Satan's Little Helper

(2004) ***

This is my second Holiday Horror flick and this is pretty much the worst case scenario for Halloween. What if you were dying in a roomful of people and nobody helped you because they all thought you were just in character? Merrill Whooly (how the hell did this movie manage to get Amanda Plummer?) staggers frantically around a Halloween party, her nose and mouth taped shut, her hands bound to her sides and she's completely lost in a roomful of partygoers who have nothing but laughter and accolades to offer her. Her daughter Jenna shows up in the very nick of time to save her. This all probably would have been somewhat more dramatic if Jenna weren't performing the rescue while wearing a giant chicken costume, but hey, it's not a plot hole or anything.

Merrill's assailant is a silent psychotic killer who hides his face throughout the movie behind a fiendish grinning mask. The mask. I Loooved the mask. Capital L. I can't explain it --- it's not like there's much depth to the mask. It's just an ordinary creepy Halloween mask. But it really put the hook in me. I found myself willing to forgive automatically the crappy video look of the movie, the weak dialogue, the general sense of cheap about the movie, all because of that frickin mask.

The man behind the mask (we think) is Billy Flarin, the disturbed arsonist son of the Mayor. I say we think because we never actually see his face. He changes costumes mid-movie to a Jesus Christ costume, a switch which prompts my favorite exclamation of the entire film: "That man was Alex's father! (pause) And Jesus is Satan!"

We come to know him as Satan through the naiive fantasy play of Dougie, the little brother. Obsessed with a video game called Satan's Little Helper, he goes as the title character for Halloween, desperately looking for someone to play his master. He finds his Satan disposing of a body in broad daylight. Satan is able to get away with this because, hey, it's Halloween and it looks like a very realistic lawn display. He manages to pull this trick three separate times; pretty ballsy on his part, although in at least one case, the filmmakers have some pretty unrealistic expectations for how brazen their villain can be. In one rampage, Satan manages to knife a grocery clerk and smash a grocery cart into a pregnant woman and another woman with a baby carriage and a blind man before scampering off into the horizon of a worm's eye view shot, his little helper hooting the whole way. In any sane town on this planet, he would have been followed by a furious mob of shoppers. But I was still in a forgiving mood when this scene happened because of the fuckin rad mask, so whatever.

A side note about the kid: this movie requires no exposition when this kid is on the scene. He's like a walking set of stage directions. When Satan hands him a bottle of pills, Dougie exclaims with glee, "I should mix this with the candy and make people have diarrhea all over the place and puke their guts out!" No bullshit. That's what he says, word for word. He comes up with all the ideas such as, "I like to hide in the basement sometimes. I can make all kinds of noise down there and nobody ever hears me!" Satan never has to say anything. His little helper just talks and talks and all Satan ever has to do is nod his head or give a hearty thumbs-up sign.

I started with a willingness to give this movie 5 stars, just because of the mask and because of wicked hot Jenna (played by Katheryn Winnick, who may very well turn out to be my nominee for favorite scream queen this year). I lopped off a point because of the crappy video. Another half point because of the crummy music. I lopped off the remaining 3.5 points because Jenna's boyfriend, Alex, is such a whining pussy, but then I put back 2.5 for the Amanda Plummer suffocation scene and another half point for when Satan ran over the pregnant lady with his shopping cart.

Good B-level fun.