Letterboxd Reviews: Hack-O-Lantern

This is the third time I've watched this, actually. I was introduced to it by Joe Bob's Halloween special (followed after "Haunt"), the one during the beginnings of the Pandemic. I watched it the second time on Tubi, and this viewing is a return to the Halloween Hideaway special, so I could enjoy how wacky this film is following those Joe Bob trivia intervals with Darcy freaking out over the Ouija Board, and our iconic host dressed as a hokey Dracula.

Hy Pyke really gets into the grandpa satanist role, complete with the finger horns hand gesture, while Katina Garner is the daughter he ickily fancies with incestuous desire. Killing her husband, Pyke eyes her snarling, dour-faced, metal-head son, a tall, intimidating, easily manipulated thug to join him "officially" in the barn-gathering Devil-worshipping cult. Oh, and there is this dream rock music video that just pops up in the film for...reasons?

There is a Halloween party with a stripper and this standup comedian, cemetery fucking, a gnarly shovel-to-the-head kill, rampant nudity, dream pitchfork to the throat, a killer costumed in a robe and devil mask, with hood, using a pitchfork. The cop son and satanist son don't get along well, with the daughter just wanting to shag her boyfriend (interrupted by Scott Cummins, who will have none of it).

I think why this works for me is the Halloween spirit and real sense of that "seasonal presence". Being in California, that is quite hard to bring to life, I imagine. Halloween in California really must take a lot of work to get on screen with much effect. This particular film seems to do that. I think the twist on who is behind the devil costume has surprising potency I wasn't expecting. Perhaps a standout scene has blond-spike-haired Jeanna Fine, after a pleasant near-naked swim, taking a shower, dropping her towel for who she believes is Cummins, and getting the pitchfork into her head/neck...the bloody wound, along with the shot of the points in the flesh, is really well done and grisly.

Still, this operates with very little budget, is loaded with 80s camp, and has some over-the-top characters so it will have a certain kind of audience who likes that kind of junkfood.

Oh, during Joe Bob's special, members of his crew start to leave the set due to lack of pay while Darcy takes him to task for this film as the selection instead of "Halloween III".

Letterboxd Review: Hack-O-Lantern (1988) - January 17, 2022

 ***/*****