I didn’t get it in by Halloween as my annual tradition, but the shlock metal-horror film Trick or Treat 1986 is very dear to my heart, the film and the soundtrack by Fastway. Devilish whispers of “66 Crush” echo in my ears anytime I think of this flick and if you’re already familiar with the film about a persecuted metalhead fighting back against his oppressors via the satanic spirit of his dead metal hero, Sammi Curr, you know what I mean. “66 Crush.” It’s a rally call only the true metal heed, posers get bent.

Marc Price did an honorable job transitioning from that dweeb Skippy on the beloved Eighties sitcom Family Ties to a metalhead, Eddie Weinbauer, who slides by the gnarly nickname “Ragman” in this film. Price did a solid job of representing our generation of metal and none of us saw it coming then. Yeah, okay, the movie’s a turd in the last half hour. The premise of enacting vengeance via the resurrection of a hedonistic metal god from his fiery suicide through the backwards acetate spin of his final recording is not merely a joke, it’s pitiful. Then again, music lovers going all the way back to The Beatles’ White Album have been twirling vinyl in reverse seeking hidden messages. All part of the shtick Trick or Treat (not to be confused with the 2007 horror anthology Trick ‘r Treat) rides on, since Ragman’s metalhead-incognito best friend, Roger (Glen Morgan) nyuks about “pinheads” wearing out their records (and styluses) accordingly.

For all the facepalm-worthy shenanigans once Trick or Treat turns into a horror film, it has its metal heart in the right place and it’s glorious. For the first hour, the trials of Ragman in high school are as exact as what most headbangers of the 1980s experienced as outcasts. You had to the walk the walk to feel Eddie Weinbauer’s pain. It’s not just getting shut out of the boys’ locker room naked for the girl’s gym class to stamp the humiliation effect even deeper; it’s the fact the bullying jocks have infiltrated Eddie’s metal sanctum by poaching his cassette tape and strapping on his garb in mockery. Someone in Weightlifting class school violated one of my metal tapes back then, which I not only correlated with in Trick or Treat, I recreated my experience in my novel, Revolution Calling.

I can see myself and my headbanging buddy, Mark, when Trick or Treat came out in the theater. It wasn’t crowded, considering all local teens were usually present and accounted for most Eighties horror films. This one was about heavy metal, and it was no different than school, with only an alienated subdivision in attendance geeking at all the heavy metal bands we loved in Ragman’s bedroom, mirrored by our own. We outclassed Eddie’s room by the amount of metal pictures and posters enshrined in our rooms, yet he had an attic loft, bro, the halcyon of teen privacy!

Priceless cameos by Gene Simmons as a local metal DJ with the handle, “Nuke” and Ozzy Osbourne in a hilarious roast of Eighties televangelism make it worth digging up this relic. A relic which has found a wider cult audience (along with another metal-horror film of the day, Black Roses), by newer generations of headbangers. Trick or Treat 1986 is now considered an out of print lost classic fetching bigger bucks than the five-dollar cheapie bins it used to haunt. Thirty bucks for a DVD in the age of streaming says something, especially when Trick or Treat is currently found on just one independent streaming platform…for extra pay, of course.

Photo by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Anyone who likes the Celtic punk band, Flogging Molly, ought to be aware that’s Dave King himself singing for Fastway in this film. An offshoot metal band started by the late Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, Fastway had a small handful of albums in the Eighties before they were corralled to contribute the songs to Trick or Treat. Seven anthems written for the album, all of them rocksteady pumpers, and two previously released cuts which never appear in the film, “Heft” and “If You Could See.” Fastway steals your soul (and the movie itself) with “After Midnight,” “Get Tough,” “Stand Up,” “Tear Down the Walls” and “Hold on to the Night.”

Blackie Lawless and W.A.S.P. were first recruited for songwriting duties with Lawless originally cast as Sammi Curr. Gene Simmons was also offered the role of Curr, instead taking a more memorable backseat as Nuke in homage of his disc jockey hero, Wolfman Jack. Nobody who loves this film gets by without snapping off Nuke’s sign-on greeting, “Wake up, sleepyheads….iiiiit’s parrrrrty time!”

Of all things, the part of Sammi Curr went to dancer, Tony Fields, whose wispy shag and chiseled physique gives the otherwise burnt-up phantasm a lilt such a nefarious, would-be black metal character doesn’t deserve. Fields’ twirling and prancing onstage at the school dance is too prissy for a spawn of Satan looking to take revenge upon the same school Eddie Weinbauer attends, synergy at its finest. Yet by this time, we’ve been waiting long enough for Eddie to consummate his improbable romance with Popular girl, Leslie. I say improbable romance tongue-in-cheek as I, as a headbanger of the decade, would land a straight Popular girl for more than a year after this film came out. It happens, believe it, or don’t.

Cringeworthy in the final acts (especially the toilet gag in momentary escape from Curr), Trick or Treat is still pure gold in my eyes. It speaks to my teenage soul for the first hour and it lays the foundation to writing about my own heavy metal life in Revolution Calling.

I’ll see ya ’round midnight, shock ya ’til the sparks fly…

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.