Stevieboy666

After spending 20 years in an asylum for a double axe murder Lucy Harbin (Joan Crawford) returns home to the family farm and her now grown up daughter Carol (Diane Baker). However Lucy soon starts to descend into madness and once again the axe starts swinging. The movie was written by Robert "Psycho" Bloch and directed by king of the gimmicks William Castle. Castle appears to have made this movie straight, however stick around for the end credits - the famous Columbia logo of the torch bearing woman has been decapitated, her head lying on the ground next to her feet! Brilliant! Joan was well into middle age by 1964 but she still looks great. One scene has her light a match on a record that is playing, very cool. The movie was nicely shot in black and white, the cast is good and some of the murders are quite grisly. An uncredited Lee Majors, in an early role, quite literally loses his head . The plot has a twist, which I will not reveal, however having watched many similar movies I figured it out quite easily. I first watched Straight-Jacket many years on late night TV when I was very young and I dare say that it frightened me. Second time around it didn't have that effect, however as psycho thrillers go it is a very worthwhile watch.

Young and randy private eye Bob West investigates a case in which a beautiful young woman called Laura is being blackmailed over some sex photographs of her. This is the second entry in the British "Adventures of.." sex-comedy series (and I use the word "comedy" loosely). Bob is a new lead character and Christopher Neil is fine in the role but how they got the gorgeous and talented Suzy Kendall (as Laura) to appear in this crap surprises me, I will always know her for appearing in some classic Italian Giallo movies. For British viewers of a certain age there are many familiar faces among the cast - John Pertwee, Diana Dors, Harry H Corbett and Willie Rushton, etc - but the one that I liked most of all was a very young Peter Moran, who went on to play Pogo Patterson in the fantastic BBC school drama "Grange Hill". For a film that was marketed as a sex-comedy there is in fact very little sex, not enough quite frankly. Likewise, there is nudity but it is all very brief. And in terms of comedy, bar a few scenes, it fails miserably at being funny. Bob stays at the home of Laura, a Gothic looking English mansion, the residents of which include a creepy butler, an eccentric female medium and a buxom blonde housemaid. There are secret passages and one good jump scare, as a horror fan I liked this. One of the few laugh out loud moments has Bob use shoe polish to go in disguise as an Arab, snowflakes might be shocked by this blackface gag but I laughed. At 96 minutes (Blu-ray) the film felt way too long. These "Adventures" are obviously a knock-off of the better known "Confessions of.." sex-comedy series but having now watched two out of the trilogy so far I am not impressed.

"Get lost Metalhead!" Bullied teenager Eddie (now that's a great Metal name!) is distraught when his idol, rock star Sammi "Ragman" Curr, dies, Curr had previously attended the same high school as Ed. Local DJ Nuke (Gene Simmons) gives Eddie the only existing vinyl copy of Curr's new unreleased album. He takes it home, plays it backwards and hey presto mulleted and scarred Sammi is back from the dead, and he's going to help Ed get revenge on the school jocks that have been making his life a misery. Other high school revenge movies such as "Carrie" and "Evilspeak" spring to mind. There are plenty of typical 1980's special effects on show, which I prefer to CGI, but sadly there is very little in the way of gore. Most of the soundtrack comes courtesy of English metal band Fastway, who I confess to not remembering. Their music is OK but it's not up there with the better known stuff. In addition to Simmons from KISS the movie also features the late great Ozzy Osbourne as a TV preacher, warning against the evils of Heavy Metal music - brilliant! (He appears in a post end credits scene so stick around for that!). Trick or Treat was the directional debut of actor Charles Martin Smith, if like me you grew up in the 1980's and have a love for both horror and rock music then this is an enjoyable watch, however it just falls short of being a "good" movie (hence my 6/10). My UK DVD release is of quite poor quality, I am sure that I would enjoy the film more on Blu-ray.