Spookies
Tags: cult, murder, romantic

Plot synopsis:
A 13-year-old boy named Billy runs from home as his parents forget his birthday. Making his way through thick woods, he encounters a drifter who is violently slashed to death after Billy leaves. Billy stumbles on an old mansion where a room is decorated for birthday celebrations. Thinking it is a surprise by his parents, he opens a present to discover a severed head. Running away, he is attacked by the drifter's killer, a werecat with a hook on one hand, and subsequently buried alive.
Meanwhile, a group of teenagers and some older adults come across the mansion intending to have a party, believing the mansion to be abandoned. However, a sorcerer named Kreon resides there, keeping watch over his bride who he has kept preserved for over 70 years using an unrevealed method, but it is known that he needs human victims in order to do it. He possesses one of teenagers in the group to use a Ouija board and summons a variety of monsters to pick off the group one by one. These include muck-men, small reptilian demons, giant spiders, an arachnid woman, an octopus-like creature with electric tentacles, a skeletal witch, a Grim Reaper statue, a vampiric boy in a monk's habit, and a large group of zombies.
Eventually, the entire group is killed by the monsters and Kreon hopes to preserve his bride for longer, but she escapes by killing him and trying to outrun the zombie horde around the mansion. The bride eventually is saved by a man who drives her away in his car. Kreon regenerates out of a coffin as it is revealed the man in the car is actually the werecat. The camera pans on Kreon's laughing face and the credits roll.

Review: They go all out with nearly everything that you can (or CAN'T) think of: zombies, a spider woman, farting muckmen (hilarious!), a cellar hag, lizard monsters, the Grim Reaper, a half-cat weirdo in biker books with a hook in place of a missing hand, a tall, ugly monstrosity with an exposed heart and tentacles, etc., etc.
"Spookies" also has an interesting story behind the movie: It was begun around 1984 as a horror-comedy called "Twisted Souls".
IMDb readers are in luck: some of the production team behind one of the two films combined into the feature called SPOOKIES have been posting to the message boards for the film, and their insights into this really odd, enjoyable little flick are quite eye opening.Unless I am mistaken in reading what they have posted, SPOOKIES began in 1983/1984 as a film slated to be called TWISTED SOULS -- credited to directors Thomas Doran and Brendan Faulkner -- about a group of people who travel to a secluded mansion in the middle of nowhere for some sort of party: The place is haunted or possessed by poltergeists who saw THE EVIL DEAD (amongst other films given visual nods) and the cast is killed off in entertainingly gruesome ways by a host of early FX horror meanies -- My favorite is the statue of the Grim Reaper that comes to life, scythe and all, though most fans seem to prefer the Muck Men, who pass gas uncontrollably while trying to maul their victims.
"Farting mud men" or whatever.For reasons I am still not 100% clear about the film was shelved for two years or so until 1985/1986 when a hack director named Eugenie Johnson was brought in to try and create a finished feature length film out of the well-produced but unused footage, shooting some additional scenes and editing them into the body of TWISTED SOULS in the same way that one might make a quilt on a loom: The two films are now inextricably interwoven into one 85 minute feature called SPOOKIES, which unless my notes are incorrect, was released theatrically & on home video in 1987/1988 to a certain amount of popular acclaim.Put quite simply, the scenes with the group of people in the haunted mansion with the Ouija board possessed chick are what is left of TWISTED SOULS, the remaining footage with the goofy made-up kids, the Angus Scrimm like old man, and the young goth babe in the white dress are what Ms. Johnson added to round out the runtime.
The film comes off as a cross between a horror farce like DEADTIME STORIES and a grim little effects thriller like SUPERSTITION aka THE WITCH, which may also have it's own grim sense of humor but is hardly played for laughs.The final film known as SPOOKIES doesn't make sense as a linear narrative, and yet there is still something going on here that is pretty darn interesting.
Here is a film that requires background reading.That the original material from TWISTED SOULS is lost to time (or legal considerations, at least) is a travesty: This could have been one of the best haunted house movies of the 1980's, and instead exists only as a sort of incomplete, disorienting mish-mash filled with genuine dreck breaking up some of the most interesting horror scenes from that particular period of time.
I find the film as it exists today as a fascinating example of how the worst intentions of even the most talented people can be used against their own better judgment: I'd love to even see a 40 minute cut of what's left that excludes the SPOOKIES additions, even if the film wouldn't have an ending.
"Spookies" received the Delirium-award for best Special Effects at the international SF and Fantasy films festival, so you see I'm not the only one who likes it.
If it only had a little more plot, it would enjoy the same status as films like 'The Evil Dead', 'Demons' or 'Re-Animator'.
"Spookies" is a well-known title among the horror fans due to its copious creature effects.Set in a dilapidated and spooky mansion it features plenty of different monsters including farting mud-men,small reptilian demons,giant spiders,an arachnid woman,an octopus-like creature with electric tentacles,a skeletal witch,a Grim Reaper statue, a vampiric boy in a monk's habit and a large group of zombies.I must say that I was impressed by fantastic creature effects made by Gabe Bartalos,Arnold Gargulio,Jennifer Aspinal and John Dods."Spookies" along with "The Evil Dead","Return of the Living Dead" and "Demons" is an essence of low-budget 80's horror cinema.8 spookies out of 10..
were-cats, sh*t demons, a bunch of fiji mermaids, a predator type thing with electro-shock tentacles, skeletor, a spiderwoman, some sort of demon that releases a pulsating field, from her brain, that causes the living to age at an incredibly fast rate, and a hoard of zombies (for good measure).This 80's comedy-horror is cheesy, low budget, and a masterpiece of cult cinema.
After, originally, having been shot by a pair of directors, under the title Twisted Souls...the guy funding the project fired them...only to hire a porn actress/editor, as director, to finish shooting the film with an entirely different cast, and some additional scenes.You can actually feel the differences in the contributions from the 2 different groups: the original filmmakers, cast and crew; and a former porn star and her group of porn people.The latter would dismember the film from it's original form- so that she and her crew could insert their own additional scenes and special effects (like adding fart noises over the muck men scene, for example)- that are clearly inferior to the work of the original creators.Drama aside- in it's final form- Spookies owes a lot to earlier films like Evil Dead and Hausu...though, it has it's own lame charm that will surely win you over, by the end.
Although no one makes it out alive in this film...at least they all go down swinging.Don't make the mistake of turning this off during the first 5 minutes- when it seems like it's going to be a low budget, schlock, piece of crap (during an additional scene added by the porn people)- because, by the end, I guarantee it will have won you over.The creatures and special effects in this are simply amazing, and it contains just the right amount of cheese.
You don't rent a movie like Spookies if you are looking for a quality horror film.
If Spookies feels like the result of two separate unfinished movies badly edited together to create a full length feature, there's a very good reason for that: it is.
The film was patched together from an incomplete horror entitled Twisted Souls and some unrelated footage shot at a later date.However, despite this fairly valid reason for being crap, one can't help but feel that, even if Twisted Souls had been completed according to its creator's original vision, it still would have been total garbage: the acting is dire; the basic set-up is highly derivative, being very reminiscent of several much better films such as The Evil Dead and Night of The Living Dead; and the effects are extremely amateurish.Attempting to follow the story amounts to a fairly pointless exercise, since nothing really makes much sense: the muddled plot sees a group of revellers travelling to a creepy old manor house where they inexplicably find themselves battling for survival against zombies, monsters, a lovesick ghoul, his man\cat pet thing, farting muck-men, a possessed woman, a grim reaper with red eyes, a spider/woman, and a couple of ugly kids.
Furthermore, what sounds like it might still be a lot of fun, despite the iffy narrative, is actually incredibly dull.For some reason, this film seems to have gathered something of a cult following, and has some surprisingly positive comments here on IMDb. It's a strange old world..
i do not know why people do not like this movie.I think its a great horror movie.
The first film was called Beyond Terror, or Terror Evil, or some sort of crap and by the looks of things was trying to be a showcase for special effects, while trying slightly to rip off the Evil Dead.
Sadly the original film Terror Beyond or whatever looks as if it was a pile of crap anyway, but it's the tacked on bits that drag this film into the field commonly known as the chronic film.The plot of the original film goes kind of like this: Two groups of as*holes - an older mature couple, a bitchy quasi-English woman and her hen-pecked husband, Duke (who is straight out of the Wanderers and says 'this is stupid' all the time) and his be-jugged girlfriend, and some tw*t who is meant to be zany and has a hand puppet (in case we don't know he's zany, he has a t-shirt with his face on it) - are lost after being chucked out of a party and end up in a spooky mansion.
Some chick that I didn't mention find a ouijja board and turns into a demon, everyone splits up and are killed by various monsters before the boring finale, which we don't see the end of due to: plot number 2: Some old wrinkly who is a warlock sits in his spooky mansion, mumbling about his comatose bride and how he's going to get blood for her to live again.
The survivors try and fight the possessed women and inexplicably begin to age, but we don't know what happens because from this point on in the movie the bride escapes from the old tw*t and gets chased around by zombies for what seems an eternity before the twist ending.
Other than that you can just feel the minutes ticking off your life as your presented by sub-par eighties effects with awful editing to integrate the movies (a lot of the running time is devoted to that cat boy sneaking after folks, but never meeting them).
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.
The special effects are top of the line for 1985, and the plot is unique.This movie is not your usual horror movie, and if the viewer looks closely at this film from beginning to end they have to admit love it or hate it, it is different from your average horror movie.I E-mailed the producer of this film, and she says this film flourishes in Europe especially France.It is sad that in the United States most people go for the same boring, uninteresting, and lame horror movies that have no sense of uniqueness what so ever.This movie is a 80's classic that deserves its respect..
Well where can I start when there is so much bad stuff in this movie, there is the farting zombies, the dodgy spider woman, the unconvincing evil muppets, duke the horny ghost.
The first time I tried watching "Spookies" was on a rough looking ex-rental video tape and I barely got through the opening sequence due to its bad quality.
Spookies 9/10This forgotten 80's flick deserves to be seen by b-horror movie fans who don't like to take things too seriously.
Here we have a cat-like henchman with a hook for a hand, a possessed woman conjuring evil with her beloved ouija board, wind-breaking muck-men who can be killed with wine, a grim reaper with glowing red eyes who can explode at any minute, a slimy little lizard-gremlin thing, a grotesque witch with icy-cold breath, an Oriental woman that can transform into a giant tarantula, a peculiar flashing blue light that causes instant aging, an adolescent boy-druid with fangs, a towering fleshless creature who strangles and electrocutes people at the same time, the neverending swarm of zombies, and much more.
come on people, I see these user ratings and I can't understand what people are looking for, If you want a cornball computer animated horror flick then you should probably stick to cheesy movies made from 95/04.
A group of young adults looking for a party end up stranded at an old house filled with zombies and other assorted creatures.Ok, from what I understand this was two separate films stitched together, I don't know if that is true though.
I won't give away any "spoilers" but I will say that some of the effects are pretty good but the zombies look like extras from the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video shoot, you know, the ones they used to fill out the scene, the ones way in the back that weren't lit and were covered by smoke.
But in both cases, they keep being bad movies and that shouldn't affect their rating.The editing is terrible, the FX are below average, the acting is amateurish, and the plot is so contrived it looks like it's gonna tear apart every minute.
Fart monsters, a Phantasm dude that talks as if he's talking through a can, one of the gang all the sudden acts as if she's all the sudden taken over by some uncontrolable desire to become possessed, a spider lady, a dwarf that looks like a character from the movie "The Brood".
While the plot may not be all that great (basically some college kids looking to party find an old haunted house filled with evil monsters.) While the "haunted house" idea has been done to death, this movie seems a little different.
In a film deeply reminiscent of the myriad 1930s old dark house horror flicks – in which a group of diverse characters found themselves collected in a haunted mansion, only to die mysteriously one by one – but with the up-to-date addition of special effects and bloodshed, SPOOKIES is a surprisingly enjoyable movie that is difficult to criticise.
As part of an unfinished film was also edited into the proceedings, this is in addition a confusing watch in which the plotting is sometimes all over the place; no matter, because there are guaranteed chills and monsters just around the corner, so don't focus too much on the storyline.Production values are invariably low (with the exception of the super-quality effects work) whilst the acting leaves a lot to be desired – just the typical badly-dressed '80s crowd you always see in horror movies like this.
The scripting is basic in the extreme, and, rather annoyingly, it rips off THE EVIL DEAD no end, including one female possession who looks just like a character in Raimi's film.
Anyway, the best thing in this is the diverse range of monsters, ranging from squelchy muck-men in the basement to a real-life Grim Reaper, complete with sharp scythe; possessed people; an Asian spider-woman; little GREMLINS-style critters; and, at the frenetic, effective climax, a whole graveyard full of zombies.
What you will find is a entertaining little flick with lots of "Spookies" to keep you coming back for more.-MaxBTW, the haunting medieval-like theme music stuck in my head for a long time.
Oh I always just loved this film to death, it has such a great fun and scary kind of atmosphere, and I never saw another horror movie with so many different kinds of monsters packed into the story!
At first it seems like the drifter's gonna try something funny with Billy until he's killed by the lame gypsy/pirate/werecat who then, after the creepiest damn horror movie birthday party ever, chases down the helpless little boy, slashes his face and buries him alive!
Most of the cast were admittedly annoying and forgettable, making you wish that they'd just hurry up and die, which in this case was probably a good thing, and that kind of low-budget acting only adds to the charm in a movie like this.
One of them called Carol seems to be really skilful with a ouja board so the sorcerer (dunno his name) pocesses her.After that, the group get separated in the dark and run into many weird monsters like zombies, farting mummies, gilled creatures with sharp teeth, a cat guy with a hook instead of a hand, a vampire kid, the grim reaper and a spider lady.
Neither did I, it's like one of those cheesy b-movies, with a handful of decent effects.I didn't know the film was done in 1987.
i is about a group of teenagers who are on the look out for a party only they decide to throw one in a manison little did they know that the house was home to an old sorcerer who wants them dead so that his bride will live - it is full of everything in a horror, action, jokes, supernatural, creatures, plus lots more my favorite actor is one of 2 Maria Pechukas and Joan Ellen Delancey..
The setting is dark, but good, and with all the different monsters on the loose, the dark setting makes the whole thing feel like a Halloween spook show, so it works.
The production is low-budget, but old-school monster movie fans should enjoy this.
My friend went screaming out of my apartment, mad that he had driven all the way over for "Spookies".The only good thing to say about the movie is that it has one of the best "bad acting" scenes ever.
There's some old guy, who doesn't appear to do anything besides play chess, and a bunch of zombies, and a spider lady, and a cast of dozens more: the movie is more like a poorly acted version of a movie about a Haunted House(tm), as in one of the ones you would go to at Cedar Point, that had somehow come alive, than a movie about any one thing.
The plot of this movie is about a group of people spending a night at a empty white house, they were having a fun time until the house became spooked by zombies, goblins, a werewolf, and a grim reaper.