Unlike Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat, the 1986 Trick or Treat doesn’t have any actual trick-or-treating in it. Still, it’s a perfect Halloween movie, one best enjoyed on a breezy fall evening with a bowl of candy at your side. Released 40 years ago today, it’s great fun in the way only an ‘80s horror movie can be, but this camp cult classic from director Charles Martin Smith (who would go on to helm Air Bud) has its roots in a far more sinister real-life phenomenon.
Trick or Treat is a relic of the Satanic Panic, which gripped America in the 1980s and early ‘90s when a not-insubstantial portion of the population believed that Satanic cults based in schools and daycares were secretly abusing children in the name of their Dark Lord. They weren’t. But while no proof ever emerged, dozens of people went to prison on charges related to the Satanic Panic, and more lives were ruined as hysteria shuttered daycares across the nation.
