Spookies (1986) watch online HD

This is one good horror flick. It really should have a better reputation than it does. Of course, it's silly and stupid... that's part of the fun! One of the things that makes this movie pretty unique is it has many scenes that are pretty serious and intense, while others are laugh riots on purpose and on accident. Perhaps the greatest thing is how creative these filmmakers got with the monsters. 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. Man, it's wild! There's also demonic possession, and a scene that has much in common with the first (human) possession in "The Evil Dead". "Spookies" also has an interesting story behind the movie: It was begun around 1984 as a horror-comedy called "Twisted Souls". That was unfinished, but they added more stuff in to make the paste-up movie that became "Spookies". Amazingly enough, "Spookies" doesn't look like remnants of separate movies. It was all put together very well, and the results definitely deserve more respect and recognition. I really want to see the uncut version, because it probably has more gore and would also probably clear up confusion about what happened in gory scenes that were obviously cut right out of the US version with an R rating. If "The Evil Dead", Lamberto Bava's "Demons", "Night of the Demons", and others were able to get by with how goofy they are, I think that "Spookies" (a movie just as equally goofy and creepy as any of the others) should be able to also. In my opinion, "Spookies" should be legendary.

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 result is even more confusing than it might sound because the film abruptly changes gears & tones in mid-scene as cutaway reaction shots by the weird monster kids are edited to make them appear as extensions to scenes which they were never meant to be in. The problem is that the production design and texture of film stock used for the SPOOKIES add-in scenes are notably different than the by then 3 years older TWISTED SOULS scenes, giving the film a discontinuous & disjointed feel to it that one might mistake for clumsy editing. One minute you get a terse haunted house scene with 20 something adults panicking as they have to fight off animated killing fiends, the next minute you get stuff that looks like a nightmare sequence from "The Wonder Years". 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. The bottom line on the film is that NO UNCUT VERSION OF IT EXISTS, unless you want to use Duchamp and say that Ms. Johnson's re-defined film with the added footage counts as a finished, single discreet object. It sort of kinda does, but only until you learn the story behind what you're seeing. And once you know the story behind the production -- and how to tell the two aggregate parts from each other -- it's hard to enjoy it as a single finished piece of art anymore, which is too bad. SPOOKIES doesn't suck but yet it doesn't exactly rule, and as Beavis & Butt-Head teach us, stuff should either suck, or it rules ... By failing to achieve even that basic standard the film becomes a big, exasperating, confusing tease that looks great without managing to say a damn thing about what it is supposed to be. 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. What ending there was tacked on isn't much to begin with, and sometimes trimming the fat from a steak helps one get to the meat a bit quicker without having to saw through all the chewy, wasteful gristle. If Ms. Johnson was not under a contract compelling her to do the work she has no excuse, because no matter how clever her additions were they only served to muddle up & confuse what should have been a lean, mean little movie.

7/10: Someone call in a butcher next time.

^^^^This is a quote from the film, and it sums up my opinions on this film perfectly. The difference being that I know it's not art, but I'm not sure what it is.

Wikipedia lists 'Spookies' as an Indie movie. As anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows, I'm in the minority in that I actually take some time to decide whether an Indie film is good or not, I don't automatically grant any indie movie a 10 just because it's an indie, I judge it as a movie, what I rate it depends on how good or bad it is. But do not think this means that I HATE indie films, I respect their makers for trying to make films outside of the Hollywood system, I just don't automatically rate any Indie film a 10 in order to defy 'The Man'. People need to learn that there's a fine line between respect and ass-kissing.

So what has this to do 'Spookies', you ask? Simple, this film shows it's indie roots firsthand. Rather than relying on the typical mainstream filmic ingredients for what makes a movie; such as Plot, Characterization, Thematic content, Acting, storytelling etc, the film instead offers us in their place these elements: 1) Gravestones that quiver like bed-sheets. 2) A werewolf in effeminate-gypsy clothing that looks like Zacherley in black-face with pointed ears who has a hook for a hand who makes cat noises and puts tree branches in the road for some reason. 3) A 13 year old boy on the lam because no one celebrated his birthday who talks in soliloquies where he explains EVERY single thing that happens who stupidly enters an abandoned mansion he's never been in before thinking his family is waiting inside for a surprise party. 4) A creepy sorcerer who looks like Warren magazines's Uncle Creepy who is trying in vain to bring his dead, preserved, non-decayed wife back to life. 5) A bickering group of teenagers who look so old that you think at first that one couple are their parents. 6) An abusive tough-talking wise-ass Italian-guy named Duke. 7) An alcoholic who can't slam the car door properly. 8) A comedy-relief guy who looks like John Waters who has a hand-puppet he uses to scare everyone with. 9) A cute but whiny broad-shouldered British chick named Adrian with the most British accent I've ever heard in a white business suit who looks like me and shares the same name. 10) A birthday party that appears out of nowhere with a severed head inside a box. 11) A creepy midget in a druid robe with green face-paint all over his face but who has normal flesh-colored hands with which he holds a knife. I can't tell if he's MEANT to be a real monster but has crappy makeup, or is meant to be wearing crappy makeup and is just a normal midget.

I've seen all of this in just the first 20 minutes. I think I may have found the greatest WTF movie of all time.

And it gets better. There literally are skeletons in the closet, who have Ouija boards in their arms that Duke thinks is a Parcheesi board. 'Spookies', where have you been all my life?

Then the zombies come!!!

And then it has the greatest line of all time....that I've heard this week: 'I've never met an electrical cord that can get the best of me', but that's not the best part. Guess what's next?

Farting wine-soluble mud mummies with pickaxes!!!!!!!!!!!

I think this movie just destroyed my brain, and I love it.

Go and buy this movie! Now! This may just be the pinnacle of all film! I'm resigning from my job, I'm going to start a church for this movie!!!

Spookies is shy and unsure of itself at first but its confidence grows and shows us what its got starting with Duke's "What's behind this door?!" and subsequent chair smashing. All it needed was a little encouragement, encouragement that other reviewers are denying it!

Farting muck monsters in the basement! A Grim Reaper made out of oily rags! (apparently) An un-dead Winona Rider lookalike! A zombified Michael Jackson impersonator! More movies should be like Spookies! The movie doesn't take itself seriously and so neither should the audience. The American public can only take so much terrorists at sporting events-world being saved by greasy wife beater shirt wearing hung over Bruce Willis-Nicolas Cage types from Brian Depalma until our souls are empty, minds numbed, and we become zombies. Wait! If that happens we can make more movies like Spookies! My optimism and hope for the world has been renewed!

A fun, but not scary horror movie. 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. The thing that really makes this movie stand out in my mind is the fact that 75% of the movie is basically a special effects showcase. There's more different creatures living in the house than real actors in the movie! We get zombies, carnivorous lizard mutants, mudmen, mangled corpses that pop out of closets, a spider woman, a killer with a hook-hand, a cyborg thug with drain-snakes for hands, and even a glow-in-the-dark grim reaper! Many people on this board said that the film was amateurish with bad special effects. Come on now, it was the mid-80's when this movie came out! Spielburg didn't write this movie! For WHEN it was written, and WHO wrote/directed/did the makeup effects it's pretty freakin' good! Bad special effects don't bother me, only the lack of them. This movie, while definitely not being a candidate for the Hair and Makeup department Grammy, is FILLED with all different kinds of effects. Makeup, monsters, costumes, stop-motion, transformations, and transparency effects are just a few different types you'll find here. The only movie I can compare to this one in terms of the sheer variety of bizarre effects is maybe Beetlejuice or Street Trash. The effects on "The Spookies" may not be as good as, say, Poltergeist or Indiana Jones, but the overabundance of them really makes me think, "Man, those FX artists must have put a LOT of time into that!!" Think of this movie as a form of art, and it's pretty good and lots of fun.

I half to say I really loved this movie. I have been watching this movie for many years and have never grown tired of it. The movie jumps around so much at times it seems like a horror soap opera. There are many random characters and random creatures throughout the whole film. The only downside is the story really dosen't go anywhere, but who cares about story when a have about 15 different monsters killing and terrifying everyone in the movie. Apparently, this movie was meant to be much more than it was. Originally titled "Twisted Souls" there was I think two or three different directors directing this movie. It would be very interesting to see what would have been done with the original idea of the movie. But nonetheless, the movie turned out very fun and very silly. Check it out if you can find a good copy as I am still looking for a version that may have extra footage.

Two-line summary : a group of people spends the night in this mansion near an old cemetery and encounter all sorts of strange, horrific beings. There are zombies resurrecting outside, demons arise from an ouija-board and all these creatures are ruled and controlled by an old Frankenstein-like fella in the attic. Other than these we have an authentic red-eyed Grim Reaper, mummies, giant spiders, little gremlins and huge monsters. Don't be fooled, however, because this 'Spookies' is a lot less silly than it actually seems. It contains several very efficient shock-effects and the make-up achievements easily outshine 90% of all the other low-budget 80's horror movies. I'd even go further and claim that this is a very underrated little flick and it deserves more praising (and a DVD-release!!). "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'. No plot, no depth, no logic… nothing but tremendous fun! That's the best way to describe this film. Check it out, horror fans, and unleash your most monstrous appetite!!

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. Sure, it is a low brow film, with lots of annoying '80s style humour and overacting leads, but nevertheless the fast pacing of the movie and the plethora of weird and wonderful creations and effects is what makes it worthwhile. 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. The music is almost classic and weirdly suits the film – to much greater effect than the usual '80s pop/rock that you usually here in this sort of thing. 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. Mix in blood and lots of corpses (and, on one sour note, an exceptionally annoying demon henchman with a hook for a hand, who doesn't do a thing the whole movie except creep around) and you have the perfect ingredients for a chilled night's viewing.

I admit, there was bad acting and the plot wasn't the most elaborate, but the movie did offer thrills as well as laughs.

As far as what they where doing there, they where doing what most party-goers do... look for another place to crash. They where looking for an after-party, got lost and wound up there. Duke being the bad-ass in the flick, thought it might be thrilling place to hang out and decided to check it out despite the opposition. the rest just followed. The rest of the film focused on monster mayhem giving the user a diverse array of creative ghastliness. The highlight of the film being the spider-woman sequence went through 4 transformation stages before becoming a monster which is impressive for a low-budget independent film which most obviously went to creature FX. also, stop-motion facial meltdown gruesomeness. Not a bad film. so if your looking for million dollar award winning FX by Stan Winston, Rick Baker, Steve Johnson or Rob Bottin... you wont find them here. What you will find is a entertaining little flick with lots of "Spookies" to keep you coming back for more.

-Max

BTW, the haunting medieval-like theme music stuck in my head for a long time. It was nice to listen to it again.

Ahhh... sweet nostalgia.

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! The theme music isn't much but it sets the tone, the smiling skull informing the audience that the following macabre romp is purely intended in the spirit of ghoulish fun, and is by no means meant to be taken too seriously, although it certainly has its grim moments and there's no shortage of death! The opening demise of the rather brainless Billy is quite the chilling and nasty sequence. 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! 13 was not a lucky number for Billy... I thought Felix Ward in his one and only role as the deliciously sinister and villainous Kreon was just excellent, and the character setup is so epic and cool to me! Ancient, evil corpse-wizard residing in his decrepit abode of the damned, using dark magic rituals to summon up a mad menagerie of freakish demons to seek out and kill the group of unfortunate sacrificial victims that are trapped in his funhouse of doom, orchestrating the fates of victims and a veritable symphony of horrors like a well-played game of chess, all for the sake of resurrecting the idealised lost love who once poisoned herself to escape him in the first place! The magnificently gothic old mansion was a truly excellent setting for some classic '80's terror. All the gloomy dark hallways and rooms make for one superbly nightmarish tone that's spiced-up by the beasties that are constantly appearing out of nowhere, creating a feeling of the unknown around every corner. 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. The wannabe comedian with the sock puppet especially deserved to die horribly - and boy does he ever! Fabulously disgusting and inventive display of good old practical effects work in that sequence. I loved the oh-so British "Adrienne", her droll bad attitude was really funny in the scene where she's smoking a cigarette and bossing around her wimpy husband! The music that plays during the scene where she's fighting the snake gremlins is so strange and dramatic, and a very eerie and weirdly poignant scene is the one of her gruesome, and partly-animated death via the electric tentacles of a wailing abomination, and then its unspeakable heart of darkness beats anew... Love that scene! The muckmen were the easiest out of all the monsters to defeat! I think maybe their farting was swamp gas escaping because they were made outta mud! Those silly noises make that part a real guilty pleasure. I love the finale with the rocking music going as the blushing bride is chased through deep dark woods by the demonic zombie horde! Totally goes on forever, but it was the perfectly over-the-top punchline that the whole movie deserved - creatures of the night, put your claws together!!! Half the film is kind of serious, and the other silly. It's a real soup of various horror concepts that somehow to me, all blend together into a joyously macabre work of dark wonder. And regardless of its faults "Spookies" delivers where it counts, maintaining a menacing and surreal tone of dread that keeps the viewer creeped-out until the bitter end. And for whatever reason I do adore that bad ending where everybody's freaking dead and buried, the malevolent old snake survives, the princess is his unwilling prize for all eternity, and his black victory is complete! This picture has something of the old E.C. Grand Guignol magic about it. Cheesy at points, but overall an awesomely spooky blast to watch and it always was one of my all time favourite horror flicks. Bloody brilliant!!!

"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.

Several youths get lost in the back roads while trying to find a party, and end up in an old dilapidated mansion in the middle of a graveyard. Inside, they discover a ouija board, through which it is foretold that they will never leave the premesis alive.

A ghost, haunting the mansion, seeks to harvest their souls so he can entrap the woman of his dreams- in ghost form- for an eternity.

The "kids" are attacked by all sorts of monsters, including... 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. And it almost never existed! 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. It also seems to have influenced a bunch of later films and TV shows, like x-files (fiji mermaids) and possibly also Stephen King's sleepwalkers (among others).

When all is said and done, it's the monsters and special effects that make this film so damn awesome. They are incredibly imaginative and extremely well done. There ain't no CGI bullsh*t employed here.

And the deaths are badass too! Something else I like, is how all the characters are survivors. No one goes down easy- or without a fight in this. Which resonated with me...as, too often, characters act like a deer in headlights, just standing around waiting to die. 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. Though not perfect- considering it has been dismembered and reformed by lesser visionaries- it is still totally worth checking out this Halloween season (as it just received the limited edition bluray treatment).

8 out of 10.

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.

I picked up "Spookies" at a video store near my home. The reason? None. I like horror stuff, so it seemed like a decent rental. It has no real plot, but it still managed to entertain me.

It is about a group of cocky young adults that are looking for a party. While lost, they stumble upon an old mansion next to a graveyard(gulp!). I guess their noses were bothering them because they actually go inside. Some old sorcerer that lives in the house needs to kill people to keep his beautiful bride alive. And those un-invited guests are his latest victims. 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. The deaths that follow are pretty gory but not too gory, and the group aswell as the sorcerers bride (she's nice) try to escape the horror. But do they?

Yes, entering the house was easy, but nobody has ever left this house before. It is a good film to watch late at night alone, or with someone else. My sister whose only 14 didn't find this scary though. 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 thought it was much older. But still it's an OK rental. It is indeed horror as it should be.

The only downfall was the ending. The struggle against the horrors in the house and the zombies outside was all for nothing. Everyone dies. Plus, the bride who nearly got away, actually doesn't get away at all. The sorcerer, who had been dead, comes back and I guess it's his victory. Over 80 minutes of people dying and for what? To feed a win for his wicked sorcerer? Nobody has a happy ending, but heck it's a so called horror film. Is there suppost to be a happy ending? Nah, simply a shocker.

Final rating: 6/10

P.S. That was cool, using red wine to kill the mummies with bad indigestion! :-D

**spoiler warning**

a thought this movie was one of the best horrors around, yet it is not given much credit. 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.

You don't rent a movie like Spookies if you are looking for a quality horror film. Anyone can tell you that. The only reason I rented this was to see the pretty 80s monster effects, and that's what I got. Pretty and rustic 80s horror. Unfortunately, the movie has a ridiculous plot with the sole intention of showing off the monsters created for the film. There are mud monsters, a reaper, a spider woman, lots and lots of zombies, random creatures, and my favorite, little gremlin-esquire lizard monsters. There are no exciting death sequences. Die hard Horror fans should check this out. You'll enjoy the cheesy effects. There isn't much else in this movie to enjoy.

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 mancat 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. Well I must admit it gave me a few laughs but it never really became silly. The movie is about a bunch of teenagers who comes to an abandoned house they are going to have a party in the house but is the house abandoned. no instead it has a lot of various monsters inside. there is also a old sorcerer who wants to wake up his wife from the dead. who will survive? i personally think this movie is underestimated and deserves a much better reputation. I have seen much worse horror movies. if you find it buy it but do not pay to much for it *S* i bet you will remember it after seeing it

This movie really doesn't want to gain anything, It's cheapo fx which actually got 2 awards and some rubbish acting. It's the perfect combo for a bad film. I've seen this movie UNCUT and it doesn't make a difference. You are still bound to enjoy this terrible cult classic. A group of people wanting to party come to a haunted house and run into the 'SPOOKIES'. Theres a real collection of scary monsters.There's the infamous 'MUCK MEN' who fart and don't like wine. The spider woman. The grim reaper. The gremlins.A walking half-octopus wannabe which melts faces and an angry new yorker! Oh! and did I mention the zombies which all have eyes missing! Fun, Entertaining, brilliant, 10 out of 10 piece of trash! Enjoy!

B-movies are great. Some are genuinely fine examples of how talent can shine through a low budget. Some are so bad they are, in fact, classics in their own right. And some are just complete crap. Like this one.

It's actually a film that was abandoned with some other stuff rather badly tacked on to try and make it more coherent. 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. He sends this cat boy with a hook to do his dirtywork, which involves lamely trying to tie this plot onto the other one (which means holding doors closed while the actors from the original film try to get out of various rooms in the mansion. This is even worse than it sounds).

To integrate the two films: The party goers are being killed for the old tw*t's bride. This doesn't make any sense though, because there's frequent references to awaking various demons so they can live in place of the victims. Bitchy English chick gets to fight a demon straight out of Ghoulies, but the editing is so bad I thought she was fighting two demons. Ends up getting her face melted off of some thing. Duke and his missus fight some farting zombies and melt them with wine, and everyone gets to fight the Grim Reaper, who for some reason explodes. 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. By this point I was painfully aware of how much time I had wasted when I could have been finishing off the kitchen I have been building for weeks, and did indeed put a screw through my index finger shortly after as a result of watching this rubbish.

Loads of monsters. Zombies. A guy getting sucked dry by a spider woman. This all sounds good, but it's crap. The only bit to note is the youngster on the run at the beginning, who enters the mansion first, gets attacked, slashed up, and buried alive. 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). The most offensive piece of the film is the zombie attack, which lasts forever and is completely pointless.

I don't even want this one in my house - it can go to oxfam.

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.

The best so bad its good movie I've ever seen. It was so funny. I have to admit the creatures were pretty scary looking. The creatures and the spooky atmosphere are the only scary things in this movie. I love this movie. I find the sorcerer repeating the same line more than once though. It is kind of funny. The music I great. I find myself listening too it once in a while. The ending is very confusing and the plot seems like it doesn't know what to do. It isn't gory but it is pretty gross. The sorcerer who lives in the house is trying to kill off teenagers who go into the house to bring his wife back to life. The ending is very weird though. It is a very fun and entertaining movie.

Spookies was a movie I endured for a while when I was young when it played on Saturday afternoons on the USA Network about 15 years ago. I watch it now and then, and I guess tonight was one of those times. It has been a while. Spookies is enjoyable. Story is about a group of couples who break into a giant empty mansion on a graveyard, for whatever reason, and are soon terrorized by a not-so-scary sorcerer who creates an army of monsters (grim reaper, spider-woman, muck men, lizard monster, skeleton witch thing, possessed woman, etc.) to terrorize them. The acting is average. The characters are clichéd, but passable and hold interest. 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. The story however is all over the place. The constant action on screen take away that fact, but sometimes you're wondering "what happened to that one guy", or "what happened 30 seconds ago?". Well whatever. Good horror film. Very entertaining if you have a tolerance for low-budget horror. The story is just incoherent and leering. Thats probably because after the film was completed legal action was brought in to have the story re-arranged, new scenes shots (the sorcerer, the zombies, the bride, the cat boy, the kid buried alive) with a new director, and a different ending filmed. Three Stars.

I simply can not understand why anyone would hate this movie.I mean I understand that this movie may not be grade "A" acting, and may seem a little bit odd at times but take a good look at what its listed under. Its listed under horror, and horror is not suppose to make total sense. 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.

Someone recently added a trivia comment which says, "Actually comprised of two separate, unfinished films and edited together." This is completely untrue. I wish people would actually read the message board notes before bothering to make such comments. Spookies is comprised of the original Twisted Souls (finished save for some post production work), and new footage added months later (which was NOT from an unfinished, separate film at all, but was footage shot to add into Twisted Souls). I know some of the people who made this film and visited the set many, many times so I know what I am talking about. Where do people come up with these things? I know it has a confusing history, but read the comments from myself and others, it will help clarify matters.