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.

This not a 5. That is just overrating it. This is 1. It is not scary. The story line is awful. The acting is awful. The ending is awful. I do not know why people like this movie. It is just an awful movie. The Evil dead is a very scary movie. And this is awful. Do not wast your time. Do not wast your money. Do not see this movie. It is a pooh movie. It should been called the poopies. Because it is pooh. If you want to get scared see Evil dead II. This is crappy crappy pooh. Why did it get a 5 I will never know. It is supposed to be funny?. It is not. It is a big pile of pooh pooh.

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.

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.