



Cult horror film Spookies was originally shot in 1984 under the working title of Twisted Souls. It was co-written/co-directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran, lifelong friends and horror fiends. The pair were in the early stages of another picture, Hellspawn, which a British movie distributor named Michael Lee offered to fund—if they’d first make a film according to his outline. So Faulkner and Doran went about writing a script about a band of partygoers trapped in a house, chased by monsters. They knocked out the text in two weeks.







Twisted Souls was shot in Rye, New York, primarily inside a spacious colonial mansion. Faulkner and Doran hired friends to star in the low budget film, with much of the budget going towards the special effects make-up used to create the various types of monsters. In one scene, creatures the crew identified as “Muck Men” emerge suddenly from a dirt floor.







Once filming was complete, the directors had to battle their overbearing financier, who insisted on approving every cut they made in the edit bay. Eventually, Faulkner and Doran got so frustrated with Lee that they bailed on the movie.







Enter Genie Joseph, a jack of all trades who got her start in adult films, and also worked as an editor for Troma. Initially hired as the editor, she ended up co-writing and directing new scenes, cutting the two and a half hour rough cut of Twisted Souls down to 45 minutes and filling the remainder of the 80 minute running time with her new footage. The results are… less than stellar.







Faulkner and Doran’s story involving a group of friends stuck inside a monster-filled mansion, inter-cut with Joseph’s plot concerning a sorcerer and his kept bride, may have seemed doable on paper, but in the final product the story lines were barely tied together. The same residence was secured for the new shoot, but the Twisted Souls actors—due to their loyalty to Faulkner and Doran—refused to be a part of Joseph’s cast. The acting ain’t the greatest on either side, and though the monsters created for the initial production look awesome by B-movie standards, what’s happening on screen is consistently baffling, largely because so much of the Twisted Souls footage was cut out. Across the board, Joseph’s editing choices are puzzling, to say the least. In short, Spookies is a glorious mess.







The “Muck Men” scene is now the most famous moment in the film, due to what was added after Faulkner and Doran exited. When the monsters appear, instead of provoking fear in the audience—as Faulkner and Doran had, of course, intended—they induce nothing but laughs, thanks to the farting sound effects Michael Lee insisted Genie Joseph add. A member of the Twisted Souls production says he shrieked in horror—and not in a good way—when the farting started on screen. Faulkner and Doran wanted to inject some humor into the film, but flatulent monsters wasn’t something they had in mind.







Spookies was initially released in Europe during 1986. Early the following year, it made its U.S. debut in theaters—and promptly flopped. The film was hugely successful on home video, though, and later on became a staple of the USA Network’s weekend program, Up All Night.







It’s been thirty years since Spookies was completed, and the directors of the two productions have yet to meet.







Spookies is long out of print on VHS, though copies still circulate. At this point, a DVD/Blu-ray edition is what’s really desirable, and though it was released on a Region 2 DVD in the U.K., Spookies has yet to come out on a DVD or Blu-ray in North America. But you can still easily see the film, thanks to YouTube.







The, ahem, spooky score for the film has just been given its inaugural release by the Terror Vision record label. Limited vinyl and cassette (along with digital) editions of the Spookies soundtrack can be had via Terror Vision’s Bandcamp page, where you can check out the opening credits theme. The LP can also be purchased through Light in the Attic’s website and on Amazon.







Early in the film, during a scene shot for Twisted Souls, an actor declares, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Truer words have yet to be uttered regarding Spookies.





