Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I wanted to like this movie but there are several problems with it:1. It is basically two separate movies spliced together as one. The runaway kid and the party goers were never meant to be in the same film. 2. The characters are all one dimensional, 80's morons. Even the kid is a dumb ass. The drifter was the smartest character telling the kid to go home and is then killed right after which feels like the movies way of saying NO SMART CHARACTERS OR ONES WITH ANY KIND OF SUBSTANCE ALLOWED! 3. There's no backstory whatsoever. It feels like the film starts out in media res. Billy already ran away, the party goers are already driving, etc. Would have been good to see any kind of development in terms of a plot.4. Some of the effects were good but for the most part they were sub par. By the mid eighties effects, while not as advanced as today, were still able to be so much better than what was shown here. This was an independent film so I can understand how money can be part of the problem. 5. Everybody dies. I hate horror movies where everybody dies. I'm in no way suggesting that every horror movie has to have a "We survived" happy ending. But someone surviving makes the experience all the more worth it (at least for me). Otherwise it's like, "I just watched a movie where no one survived till the end...okay."Spookies is a film that could have been so much better if it had better writing and did not have issues between its creators and financial backers. That is the problem independent films often face. If the person(s) paying for the film to be made, who rightfully should have a say in the creative process, and the creators themselves do not get along it will effect the product. Moustapha Akkad financially backed the movie Halloween and thus became part of the creative process. However, he wanted the film to be the best it could be as did Trancas and John Carpenter. I'm sure there were rough spots in that partnership but in the end everyone worked together to create a masterpiece that has withstood the test of time.To sum up that last paragraph, Halloween is the success story of when financial backers and creators work cohesively and Spookies is the failure that occurs when the opposite happens. And to this date Spookies has not even received a DVD release and we're already in the 4K market. Even Troll 2, the best worst movie of all time, got a Blu Ray release. Spookies, while it tries, ultimately does not hold up.

What "Spookies" was - based on my non-extensive, post-viewing research - initially, a completely different movie that I guess got scrapped along the way after some financiers backed out. So a new director was brought in to finish the production by coming up with a whole new premise and just cobbled the sh*t together based on the footage they had. So what it ended up being was basically three or so different stories clumsily mashed together. And it definitely shows...It starts off with a 13-year old boy running away from home because his parents forgot his birthday. He comes across some shady adult man in the woods, whom he exchanges brief dialog with before leaving the man to be killed by some kind of cat-man creature wearing a pirate shirt. The kid shows up at secluded mansion where he finds a birthday party set-up (cake, presents, etc...) but no people. After opening a present to find a talking human head inside, he runs from the house where he is chased and killed by cat-pirate. The movie then shifts to a group of people who show up at the mansion to party. However, things go awry when the house's primary inhabitant (whose head was in the box...) starts playing a deadly game of 'chess', using his new visitors as the pawns... Oh, and he has some chick he loves preserved in a coffin...So, of course, the direction and editing are beyond horrible and nonsensical. What "Spookies" is more or less known for is its multitude of make-up and creature FX - the vivacity of which is actually pretty spotty. Some of the FX are decent while others look like dollar store Halloween costumes. I think the effects work was suppose to act as the redeeming factor of this flick, but, in the end that really couldn't save it. In all, "Spookies" is just a slapped together mess that should have just been aborted the first time production funds were pulled. This outcome just doesn't work...More reviews @ http://swinesewage.blogspot.com/

The obscure "Spookies" is very fun to watch. It's the typical '80s slasher flick in which some young people stop at a house that contains an evil entity. The evil entity here is a sorcerer who wants to resurrect his bride. There are some really neat makeup effects, and the spider scene was probably the best. I will say that the flatulent monsters were kind of silly, but the movie as a whole was really fun. Despite what the cover implies, the movie is not about monsters attacking naked women. The soundtrack is about what I expected.OK, so the characters have no depth. Who watches these movies for character development? We watch these flicks to have fun, and there's no shortage of that in "Spookies". It's entertainment for the ages! So just be careful the next time that you play with a Ouija board.

So this film was a low budget project that was shelved and patched up by someone else with additional footage. The acting is standard, the effects are old school but you know what it has atmosphere and its weird as hell. So I like it, even more than all those crappy Michael Bay remakes, even better than the Paranormal Activities and the Paranormal Entities and the Devil Insides etc.The story is sparse to say the least, also it doesn't make much sense. Think Phantasm or City of the Living Dead and you get the idea. A kid is alone in the woods, its his birthday and his parents forgot so he has run away from home. He talks to a weirdo who hangs around in trees, once the boy goes the man is murdered by what appears to be some sort of blue cat man in a strange dinner suit, who proceeds to follow the boy. The basic plot revolves around an old man who lives in an old house in the woods, trying to revive his dead wife with people souls, only to find when she wakes up, she doesn't want him. What a bitch! ha So then we meet a motley crew of people looking to party pull up outside an old house, why these people decided to hang out together I have no idea, they are so random.So the boy finds the house and finds a room set out as a party for him for his birthday, he is delighted but finds a head in the cake box and runs off to the woods, only for the blue cat thing to catch him and bury him alive... weird and a little disturbing. So we are left with these party goers who don't really have a party. What follows is a series of set pieces that are weird, funny and not at all predictable. There's the mud men in the basement, a disgusting mutant that fires electric currents, the witch in the caverns, the little vampire kid and most memorable, the spider lady. So if you like some old school 80s weirdness I would recommend.