moments, and the score composed by rock band AC/DC are very appealing to some – and now that we’re so far removed from its initial release, there’s also a level of nostalgia fueling appreciation for Stephen King’s one directorial effort.
Years after Maximum Overdrive came and went, King said the problem with the film was that he was coked out of his mind all through its production, and really didn’t know what he was doing as a director. Cast and crew have said they weren’t aware of King’s cocaine problem at the time, but they did notice a drinking problem when he would be on his tenth beer of the day by 8:30 in the morning.
Whether they’re a fan of the movie itself or not, many genre fans agree that the best thing to come out of Maximum Overdrive was the film’s trailer, which is scored by music from Halloween III: Season of the Witch and features King himself, speaking directly to the camera and promising the audience that he’s going to scare the hell out of them. Watching this trailer, it’s almost shocking to hear that the people who worked with King on the movie weren’t aware that he was using cocaine, as one look at his demeanor here will leave you thinking, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.”
And King made one hell of a crazy movie while he was under its influence. But as the writer/director himself said, “Maximum Overdrive does have something that no other King adaptation has; it’s mine. Viewers are going to have an experience that is analogous to the experience they have after reading the books. It’s my picture, for better or worse.”
More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals!
No comments:
Post a Comment