Halloween Edition: Trick or Treats (1982) Movie Review

Trick or Treats (1982) Movie Review

**SPOILER ALERT! This review contains the movie ending**

Joan (Carrie Snodgress) the mother of a young prankster leaves babysitter Linda (Jacqueline Giroux) in charge of her son Christopher (Chris Graver) while she and her new husband head to a Halloween party in Las Vegas not knowing that her ex husband Malcolm (Peter Jason) plans to escape from the mental hospital and comes to the house looking for her.

At the beginning of the movie, we see Joan let in two guys who force Malcolm into a straight jacket. Does he belong in a mental hospital? We don't know. All they showed him doing was reading the morning paper. From there he gets taken to the Western State Hospital where the movie completely stereotypes mental patients by making them all act completely out of control. 

Not only is Linda WAY to old to be a babysitter but she clearly doesn't know anything about babysitting. Every time the kid scares her with a prank, she freaks out, yells at him and storms away. Half of the pranks he wouldn't have been able to do if she was actually watching him like she's supposed to. Plus drinking wine and leaving the front door open aren't such good ideas either.

This movie is a complete mess. It's not even laughable bad, it's just plain bad. Nothing (aside from the constant pranks) happens in this movie until the 1 hour and 11 minute mark with the total run time being 1 hour and 30 minutes.The casting choices were poor (who hires someone who looks like they are in their forties to play a babysitter?!), the acting is terrible (how can someone be scared by pranks so many over and over and over?!), and the script is the worst: 

Linda (says to a trick or treater): "Are you a policeman"

Little kid: "Yep. The local policeman" 

How the heck would the child know the difference between a regular police man and a local police man?! Plus the words "beddie-by time" was used in a conversation between two grown men, neither referring to a child.

The movie ends in the worst way. After Linda has the little boy murder Malcolm (that's right, she can't even do THAT herself, what a babysitter!), the little boy then picks up the knife that the man was holding and a grin spreads upon his face. We then see Linda calling the police while Christopher walks up behind her, knife in the air and it ends on a freeze frame. What I can't figure out is why? What would make the boy want to kill Linda? It makes no sense. 

The tagline for this film states: "When Halloween stopped being fun." Trust me, any night you choose to watch this movie will stop being fun. The movie is perfectly summed up by one quote the mother told the child at the beginning of the movie "you have to learn that not everything in life is fun". This movie is a perfect example of that because watching this movie certainly wasn't fun.

Grade: F+


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