Know the fable about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”? Of course you do! Everyone does! However, that didn’t stop writer/director Gary Graver (Texas Lightning) from having a woman tell it in full in Trick or Treats. It kind of makes sense later when two other characters ramble on about editors being the unsung heroes of cinema — this, too, should have been cut — and you learn that Graver also served as editor. His slasher film is utterly scatterbrained, but recommended for that very reason; it has no clue how bad it is.

Take Corey Feldman’s monster-kid protagonist from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, add 50 pounds and a My First Magic Kit, then plop him into the Halloween framework. That’s Trick or Treats, and that 10-year-old is Graver’s own son, Chris, as — here’s a stretch — Christopher. On Halloween night, the ham-headed, hair-helmeted boy is babysat by ditzy wannabe actress Linda (Jacqueline Giroux, Prison Girls). The kid — who has a working guillotine in his room — plays prank after prank on Linda, who hangs out in a silky nightgown pilfered from Christopher’s mother’s closet.

Meanwhile, Christopher’s “ex-millionaire industrialist” father (Peter Jason, They Live) chooses this very evening to escape from the mental hospital — in drag — after five years and pay his son an unannounced visit, murdering all the way. While depicted as spacious in exterior establishing shots, the institution from which Mr. O’Keefe flees looks like a one-room porn set on the inside. (Graver was a prolific director of X-rated flicks, so perhaps this place was left over from Center Spread Girls or Peaches and Cream?)

As committed as Jason is to playing crazed — stuffed bra and all — viewers will find themselves not giving a flip about that half of the movie. Trick or Treats‘ treats stem from Christopher’s oversold tricks and Linda’s overacted reactions. The kid is such an unlikable wiseass, you almost want to see Dad succeed in slicing him up. Christopher is … well, if Joe Don Baker were a fourth grader, if cans of Dinty Moore beef stew could be human … yeah, that’s this brat.

Relative star power can be found via cameos from Carrie Snodgress (The Attic) as Christopher’s mom; Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul) as a drunk hobo; Lifeforce‘s Steve Railsback, literally phoning it in (“Look, how many times are you going to see me play Othello?”); and David Carradine (Death Race 2000), who shows up just long enough to attempt molestation of Linda. The biggest name of all, however, is on the crew side, with one-time wunderkind Orson Welles credited as “Magical Advisor.” —Rod Lott

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A little-known piece of history: During the Cuban missile crisis, a Russian sub was downed by American torpedoes, causing it to spill its contents — more specifically, barrels of anthrax — deep into the ocean, thereby causing an octopus to mutate to gigantic proportions.

Flash-forward nearly four decades and an American sub carrying a Russian terrorist-cum-prisoner finds itself being slapped around by the eight-armed beast. Strangely, none of the passengers takes the news with much surprise. “From what I can tell,” says the hot oceanographer calmly, “we’re dealing with a giant sea creature.” And no one bats a freakin’ eye.

The octopus threat actually is secondary in Octopus, compared to a plot thread that has the Russian’s pals hijacking a cruise ship in order to rescue him, eventually culminating in an absurd finale where the octopus mounts the mighty liner and starts whipping the shit outta all aboard.

Directed by Shadowchaser trilogy shepherd John Eyres, this cheesy underwater monster movie is one in which the token minority dies and dead bodies have the habit of “popping out” while live bodies walk by it. The fake rock music seems lifted from that cable series where Emmanuelle was in space.

In an entire cast of no-names, Carolyn Lowery (Candyman) stands out as the oceanographer, mostly because the script gives her three opportunities to strip down to her underwear. She seems a little saucy and ditzy to be an oceanographer, but she does a good job, considering she’s in the movie Octopus. —Rod Lott

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Epic mullet intact, Pedro Fernández is the lone cast member of René Cardona III’s Vacation of Terror to return for the wonderfully titled sequel, Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday, again as Julio. Alternately (and unimaginatively) known as Pesadilla Sangrienta (Bloody Nightmare), this second helping may be an improvement over the original, but let the record show that no one takes a vacation.

Now under the guiding hand of another director with Roman numerals in his name, Pedro Galindo III, the Mexico-made monstrosity puts Julio in the antiques biz. What to his rapey eyes should appear in his store one day but teen tart Mayra (unimonikered singer Tatiana). He gives her a free plant worth 60,000 pesos in hopes of getting into her pantalones; instead, he gets an invitation to hear her sing that night at the birthday party for her 7-year-old sister, Tania (Renata del Río).

The shindig is horror-themed — because if there’s one thing all little girls love, it’s monsters — and being thrown at the movie studio owned by their father, producer Roberto Mondragón (Joaquín Cordero, Wrestling Women vs. the Murderous Robot). Mayra takes the stage to belt a tune whose pure pop pep belies such grim, gibberish lyrics as “Boys, boys, boys / Clumsy and aggressive / Poor boys / Neurotics, all lost / Boys, boys, boys / Super guys / Surprised by Sunday crisis.”

Then Papa Mondragón wheels out a grande-sized strawberry cake, underneath which hides the creepy doll from the first film. Consuming a swiped handful of the cake causes the doll to lose its hair and shed its skin, thus revealing its true self: a goopy demon with horns, tail and all. (Don’t question it.) Tania vanishes within a wall and Julio swoops into he-man mode, strutting around the grounds in a trench coat, as if he were Van Helsing … but played by comedian Paul Rodriguez.

Making cameos in this frivolous spectacle of special effects — “special” as in “special education” — are Tom Cruise and Heather Thomas, albeit via posters: respectively, the Cocktail one-sheet and the smashed-pancake/white-bikini shot that got me all hot and bothered at the onset of puberty. You know, when I was neurotic, all lost, surprised by Sunday crisis. —Rod Lott

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Fernando (Julio Alemán) is an architect who has it all: a loving wife, three kids, another on the way, a teenage niece living under their roof and an appreciation for life’s finer things, i.e. cow-eye tacos. And now he has even more, inheriting a vacation home from his aunt. So what if it “looks like a haunted house,” as his daughter, Gaby (Gianella Hassel Kus), says? It’s his, and it calls for a celebration!

It also calls for, naturally, a vacation — to be precise, a Vacation of Terror! The old place turns out to be a real fixer-upper; it’s all dust and cobwebs and — ay-yi-yi! — the kitchen has no stove! Even worse, the place houses mice, snakes, spiders, bleeding works of art, flying kitchenware and upturned furniture on strings, all because it was built on the site where a witch was burned at the stake, Joan of Arc-style, one century prior.

Besides a pile of ashes, the Beelzebub-worshipping woman left behind a doll, which Gaby promptly finds and clutches. Looking like a bloated, latter-day Elizabeth Taylor, the doll has a porcelain complexion, pursed lips and the ability to do magic things. All of these aforementioned acts are accompanied by a close-up of its eyes shifting back and forth while the soundtrack plays the same sound effect: someone quickly dragging his fingernails across a piano’s wires. Third-generation director René Cardona III employs the aural sting so often, it eventually gains a Pavlovian effect.

If Vacation of Terror weren’t a Mexican-language production, it may not be worth a watch. Seeing American horror tropes filtered through the culture and perspective of our republic neighbors to the south is what makes this cheap flick fun, from the niece’s boyfriend (Pedro Fernández) stepping up as a hero in acid-washed jeans to his oddly phrased declaration that “I, for one, will make myself a sandwich.” His total ingredients are lettuce, tomato and carrots, in case you wish to emulate his snack for optimum viewing; in all honesty, a El Charrito frozen dinner — the more calories, the better — would be more apt. —Rod Lott

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Night of the Bloody Apes earns its reputation as a classic of Mexploitation cinema — and then some. Director René Cardona plundered his own film, 1963’s Doctor of Doom, to build a better monster, adding el grande tres: color, guts, nudity.

Dr. Krallman (José Elías Moreno, who played the title role in Cardona’s Santa Claus) has a problem: His son’s leukemia has progressed to where the young man’s days are numbered. Dr. Krallman also has a two-pronged solution: First, kidnap a gorilla from the zoo. Then, transplant the gorilla’s heart into his son, Julio (Agustín Martínez Solares, Santo & Blue Demon vs. Dracula & the Wolfman). For this second step, Cardona splices in lunch-losing footage of an actual open-heart surgery.

It works! And yet it also doesn’t, because Julio’s head transforms into that of an ape. He doesn’t look simian so much as his face has been dipped in chocolate pudding, which since has dried. Primate Julio runs around town, wanting to rape women, but he cannot figure out how to remove his infernal, high-waisted pajama pants.

So the doc performs another organ swap, this time giving Julio the ticker of a woman who suffered a skull fracture. It works! And yet it also doesn’t, because Julio continues ripping clothes off the ladies and, to their boyfriends, squeezing out marshmallow-like eyeballs, tearing off flesh and other acts that earn the title its penultimate word.

It says a lot about the movie that I haven’t even mentioned the good-guy cop (Armando Silvestre, The Scalphunters) and his girlfriend (Norma Lazareno, Cardona’s Survive!), who wrestles professionally in a red-leather catwoman mask. Cardona’s story is so weird on its own, it doesn’t even need them, yet the two are major players.

Cardona works in a palette of unbelievably bright colors for a story so willfully embroiled in the sleazy side of things; the juxtaposition works to Night of the Bloody Apes‘ advantage, lending a downright quaint and wholesome vibe to its gleeful presentation of gore and gazongas. Plus, it’s easy to love a film rife with such absurd dialogue played straight-faced: “It’s too early to declare a victory. We have to wait and trust in God. Come, help me drag the cadaver of the gorilla over to the incinerator.” —Rod Lott

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