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Can't really take this one seriously, but definitely worth a chuckle! It just gets weirder and weirder. The concept is overdone, but it could have been a better story. Very goofy.

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.

A bunch of people go into a creepy mansion and scary things start to happen.

That's about the best way one can describe Spookies. It's a good lesson of what happens when producers tinker with a film too much and add too many cooks in the kitchen. The fact that any element of Spookies works is a miracle. It still has that thrilling can-do indie film spirit and a myriad of excellent special monster effects, but it's a film that's better played on fast-forward since the story never convinces or gels together.

My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Spookies" is a silly horror picture which contains some interesting special makeup effects along with very amateurish ones, presented in the usual package of a group of hapless travelers murdered one by one. It's of interest to undiscriminating horror fans.

Felix Ward, wearing some pretty phony old age makerup, to;ines as Kreon, a sorcerer who is bringing back to life his bride (lovely Maria Pechukas), who committed suicide 70 years ago. He needs human sacrifices and fortunately (for him), two carloads of people lost en route to a party stop in at Kreon's mansion that night. Earlier that evening, a young boy named Billy (Adam Nemser) wandered into the mansion, found a grisly birthday party being held there for him and is scared off by Kreon's servant (Dan Scott) and other monsters.

The nine partygoers with no party play with a vintage ouija board and make dumb jokes but one of them, Carol, is suddenly turned into a monster Linda Blair-lookalike from "The Exorcist" by Kreon and all hell breaks loose. Disjointed film never explains why the survivors don't just jump in to their cars and head on home. Instead, intime-honored, stupid horror film tradition, they split up in ones and twos and search the mansion repeatedly, making for easy victimization.

Film'[s novelty is that the entire cast is wiped out (no last-minute rescues) and the final reel even has Pechukas, showse reanimation was after all the purpose of all the killing, running around for dar life as a neighborhood full of ghouls shamble around and paw at her.

Rule of thumb here is that when makeup is applied to a person's face it's strictly amateur night, while several of the from the ground up (no pun intended) monster creations are well done. Among these goodies are a huge spider transformed from an oriental lady, a grim reaper skeleton with illuminated red eyes, a gill man who probably saw Ridley Scott's "Alien" and several green lizard monsters. Low point is when some imitation clay people (out of "Flash Gordon" but poorly designed) terrorize a busty babe and her boyfriend in the basement, while postproduction amplified sounds of flatulence lamely attempt to make this scene humorous.

Three directors are credited for "Spookies". Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran teamed up to shoot the bulk of the N. Y.-lensed picture, originally titled "Twisted Souls", while editor Eugenie Joseph completed the film after there was squabbling with the British-based financial backer.

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.

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.

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 bad, deliberately bad but bad nonetheless. The farting basement monsters was a particular highlight. It's not especially gory or funny or scary and takes obvious inspiration from The Evil Dead (1981) but doesn't pull it off. Large portions of the film don't make sense from a character or story perspective but that goes with the deliberately bad vibe nicely.

An almost completely impossible film to review since it was so heavily re-shot and re-tooled after its initial production, muddling the original creator's intentions so you're never really sure what most scenes are going for. That said, there are several inventive effects sequences and it's entertaining in a trainwreck sort of way.

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.

A group of people get trapped in an old house and are taken out one by one by a various monsters , zombies and even the grim reaper and nearly all of these ghouls look terrible, i understand that i have to take into consideration the era but you can see the puppeteer for christ sake.. I am not sure if i watched the cut version of the film but there is not a great deal of gore and there is no nudity , it almost seems like a pg13 movie All in all this film is still pretty entertaining I love the spider woman death scene And it has the 80s charm but i feel it falls just below the average horror from this time.

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.

Spookies has enough weaknesses for two movies, which is fitting given that it is really two movies edited together into one. Although the resulting "film" is far from the worst example of this type of project (e.g. anything by Godfrey Ho), it highlights the weakest aspect of both films.

One plot line follows a group of friends who get caught in a haunted house populated by nightmarish demons. This plot thread is the better of the two, as it boasts some impressive make up effects and creature puppetry. A spider creature represents a particular highlight.

However, none of the characters are really fleshed out, and no protagonist emerges. Furthermore, the characters are so disparate that it is hard to imagine why they associate with one another. The group boasts a middle aged man and what appears to be a fifties juvenile delinquent.

The second plot, tangentially related to the first through some dialogue, but never intersecting, involves a sorcerer trying to resurrect his wife with the help of his werecat and some human sacrifices. The special effects in these segments are much weaker, with make up on the level of a children's Halloween costume.

The overall product is also weakened by mostly failed attempts at comedy, mostly consisting of the characters acting even more stupid than the typical horror victim. The film is worth watching, if at all, for some of the more interesting creature effects.

Spookies is one of those so-bad-it's-kinda/almost good horror flicks. It's a total mishmash of monsters, weird plotlines, and pure 80s b-movie horror vibes. You can tell there were production issues because the story makes very little sense and feels like two different movies stitched together (because that is what actually happened here).

That said, the practical effects are actually pretty awesome for a low-budget, Halloween-haunted-house movie. There's a weird charm to it, even if the acting is wooden and the pacing is often all over the place. It's not exactly good, but still an entertaining and ridiculous 80s horror flick.

As cheesy as Spookies is, and as much as I love cheesy horror flicks, I didn't particularly enjoy this one at all. It just didn't grab me and seemed very flat and dull. How can you get bored whilst watching a cheesy monster flick, I hear you cry. Well, I don't know the answer, but I was. I just didn't like the 'style' of the whole film, it seemed too cheesy and was also too dark to see things properly. There seemed to be a lot of stalking about in the house which was tedious. There was also some guy controlling the monsters babbling on about nonsense, and I couldn't really follow what was going on.

Some people will dig this, but it's not for me. Only recommended to those who love cheesy monster movies.

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.

'Spookies' is a dumb yet entertaining 80's supernatural horror flick that despite its disjointed narrative and bizarre tonal shifts it manages to work for the most part thanks to its eerie atmosphere, awesome creature effects, memorable characters and a few cool death scenes. There's also a twisted sense of humour to it with many random and absurd moments to keep you interested throughout its runtime. This pure guilty pleasure entertainment that only the 80's could deliver.

The Plot = A group of party goers find themselves stranded in a remote part of New England. After taking shelter in a spooky old mansion, they discover a Ouija board which unleashes all sorts of demonic creatures led by an evil sorcerer Kreon (Felix Ward) who wants to kill off the group and use their souls to keep his wife alive.

This is a rather confusing mess of a movie with sloppy writing and editing, but a lot of that is due to the troubled production history where they've basically added in another sub-plot into an already finished film (originally titled "Twisted Souls") and it shows as they don't really blend together that well. However, despite all the chaos this is one hell of a good time where the special effects easily steal the show here as they are ambitious and imaginative. The plot is nothing new and doesn't make a whole lot of sense and the acting is a mixed bag with some ranging from terrible to overacting.

There are moments where you can tell multiple filmmakers were involved and you can tell whether footage has been cut or added, and for the most part it isn't that distracting, but it does leave the film without a consistent vision or tone, thankfully the movie manages to move along at a brisk enough pace where you don't have to stop and think about it too much and just leave your brain at the door and have a good time.

Overall 'Spookies' is a hectic and chaotic mess where ambition outweighs its execution, but it's a solid 80's cult classic horror flick nonetheless.

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. I'm just getting carried away with specifics here. Suffice to say honestly the worst movie I've ever seen apart from the scene in the wine basement filled with farting zombies who's only apparent weakness is they can be killed by wine. Good place to hide fellas. From the start it is unapparent why the characters go into this "spooky house" and when they go in what their motivation is to keep hanging around I mean it isn't even their house, why are they surprised when bad things happen when they break into a spooky looking mansion that is built on a graveyard. Well all I can say is that it is no shock that most of them have ever worked in that industry again.

"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.

It's fun. It's a lot of fun even with it's flaws and awkward moments. Spookies is wildly entertaining while showcasing the special efx and the absolute craziness of 80s horror films that us genre fans love. There is so much packed into this flick it's nuts and it's less than 90 mins long. Spookies is and will always stand out from other horror films of that time and you just have to see it to get it. Im not doggin the film at all and I think it's cringy moments add so much charm and character. But remember it's not for everyone but those of us who dig it really dig it. Watch Spookies and then watch the documentary Twisted Tale:The Unmaking of Spookies on the Blu Ray from Vinegar Syndrome. The story behind the film is something to behold and it will make you watch Spookies again with new eyes and ears and you'll understand that is just short of a miracle how films get made.

Okay, this movie has a reputation as having been completed as a film, when the producers realized that they didn't have a long enough film to release to theaters. So rather than call the original cast together for reshoots, as they might want more money or something, just write a bunch of scenes with unrelated characters, somehow shoehorn them into the story, and then hope it doesn't turn into an incoherent mess.

Oh, wait, no, it turns into an incoherent mess, anyway. The spliced scenes are so bad, they look like they have no business even being in there. Most of it involves mugging by a werewolf henchmen, who was holding all the doors shut when the doors suddenly closed. That actually made the movie less scary. None of this really worked, and that no one had the guts to say so is kind of sad.