Sometimes you eat Coq au Vin and sometimes corn dogs at the fair. You can’t really compare them, both have their own delights. Let’s compare corn dogs to corn dogs. Director Jared Cohn wants you to eat his bloody corn dog in Halloween P***y Trap Kill! Kill! His grisly Halloween junk food is made of empty calories full of fun. The fun is the important part. The film doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Reincarnate Russ Meyer as Jigsaw with the voice of Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine and make the underground complex at the Cabin In The Woods a series of escape rooms… I’m guessing the concept development of the film took about as long as it will take you to read this paragraph. But, it’s a corn dog! We like corn dogs!
“…this grisly Halloween junk food is made of empty calories full of fun.”
There isn’t a single sympathetic character in the movie. You’ll want them all to die and for the most part that desire will be fulfilled.
There is one interesting attempt to give the story narrative integrity… the Mastermind origin story is of war in the desert where all of his fire team are killed and he is horribly disfigured when tortured by those generic Middle Eastern bad guys babbling in Arabic…you know, those Muslims? It’s a tenuous rationalization in a tired horrible racist stereotype, but it’s something to hang the film on. It’s a weak scene. You just have enough time to think “Hey!” and then heave an exasperated sigh and have another drink. It passes quickly. On the other hand, in a film that seems to be aiming for the most awful example of everything it presents, you’d have to say this scene meets that goal with panache.
The rest of the story is pretty much just the logical runout of the mashup of Saw and Cabin In The Woods. A mostly female rock band, “Kill P***y Kill,” has their van break down and are abducted by a creepy gas station attendant (is that redundant?) named Dale (Richard Grieco. Yep, THAT Richard Grieco. Times is hard) and introduced to the escape room funhouse of the Mastermind (Dave Mustaine, Jed Rowen).
The last hour or so of the film is a haunted house thrill ride of blood, torture, betrayal, murder, boobs, and the Mastermind’s violently insane family of horrors. I particularly enjoy the creative ways they dispatch the various trick or treaters who interrupt the Mastermind’s games with their silly a*s requests for candy.
“… a haunted house thrill ride of blood, torture, betrayal, murder, boobs, and the Mastermind’s violently insane family of horrors.”
A special nod to Richard Grieco as Dale: he plays that character with solidly malevolent glee. Dale actually becomes something of a protagonist you root for in a sick way.
Cohn’s nasty corn dog is trashy fun just right for Halloween! Go see it in costume, get drunk, and howl with your friends. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, looks like it was fun to make, and is definitely fun to watch.
Halloween P***y Trap Kill! Kill! (2017) Written and directed By Jared Cohn. Starring Richard Grieco, Sara Malakul Lane, Margaret O’Brien, and the disembodied voice of Dave Mustaine.
6 out of 10
