“The pitch was: ‘Kid plays record backwards to unleash revengeful ghost rocker’”: How Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons and Eddie Munson’s “long lost cousin” helped make the greatest Halloween-friendly heavy metal horror movie of the 80s

A still from the movie Trick Or Treat with Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons and actor Tony Fields in character.

Throughout the US in the ’80s, America was in the grip of a Satanic Panic. Talk show hosts, tabloids, televangelists and the self-appointed moralists of the day declared all-out war on what they perceived as one of the most imminent threats to American decency: heavy metal.

Acts such as Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne were caught up in this mass hysteria, many of them leaning into it with varying degrees of glee - not least Ozzy and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who spoofed their respective images as bogeymen in one of the era’s great cult movies: Trick Or Treat.