“The pitch was: ‘Kid plays record backwards to unleash revengeful ghost rocker’”: How Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons and Eddie Munson’s “long lost cousin” helped make the greatest Halloween-friendly heavy metal horror movie of the 80s

Throughout the US in the ’80s, America was in the grip of a Satanic Panic. Talk show hosts, tabloids, televangelists and the self-appointed moralists of the day declared all-out war on what they perceived as one of the most imminent threats to American decency: heavy metal.

Acts such as Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne were caught up in this mass hysteria, many of them leaning into it with varying degrees of glee - not least Ozzy and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who spoofed their respective images as bogeymen in one of the era’s great cult movies: Trick Or Treat.

Trick Or Treat was a low-budget metal themed horror movie. Writer Rhet Topham stated that the 1986 movie was sold on a one-line pitch: “Kid plays record backwards to unleash revengeful ghost rocker.”

The film centres around Eddie Weinbauer, an alienated, metal-loving teenage outcast who could be beloved Stranger Things character Eddie Munson’s long-lost cousin. His crush, Lisa, is dating Tim, the school douche, who mercilessly bullies Eddie throughout the early stages of the film, which we know will not end well for them because, well… bullies tend to fare really, really badly in horror movies.

Things get interesting when Eddie’s musical idol, a depraved metaller named Sammi Curr, dies in a hotel fire. Played by Tony Fields, Sammi resembles a cross between Nikki Sixx and Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Bereft, Eddie seeks consolation from a local DJ (played by a cowboy hat-wearing Gene Simmons), who takes pity on the lad and gives Eddie a copy of the last record that Sammi ever recorded. It’s a one-off demo that the DJ will be playing on Halloween at midnight.

When Eddie gets home and plays the demo, it begins playing backwards on its own, with chilling demonic messages pouring forth in Sammi’s voice. Just like that, Sammi travels from beyond the grave, through the stereo and into Eddie’s world in the guise of evil electrical forces.

Initially, this is a good thing. Under Sammi’s tutelage, Eddie wreaks vengeance upon the bullies and gets the girl. But the carnage doesn’t stop there and, as bodies pile up, Eddie realises that Sammi is a murderous entity seeking to destroy the world. From there, it’s a blood-drenched race to get the metalized genie back into the proverbial bottle before the DJ plays the demo over the radio, unleashing Sammi’s evil spirit into every boombox in town.

The performances are deliciously OTT, with Sammi Curr drawing from every possible Sunset Strip hair metal cliché ever captured on video. Blackie Lawless was reportedly offered the role, but he declined, not wanting to lip sync the music written for Sammi.

Both Sammi’s music and the film’s soundtrack were provided by Fastway, the ’80s hard rock supergroup formed by Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke and vocalist Dave King, who later struck gold as frontman of the Celt-punk juggernaut Flogging Molly. Fastway released the soundtrack as their third album, and the songs are precisely the sort of vapid, boozy, fist-pumpers that you’d expect from the apex of the glam metal era.

As an 80s time capsule, Trick Or Treat is tough to beat. In a news clip within the movie, Sammi is shown testifying before Congress in defence of his music, à la Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, and he later bites the head off of a snake: an unambiguous nod to Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off of a dove in 1981.

Ozzy himself makes a hilariously tongue-in-cheek cameo, playing a dour, moralising televangelist. Producers reportedly asked Ozzy to ad lib for 45 minutes and chose the best bits for the final cut. Sammi Curr even has a little Eddie The Head-style demon mascot named Skeezix, which appears in one fleeting but thoroughly epic scene.

Trick or Treat (1986) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD] - YouTube

Watch On

Shot on a $3.5M budget, first-time director Charles Martin Smith was given an aggressive deadline: producers wanted the movie filmed and released in less than a year, with an October 24, 1986 release date. Smith and his team hit the mark and the film did comparatively well, raking in nearly $7 million at the box office. Nonetheless, it fell well-short of the commercial heights of mainstream horror films and no sequel was commissioned.

It’s a shame because, on balance, Trick Or Treat is acres of fun. Cheesy as hell? Absolutely. But, the film masterfully sends up the pearl-clutching hysteria of its time, packed with scores of real-life headlines, some bona fide metal gods in cameo roles and plenty of laughs of both the intentional and unintentional varieties.

It’s not, as some initially assumed, an indictment of heavy metal, but a thorough dragging of censorship: a theme that still rings loudly nearly forty years later. Sadly, the film has yet to receive the extras-packed retrospective release that it richly deserves, but it is well worth inviting over your squad, firing up some popcorn and enjoying this stupidly entertaining slice of vintage ’80s horror.