Spookies ( 1986 )

 AKA: Twisted Souls


"Taking a wrong turn, travelers find themselves trapped in a mysterious house. One horror after another threatens them as the sorcerer who lives within needs sacrifices to give eternal life to his beautiful bride."


You know....sometimes you can get lost watching a movie from not paying attention, you lose the basic plot. But when you watch the entire movie.....and are lost literally through the entire thing....theres a big problem. That seems to be the problem with this particular film. Its a incoherent jumbled mess......but somehow its very entertaining. The special FX are top notch, even if the plot fails, the monsters and gore make up for it. Lets see if I can piece together a summary of what happens in this golden turd.

"Welcome Friends"

Our title credits seem to be pretty promising, has the whole creepy music and halloween/spookhouse type feel. I guess thats kinda cool. We get a shot of a old mansion in the middle of a cemetery thats also in a large forest, this is our set up for our "horror show" tonight. We are introduced to our main antagonist, Kreon, the sorcerer/wizard/what ever the hell he is, speaking sweet nothings to his comatose bride about how many souls he must sacrifice to bring her to life so they can be eternally happy together forever....blah blah. Apparently he has fetish for women in coffins or something, Kreon is into some kinky shit.

The sleeping beauty

Now this I can follow, and I guess this is our underlying story here. As the film progresses we meet a few characters that actually have nothing to do with the main story, one including a kid who ran away from home and some creepy guy that seems like a rapist. But they are short lived, only to get killed by one of Kreon's many monsters, ( a cat guy with a hook hand and cowboy spur boots....how scary ). But the fun doesn't stop yet. A group of rag tag people who just got thrown out from a party ( one of them is a stereotypical bad dude named Duke, dressed in leather duds ) stumble across Kreon's mansion and decide to continue the party.

The unsuspecting group

Upon futher inspection of the house they come across a ouija board, when one of the characters plays with the board, she immediately becomes possessed by Kreon and transforms into a ripoff of Evil Dead and attacks everyone. When the unsuspecting fools try to escape the mansion, they find the mansion is now surrounded by zombies and surprise, they are trapped.

Possessed, Evil dead ?

Well from here its pretty apparent what happens, all of our characters disperse into the mansion where they run into Kreon's monsters. We get some very interesting creatures throughout this movie and this is where the special FX really takes off. Our bag -o-ghouls include farting muck men....yes......FARTING muck men, which is by far the most hilarious part in the entire movie, reptile like imps ( total Ghoulies rip off ) and a giant spider woman just to name a few.

Bloodsucking Imp

 It all winds down to the bride who awakens from her eternal slumber and refuses Kreon's advances to be with her. When she attempts to escape his clutches, she is attacked by a giant zombie horde that rip most of her clothes off ( cool ! ). This chase scene seems to drag on fucking FOREVER too. I don't know what the hell they were thinking. At the end of the film Kreon gives us the final "scare" by popping out of a crypt waving his arms around like a retard and laughing hysterically.

What kind of ending is this ?!

So what is it with this movie ? Does it make sense ? Not at all. At least it had super awesome FX behind it. Or else this would have been one ice cold turkey. This movie actually suffered a bad plot fate and incoherent story line because it had several different directors, and from what I hear left the set and quit the film one after another. I guess that explains everything. It just seems they tried putting as much creatures as they can pack into one movie and forgot all about the plot. This movie can really lose you, the film jumps to useless characters and its just mass chaos all about. But like I said, its worth a watch, especially for fans of cheesy 80's horror.




You can find Spookies on VHS format since it has not been officially released to DVD, or you can buy it off a online bootleg website.

Foreign VHS artwork

Gore : 3/5 - The victims deaths were pretty neat, we see a guy get sucked dry, a chick melted, its decent.

Gratuitous Nudity : 0/5 - Nothing at all ! BOOOO. And to think, the chick with the biggest rack doesnt whip em out. What a tease.

Death Count : 8 +

Special FX : 5/5 - The monsters were amazing. Super cool creatures and zombies.

Things you will learn from this movie 


Following strange asian women into the darkness is never a good idea.

Grim reapers explode.

Monsters are really gassy.

Its always a good time to get laid, even when there's monsters all about.

Cat men wear fashionable clothes and boots.

Zombies just want their mommy.

Memorable quotes :  " Uhhh look at me I'm Duke the horny ghost"

All in all I give it about

2/5

Till next time.

Chopper Chris.