TRICK OR TREAT is one of those 1980s films that has dated in the best way imaginable. It sits as a perfect snapshot of that decade, exploring the hard rock genre and the media links that associated it with Satanism and the black arts. Everything about the film, not least the soundtrack, has dated, and yet these are all positive aspects for me. It's one of the most '80s-feeling '80s films out there.

The plot is predictable indeed, but it's the atmosphere which is strong here so I didn't mind. Marc Price is well cast as the high school outsider, who decides to get revenge on school bullies by summoning up the undead spirit of a recently-deceased rock star in order to get revenge. Except Price isn't really a villain after all, and he soon finds himself with a real fight on his hands. The acting is quite acceptable, although the female characters are badly written. Watch out for future DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES star Doug Savant as the chief villain.

One of the most surprising things about TRICK OR TREAT is that it was directed by Charles Martin Smith, the geeky one out of THE UNTOUCHABLES. Still, Smith does a good job, and the '80s-style special effects are very well handled. There's not a lot of gore on offer here, but plenty of black comedy. A crucial set-piece has been based on CARRIE's famous prom scene although it doesn't come close to that moment in the De Palma classic. Watch out for cameos by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, the latter particularly amusing as a vicar!

Sammi Curr was a famous, devil-worshiping rock star who died under mysterious circumstances. Now he wants to come back to life. Doing so requires possessing radio waves and automobiles and making a few human sacrifices.

I was not familiar with this film, and had no idea what it was about. Today, if you say "Trick or Treat", people will think of "Trick 'r Treat", if they know their horror films at all. But right from the start, I liked what was going on here, a rock and roll horror film set in the heavy metal 1980s when rock went head to head with the PMRC.

Unfortunately, the film does not quite live up to the early promise, and is not helped by some irritating music. (I like heavy metal, but some of the tracks on here are awful.) We get a story that is a bit like "Shocker" and a bit like "Rock and Roll Nightmare", though very much its own story... worth a peek, though perhaps not the lost treasure I wish I was.

Undoubtedly the best heavy metal horror item made in the manically headbangin' 80's, which admittedly doesn't sound like much considering how utterly abysmal many other entries in this odd little fright film sub-genre like "Hard Rock Zombies," "Blood Tracks," "Terror on Tour," and the especially ungodly Jon-Mikl Thor-starring stinker "Rock'n'Roll Nightmare" tended to be. That aside, this one still deserves props for downplaying the excessive splatter and needlessly flashy special f/x razzle-dazzle in favor of focusing on adolescent high school characters who are depicted with greater acuity and plausibility than the norm for a mid-80's teen-targeted scarefest. Moreover, the film's pointed sardonic parodying of both ridiculously overblown 80's heavy metal stupidity and the nauseating self-righteousness of the uptight killjoy conservative stiffs who claimed it was the devil's music are very clever and on the money funny (famed Greed Decade heavy metal god Ozzy Osbourne has a hilarious bit as a smarmy anti-metal TV evangelist!).

Marc Price (the hopelessly dweeby Skippy on "Family Ties") gives a surprisingly strong and winning performance as Eddie "Ragman" Weinbauer, a geeky, socially awkward and severely persecuted heavy metal aficionado who's constantly picked on by the stuck-up jerk preppie bullies who make up the majority of the student body at Lakeridge High School (the cruelty and mean-spiritedness of the high school kids is nailed with painfully credible accuracy). Eddie's life takes a turn for the worse when his rock star idol Sammi Curr (an impressively whacked-out portrayal by Tony Fields) perishes in a hotel fire. Hip local disc jockey Nuke (KISS front-man Gene Simmons in a cool cameo) hooks Eddie up with Sammi's final, unreleased album, which when played backwards resurrects Curr's malevolent spirit back from the dead. Sammi encourages Eddie to sic him on all the vile scumbags who make poor Eddie's life the proverbial living hell, only to have meek Eddie prove to be a most reluctant would-be accomplice. It's up to Eddie, assisted by token nice girl Leslie Graham (likeably essayed by the lovely Lisa Orgolini),to stop Sammi before things get too out of hand.

Ably directed with commendable thoughtfulness and sensitivity by character actor Charles Martin Smith (who also briefly appears as a nerdy school teacher),smartly written by Michael S. Murphy, Joel Soisson, and Rhet Topham, and capably acted by a uniformly up-to-snuff cast, this surefire sleeper even comes complete with a handful of nifty "jump" moments (an outrageous attack in the back of a car by a grotesquely lecherous long-tongued mutant thingie rates as the definite highlight),a rousing "Carrie"-style high school dance slaughter sequence, a neatly utilized Halloween setting, revenge being correctly shown as a truly ugly business, and a solid central message that you shouldn't make a particular over-hyped person your hero strictly because of the calculated anti-establishment posturing said fellow does to qualify for that special status.