Movie Review: “Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill” Is “Something Wicked This Way Comes” Down “21 Jump Street”

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Members of the all-girl punk rock band “Kill, Pussy, Kill!” must fight for their lives and attempt to outwit an unknown assailant after finding themselves trapped in a madman’s maze.

Exploitation is a style of film that looks to benefit from stereotypes usually at the expense of marginalized people, bizarre happenings, rebellious misanthropes and good old gore. It seems most decades in film history had a few like the ’40s with Biker gangs being the dominant subject, or dozens in some years like the ’70s which showcased ‘Blaxploitation’ with movies like “The Mack,” “Shaft,” and “Foxy Brown.” In general, these types of films are too silly or cruel to rise above more than their genre but every once in a while a film comes along to transcend the status quo. “Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill” does not accomplish the latter and even somehow makes it even worse.There are plenty of midnight movies that are self-aware but “Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill,” clearly riffing on the 1965 cult classic “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” really missed its mark. The 1965 Black and White film was a box office dud and at first viewed as objectifying women has since has become revered and viewed by some as a feminist film. I can confidently say this will not become a great cult classic.

The movie opens in Islamabad, Pakistan in 1996, with US Soldiers on a mission. I did a Google search on Islamabad ’96 and all that came up were 1996 era Honda Civics available for resale in Pakistan. We are then immediately shown a group of armed Pakistani militants running down the steps to engage the soldiers in cartoonish unison shouting Arabic sounding words when really they should be yelling in Punjabi or Pashto. They are defending their turf and both parties are engaging in a firefight. The gun battle scenes are shot in typical clean handy cam in a foxhole-type style but the real war crime is the choppy hand to hand combat with more cuts than an infirmary ward. After the dull fight the GI Bros are captured and forced to endure macabre deaths straight out of an IS recruitment video. The accents and acting of the militants make them appear like “Planet of the Apes instead of human beings, the product of a xenophobe’s twisted fantasy, even worse, their last line to one mangled soldier is “Happy Halloween.” I’m not saying brutal things aren’t and haven’t happened on the battlefield but this is way overdone.

Smash cut to our 4 female leads singing on stage and I couldn’t tell if it was the dusty desert of California or a quiet and quaint Western Texas plain. I actually kind of dug their opening song, maybe I will give the movie half a star for that. They are performing music with ’80s drum kits and synths galore. They wear very kitschy ’80s/raver outfits and overact and overemphasize every phrase possible. After the show one of the women decides smoking meth with a guy named DJ Speed, who looks like 311/90s ska surf rocker in a van, seems like a great idea. DJ Speed (fast on turntables and women) sexually assaults her and is then approached by a masked wheelchair-bound man with mysterious ominous tones and not very veiled threats. The group heads to the very original vintage deserted gas station and in not so typical casting, Richard Grieco looking a lot like a baseball hat wearing Garth Brooks, is Dale the southern drawling, beer-swilling attendant (wait, what?) but we know ‘something just ain’t right with this here fella.’

In another “unexpected” turn, their car won’t start and they reluctantly take a ride to Dale’s modest cabin. While still in the car, he shows them his WWI era gas mask which reminded me of the excellent Shane Meadows movie, “Dead Man’s Shoes,” before dispelling sleep-inducing gas into their car while they are locked inside. Later, they awake in a very “Saw”-like fashion to a voice that says his walls are “Unescapable” which made me chuckle and says “pleasurable.” They are forced to endure different games and challenges to move onto the next room and potentially their freedom. The rooms are not well thought out or in the least bit scary. In one room they are drugged with some psychosomatic gas and are made to reckon with their past traumas including a patronizing grandmother, a drooling zombie werewolf, and a torch holding clown. His schemes and plans are terrible and lack any thought or imagination and we are supposed to believe he is a mastermind but it seems like he could screw up a coffee order.

The movie did have some good make up effects when once again, gas is released and skin poisoning boils grossly pop on their pores. With the terrible opening, I wondered if it was produced by Steve Mnunchin or Steve Brannon but alas, it was written and directed by Jared Cohn, whose filmography includes straight to garbage DVD horror flicks and even scarier, an evangelical religious movie starring Corbin Bernsen and Steve Baldwin called “God’s Club,” which I can only imagine is about a Christian Country Club. It seems like Jared basically went to escape rooms around L.A. and binged “Saw” in the same weekend. There are plenty more campy characters, including our bandaged “mastermind”’s worse/better half who also enjoys Halloween and throwing a grenade at 3 pre-kindergarten trick or treaters. I’m all for anti-heroes but how are we supposed to root for a meth-smoking, bleach-haired sexual predator? Finally, the biggest insult comes from the Mastermind himself and how his terrible plan was to teach a half-baked blind jingoist, lessons about self-sacrifice. If you see this playing at your local theatre, quickly cross the street!

In theaters Friday, October 27th