Jack-O

In Halloween, three friends seek an ancient cemetery in the suburb for fun and remove a cross from a tomb, where Jack-O was buried many years ago by the farmer Arthur Kelly. The evil creature is unleashed, kills the trio and seeks the descendants of the Kelly family for revenge.

The cheesy "Jack-O" is a combination of a terrible story with awful acting. I was curious with the name of John Carradine in the credits and I can not imagine how a relative authorizes the use of archive footage in such a bad movie, showing a total lack of respect with the name of this great actor. It is impressive how bad the acting is, shifting the film to a comedy instead of the proposed horror genre. This is the type of movie good to see with a group of friends, drinking beer, making comments and laughing a lot. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): " Halloween: A Maldição Está de Volta!" ("Halloween: The Curse is Back")

Note: On 26 Jul 2022, I saw this film again.

This was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The editing was so bad. The scenes with the pumpkin in it are funny but there is too much dead time. His glowing head is cool but that's it. Don't watch this unless you have an hour and a half that you don't need.

A bad horror flick requires certain components. A nice shot of a pair of breasts, with no relevance to the plot. A beheading, preferably one where the head rolls to someone who is in love with the recently deceased. An innocent loser who doesn't actually die in the movie, but you wish they would. At least one famous actor in a small and likely irrelevant role. A utility worker of similar individual who gets gored while one of the "stars" looks on. If you agree, Jack-o is the film for you. If not, rent Free Willy or something. If you feel plot is important, you're in the wrong genre, I'm afraid. Great for Halloween if you want to kill a few hours.

"Jack-O" was scripted by my good friend Brad Linaweaver, so I'm prejudiced in its favour. Low-budget film-maker Fred Olen Ray had a few minutes of footage of John Carradine sitting in a forest at night, and a bit more footage of Cameron Mitchell staring into a camera and telling a spooky story. Ray challenged Linaweaver to write a feature-length script using these snippets of footage. Carradine and Mitchell appear VERY briefly in "Jack-O", and not together.

"Jack-O" is a bog-standard spookfest. Jack-O-Lantern is a homicidal maniac who died in arcane circumstances but who still comes back for one night every year: guess which night. Yes, Hallowe'en. The crucial (dual) role in this film is a small boy in modern times who's related to Jack-O's first victim (also a small boy) from more than a century earlier on. When I saw that the child actor cast in these roles (Ryan Latshaw) is the son of the film's director (Steve Latshaw), I expected a vanity production. But young Ryan is actually a decent actor: in this film at least, his performance is better than his dad's directing.

I always expect zero production values in a film like this, so I was pleasantly astounded by the realistic 19th-century prologue. Brad told me that this was filmed in an historic village in Florida. Unfortunately, the first few minutes of the film look much, much better than anything afterwards.

There are several very attractive actresses in this film, notably scream queen Linnea Quigley as the heroine, and Catherine Walsh as a "bad girl" who MIGHT have supernatural abilities. Untalented Helen Keeling is attractive, but she speaks her dialogue with one of the most bizarre accents I've ever heard.

There are some REALLY grotty special effects: notably the lightning (why didn't they use a stock shot?) and the scene in which one character gets electrocuted. I've seen more realistic electrocutions in Tex Avery cartoons. The post-dubbing of the soundtrack is worse than it really needs to be for this low budget.

"Jack-O" isn't very good, but it isn't nearly bad enough to be one of those Ed Wood-ish camp classics. I strongly recommend it as a study aid for those who want to learn "Bowfinger"-style film-making techniques. And some of the actresses are very watchable. Otherwise, "Jack-O" is a Joke-O. For thrills and chills, look elsewhere.

Man, this movies sucked. It appeared to have like seven different plots going on at once and they all made little to no sense. The special effects, costumes, and all that stuff were beyond awful. The acting was particullary bad. Everything seemed so forced, especially the lines from the woman with the huge eyes and the little kid (his "Noooooo" as he gets burried is so unenthusiastic it's laughable). A good portion of this movie is rather funny anyway. The one woman's death where she shoves a knife into a toaster, gets electrocuted, and magically turns into the crapiest skeleton dummy in the world had my friends and I laughing for a good ten minutes.

Bottom line: If you're into watching really horrible movies, seek this one out. If not, run for your life.