Film / Tales of Halloween

Tales of Halloween is a 2015 American Horror Comedy Anthology Film. It features ten interlocking stories, all taking place in a suburban neighborhood on All Hallows' Eve, punctuated with commentary from a radio DJ (Adrienne Barbeau).

The stories are:

• "Sweet Tooth": Mikey, having just finished trick-or-treating and currently eating his candy, is cautioned by his babysitter Lizzy not to eat all of it. Lizzy and her boyfriend Kyle tell him the tale of Timothy Blake, a boy whose parents regularly forbade him from eating his candy. One Halloween 15 years ago, Timothy discovered that his parents ate the confiscated candy themselves. In a rage, he murdered them, then cut them open and ate the candy in their stomachs. Timothy's murderous spirit, dubbed "Sweet Tooth", roams the neighborhood every Halloween, looking for any candy he can find, even if it is already eaten. Despite warning Mikey that it is only a story, Lizzy and Kyle soon discover that the legend of Sweet Tooth is all too real, especially since they have just finished eating all of Mikey's candy.
• "The Night Billy Raised Hell": Billy Thompson, alongside his older sister Britney and her boyfriend Todd, attempts to begin trick-or-treating early in the afternoon. The teens persuade Billy to egg the house of Mr. Abaddon (Barry Bostwick), a stingy neighbor who has never given away any candy over the years. When he is caught in the act, Billy learns that Mr. Abaddon is the Devil himself, who vows to teach him what a real Halloween prank is. To that end, Mr. Abaddon and Billy go out on a crime spree, tormenting the townsfolk with various morbid and deadly "pranks".
• "Trick": James, Maria, Nelson, and Caitlyn are a group of friends who are spending Halloween lounging around, smoking weed, and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. Suddenly, Nelson is assaulted and fatally stabbed by a girl dressed as a witch, prompting the group to panic. The others are attacked and killed one by one by various children in costumes, but it would seem that these homicidal children have a certain motive for their actions.
• "The Weak and the Wicked": Alice, Isaac, and Bart, a group of leather-clad sociopaths (Grace Phipps, Booboo Stewart, and Noah Segan), are interrupted from tormenting a kid dressed as a cowboy when they are confronted by a teenager dressed as "The Demon of All Hallow's Eve". Despite warning them that the demon will come for those who harm the weak, the bullies pursue him into a dead end, where they learn that he is a person from their past. When they move into finish the teen off, the bullies end up meeting the real Demon of All Hallow's Eve, who shows them exactly what happens when the wicked torment the weak.
• "Grim Grinning Ghost": Lynn attends her mother's Halloween party, where she tells the story of Mary Bailey, a girl who was mocked all her life for her disfigured appearance whose ghost rises from the grave to take the eyes of anyone who looks at her. After leaving the party, Lynn's car breaks down and she can't call a tow truck, leaving her to walk home by herself. Hearing footsteps and ominous laughter in the distance, Lynn begins believing that her mother's story is true, and that Mary's ghost may be stalking her.
• "Ding Dong": One year ago, Bobbie is left despondent over the fact that she has no children. Her husband Jack tries to cheer her up by dressing their dog as Gretel, but this ends up with Bobbie, who is revealed to (possibly) be a witch, assaulting him into submission. This year, as the two go out to greet trick-or-treaters dressed as Hansel and a witch, Jack grows more and more concerned with his wife's obsession with children. When Bobbie nearly kidnaps a boy who is also dressed as Hansel, things between the couple end up reaching the boiling point.
• "This Means War": Middle-aged Boris (Dana Gould) proudly decorates his house for Halloween, setting up a classic, graveyard themed display. Any trick-or-treaters who attempt to observe his decorations are frightened away by the loud music being blared by his neighbor, Dante, an obnoxious rocker who has set up a morbid, gore-themed display at his own house. Boris asks Dante to turn the music down, but Dante refuses and mocks his decorations. In retaliation, Boris wrecks Dante's sound system, prompting Dante to break the head of Boris's animatronic skeleton. This causes the two to go to war, wrecking each other's decorations and engaging in a fistfight... that leads to a tragic conclusion.
• "Friday the 31st": Deep in the forest, a backwoods slasher with a mask (not that one) pursues his latest victim, a young girl dressed as Dorothy Gale. After he finishes off the girl with a spear through the chest, a UFO suddenly appears overhead. A tiny, costumed alien greets the killer and repeats "Trick-or-Treat!" constantly. Unable to give the alien any candy and annoyed with his constant repetition, the killer ends up crushing the alien with his foot. The alien's remains slither the mouth of the killer's victim, causing her to become possessed. The possessed girl goes after the killer, who discovers that the tables have turned and attempts to fight back.
• "The Ransom of Rusty Rex": Hank and Dutch (Sam Witwer and Jose Pablo Cantillo), a pair of bank robbers, watch as Rusty Rex is let out by his father, millionaire Jebediah Rex, to go trick-or-treating. Seeing the opportunity of a major score, the two criminals kidnap Rusty and hold him for ransom. When they call Rusty's father for their demands, they are shocked to learn that Jebediah doesn't want his son back. It is revealed that Rusty is actually a malicious imp who has actually been holding his "father" hostage for years. Rusty proceeds to attack his kidnappers, leaving the duo scrambling to get rid of him by any means necessary.
• "Bad Seed": Ellen Bishop watches in horror as her husband Ray, who had previously been carving pumpkins in the kitchen, has his head bitten off by a sinister looking pumpkin that escapes out the back door. Detective McNally (Kristina Klebe) is called in to investigate the crime scene, and after some initial disbelief, the forensic team proves to her that the killer was indeed a pumpkin. Police Captain J.G. Zimmerman assigns McNally to track down the monstrous pumpkin before it can cause any more damage to the neighborhood, but discovers that the pumpkin may not be the only member of its kind.

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This film contains examples of:

General

• Big Bad: Each story has their own:
  • "Sweet Tooth": Sweet Tooth.
  • "The Night Billy Raised Hell": Mr. Abaddon.
  • "Trick": Caitlyn and her friends.
  • "The Weak and the Wicked": Alice.
  • "Grim Grinning Ghost": Mary Bailey.
  • "Ding Dong": Bobbie.
  • "This Means War": Boris.
  • "Friday the 31st": The killer.
  • "The Ransom of Rusty Rex": Rusty.
  • "Bad Seed": Milo.
• The Cameo: All over the place, considering that the film carries an all-star cast.
• Extremely Short Timespan: All ten stories take place on the same Halloween, combined with a couple of short flashbacks.
• Greek Chorus: Adrienne Barbeau plays a radio DJ whose comments provide strangely appropriate commentary to the events going on around the neighborhood, despite not knowing what's happening outside the studio.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: It's Halloween, so there's obviously supernatural forces at work. "Bad Seed" even has Captain Zimmerman lampshading how the neighborhood goes utterly bonkers every October 31st.
• In Memoriam: The film is dedicated to Ben Woolf, who plays Rusty, the film being released after he died.
• Our Demons Are Different: As Mr. Abaddon and the DAHE show, they appear as horned monsters who can take more human forms and love murder, but they aren't Always Chaotic Evil. The former only lashes out because people keep harassing him with pranks, while the latter is a supernatural vigilante who inflicts bloody justice upon the wicked.
• The Public Domain Channel: The film consistently uses the old horror standby, Night of the Living Dead (1968).
• The X of Y

Sweet Tooth

• Abusive Parents: When he was a kid, Timothy's parents were not particularly kind, allowing him to go trick-or-treating for candy they forbade him to eat, warning that it would make him fat and lazy instead of warning him of the legitimate dangers of unfamiliar, unwrapped candy.
• An Aesop: As the radio DJ says, always check your Halloween candy. And even if it's safe, make sure you don't gorge yourself on all of it the same night you get it.
• The Cameo: Mikey's parents are Greg Grunberg and Clare Kramer, reprising their characters from Big Ass Spider!.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Timothy ended up murdering his parents for eating all his Halloween candy, though they had apparently been doing so for years after warning him that it was going to turn him lazy and fat, and the truth most likely broke him.
• Downer Ending: Lizzy and Kyle end up gruesomely murdered by Sweet Tooth, and as revealed in "Bad Seed", Mikey was blamed for the murders and arrested.
• History Repeats: Sweet Tooth murders Kyle and Lizzy after they stuff themselves with Mikey's candy, just as he did with his parents.
• Karma Houdini: Sweet Tooth gets away with murdering Mikey's babysitter and her boyfriend, and framing him for their deaths when his parents get home.
• Kick the Dog: Timothy's parents let their son go trick-or-treating every year for candy they never allowed him to eat, and later ate it all themselves after lying that it would make him fat and lazy.
• Properly Paranoid: Leaving that candy bar by his door saves Mikey from getting butchered by Sweet Tooth. Unfortunately, it doesn't save him from getting arrested.
• Real After All: The legend of Sweet Tooth, as Lizzy and Kyle find out the hard way.
• Shout-Out: The candy bar that Mikey leaves for is left for Sweet Tooth is a Carpenter Bar. He also has a model of The Car on his dresser.

The Night Billy Raised Hell

• As Herself: Adrianne Curry makes a cameo as herself, with Mordecai and Mr. Abaddon faking that the latter's having a heart attack in order to carjack her and ram trick-or-treaters.
• Bait-and-Switch: The little kid in Billy's devil costume isn't actually Billy, who was tied up in Abaddon's house all along, but a kid-sized demon named Mordecai.
• Bear Trap / Burning Bag of Poop: Both tropes are combined here. Mordecai, as Billy, places a flaming bag on the doorstep of his dentist neighbor and rings the bell. When the guy goes to stomp it out, the bag contains a bear trap that snaps shut on his leg.
• Breather Episode: This story is much more darkly comedic than the first, letting the viewers take a break from the hardcore scares.
• Brick Joke: The story begins with Billy arguing with Britney and Todd that he doesn't pee his pants, only to do so at the very end.
• Denser and Wackier: This is definitely the most comedic story of the whole film, as Mr. Abaddon and Mordecai go out and pull various morbid pranks on the townspeople, punctuated with wacky cartoon sound effects.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Mr. Abaddon frames Billy for a crime spree and lets him get shot by the police, just because the kid almost egged his house.
• Downer Ending: Played morbidly for laughs. Billy is released from his bonds and shot dead by the police for the many crimes he was framed for.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Mr. Abaddon is the Devil himself. This allows him to stroll the busy streets with a very minimal disguise, as everyone assumes he's in a costume.
• Kick the Dog: After framing him for his and Mordecai's crime spree, Mr. Abaddon tells the boy that he's going to be getting it on with his hot mom, and the cops who show up to arrest him mock him for peeing himself and shoot him dead.
• Louis Cypher: Mr. Abaddon turns out to be the Devil himself. "Abaddon" is the name of the angel of the bottomless pit in the Book of Revelation, whom some scholars identify as Satan.
• Potty Failure: Billy is said to piss himself at the end of the story, the police looking to book him mocking him for it before they shoot him dead.
• Satan: Mr. Abaddon's true identity.
• Sinister Shiv: A dentist who lives on Billy's block gives the disguised Mordecai a toothbrush instead of candy. Mr. Abaddon whittles the brush into a shiv, and then sends his fellow demon back to the dentist's door, whereupon he stabs the dentist in the gut.
• Stock Sound Effects: These play constantly during the crime wave, emphasizing the goofiness and black comedy of the whole thing.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Todd and Mr. Abaddon ask Billy if his mom will be dressing up in a slutty costume like she has in the past.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Todd, who persuades Billy to egg Mr. Abaddon's house, which leads to a crime spree that the boy is framed and shot dead for.
• Would Hurt a Child: The cops who show up to arrest Billy shoot him dead when he puts his hands in the air.

Trick

• Aerosol Flamethrower: One of the murderous children uses this technique to torch James' face.
• Asshole Victim: Caitlyn and her friends are brutally murdered by a group of kids, but only because the kids were out to rescue their friend, as well as to avenge all the other kids the quartet murdered for laughs.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The main characters are revealed to be serial torturers of children.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The creepy children are Ax-Crazy killers who cut down the homeowners. But it's later revealed that they were Good All Along, and were hunting down a band of sadistic child torturers.
• Evil All Along: The lead characters are actually a quartet of psychopaths who have been kidnapping and torturing the neighborhood children, and the trick-or-treating kids are killing them as part of a rescue mission to save their latest victim.
• Eye Scream: The group's primary method of torture was to cut out their victims' eyes. Judging by the pictures on Caitlyn's phone, she also ate one.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When only she remains, Caitlyn attempts to dial 911, but she doesn't actually call. When we cut back to her, she's frantically deleting pictures off her phone... pictures of her and her friends seemingly working on gruesome Halloween makeup effects. Then the lights come on, where she's hiding is revealed, and we learn those "effects" are, in actuality, very real.
• Foreshadowing: Caitlyn and her friends discuss how a lot of kids are dressed as pirates this year, with one of them joking they might be missing eyes. It turns out these adults have been torturing kids largely by cutting their eyes out, making the joke especially heinous.
  • There's also that image Nelson shows Maria on his phone, which she visibly recoils at.
• Rewatch Bonus: There are a lot of subtleties that are picked up on a lot easier after The Reveal.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: The little girl the kids rescue, who is missing an eye and has been strapped to a makeshift operating table for Catlyn and her friends' perverted experiments.
• Too Dumb to Live: The adults don't call the police, and Maria stupidly leaves the house to start her car, leaving her open for the other kids. Of course, if the police came, they'd find out about how the quartet have been using Caitlyn's pool house as a torture chamber for the children they kidnap. Caitlyn is even shown considering dialing 911, but she instead opts to delete the photos of her and her friends carving out a young boy's eyes.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The murderous children attack and kill the group silently and with no expression, using a variety of weapons including knives and an Aerosol Flamethrower. However, while their behavior is creepy and unsettling, these kids are actually the good guys, attacking a gang of psychos to rescue one of their friends.
• Vigilante Man: The murderous children are revealed to be vigilantes going after the main characters, who are serial child torturers.
• Villain Protagonist: Caitlyn and her pals; a band of psychopaths that horrifically torture and mutilate children.
• Would Hurt a Child: The main characters are actually a bunch of psychopaths who kidnap children and torture them, largely by removing their eyes.

The Weak and the Wicked

• Agony of the Feet: In the opening scene, Alice displays how much of a pyromaniac sociopath she is by nearly extinguishing her cigar on the lost trick-or-treater's bare foot.
• Asshole Victim: Alice, Isaac, and Bart — all three of whom are cruel and murderous — end up killed when Jimmy, whose parents they burned, summons a supernatural vigilante as revenge.
• The Cameo: Jack Dylan Grazer plays the kid dressed as a cowboy who Alice and her goons torment in the alley. He also plays Jimmy Henson's younger self in a flashback.
• Cigar Chomper: Alice smokes a stogie quite frequently to illustrate her powerful status.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Demon of All Hallow’s Eve is a monstrous being straight out of Hellraiser or Silent Hill, but he's also a punisher of people who torture the weak.
• The Dreaded: Alice and her cronies have a nefarious reputation around town, to where the lost trick-or-treater instantly gets a look of terror when he spots their bikes parked nearby.
• Enfante Terrible: A flashback reveals that even as a child, Alice was always a heartless sociopath, watching in sheer delight as Jimmy's parents burn alive in the fire she set for no reason.
• Foreshadowing: An illustration of the killer pumpkin from "Bad Seed" can be seen in the very first shot of the story.
• For the Evulz: Alice's main motivation for everything, including burning Jimmy's parents, who he even claims didn't do anything to her, alive.
• It Amused Me: Why Alice burned Jimmy's trailer car and his parents as a kid.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Alice and her lackeys finally get hit with a really overdue and exceptionally bloody dose after they burned Jimmy's parents alive.
• Pyromaniac: Alice greatly enjoys burning things. When first encountered, she's about to burn the lost trick-or-treater's foot with her cigar. Near the end, she douses Jimmy in high-proof vodka and tries to light him up to join his parents, who she is shown to have burnt alive in a flashback.
• Real After All: Alice and her gang discover too late that the Demon of All Hallow's Eve is real, as the drawing Jimmy shows them also carries instructions to summon it.
• Slasher Smile: A preteen Alice flashes a genuinely horrific one as she watches Jimmy's trailer car burn down, with his parents inside.
• The Sociopath: Alice, who went as far as burning Jimmy's parents alive, completely unprovoked, as a child.
• Teens Are Monsters: Alice and her gang torture and kill people for their own sadism. A flashback shows that she and her goons were like this even as children.
• Tragic Keepsake: Jimmy carries the pocketwatch he gifted to his father everywhere, as he was holding it when he and his wife died.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: In the flashback, Alice and her gang are shown as children, casually watching Jimmy mourning his parents, who she burned to death.
• Vigilante Man: The Demon of All Hallow's Eve acts as a supernatural vigilante, bringing vengeance on those who harm weak people who summon him, especially if they've been greatly wronged.

Grim Grinning Ghost

• The Alleged Car: Lynn's car is outright called a piece of crap by her mother, and true to her belief, the engine craps out on her during the drive home.
• As You Know: Lynn's mother tells the story of Mary Bailey's ghost in the opening scene, setting up what happens to her daughter later on.
• The Cameo: Barbara Crampton, Stuart Gordon, Lisa Marie Smith, and Mick Garris are guests at Lynn's mother's Halloween party.
• Cat Scare: After Lynn safely arrives back home, she contently brushes her teeth after convincing herself that the ghost supposedly following her was just a figment of her imagination. Suddenly, the bathroom door swings open and she looks behind her in panic, only to discover that it was her dog that pushed the door open.
• Dangerous Key Fumble: As Lynn runs up to her front door convinced that she's being chased by Mary Bailey's ghost, she fumbles and drops keys when she tries to let herself in.
• Downer Ending: Lynn manages to get home and escape the ghost she thinks is following her, only to later find that ghost on her couch. "Bad Seed" reveals that Mary did indeed take Lynn's eyes, though Captain Zimmerman dismisses the incident as a case of "hysterical blindness".
• Evil-Detecting Dog: As Mary manifests on Lynn's couch, her dog starts whining and races out of the living room.
• Foreshadowing: Lynn walks by the pumpkin from "Bad Seed" during her walk home, it's face glowing red.
• Jump Scare: The very end of the story has one, where Lynn finds Mary sitting next to her on the couch and jumps, followed by a Smash to Black.
• My Car Hates Me: Lynn's old car, which has already been described as a "piece of crap", stalls on her when she drives home and refuses to start again. As she tries to fix the engine, she accidentally breaks her phone by slamming the hood on it, keeping her from calling a tow truck and forcing her to leave the car there while she walks the rest of the way home.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Mary's ghost is a homicidal being that resembles a rotting corpse, who will do anything to achieve her goals.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: Just before her car breaks down, Lynn's radio plays a song whose lyrics tell someone to turn around, since they're right behind them.
• Vengeful Ghost: Mary Bailey, who was said to have died unloved and alone after being rebuked by everyone in town for her disfigured face. Her ghost rises from the grave every Halloween so she can take away the eyes of any poor soul who looks at her.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: As per Lynn's mother's story, Mary had severe facial deformities that rendered her a laughing stock, so her ghost swipes peoples' eyes as a means of payback.

Ding Dong

• Bigger on the Inside: Bobbie's oven looks normal from the outside, but the inside is cavernous and large enough to take the body of a full grown man, though that part may be a case of Through the Eyes of Madness.
• Call-Back: Some of the murderous trick-or-treaters from "Trick" come to Bobbie and Jack's door, as does Mikey from "Sweet Tooth".
• Child Eater: Bobbie spends the entire story trying to get a child "to eat up", and it's kept disturbingly ambiguous as to whether this compulsion is literal or metaphorical.
• Domestic Abuse: Bobbie regularly assaults Jack. It's not clear if this is because she actually is a malevolent witch, or if this is how Jack sees her because of the abuse, but either way he's terrified of her. It gets to the point where he actually had a vasectomy behind her back, because he knew she'd be just as abusive towards any child they might have.
• Downer Ending: It's notably muddled, but upon hearing that Jack had a vasectomy, Bobbie snaps and throws him in the oven, then ends up melting to death. Given the hints that this segment is viewed likely from Jack's broken point of view, this may actually have been a murder-suicide.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Rusty Rex from later in the film is among the trick-or-treaters who come to the couple's door.
• The Hero Dies: Jack gets shoved into the oven after his wife learns he had a vasectomy.
• I'm Melting!: After she kills Jack, Bobbie's witch form melts to death for some reason.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear as to whether Bobbie truly is a demonic witch who wants/needs to eat children, or if this is a metaphorical visual trick to show that she's an abusive and emotionally unstable woman who wants to be a mother, her appearance as a child-eating witch representing the abusive mother she would definitely be to her hypothetical child.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: In her witch form, Bobbie is able to sprout several extra arms that she uses to attack Jack.
• Murder by Cremation: Jack is shoved inside the flaming oven—which is much larger on the inside than it has any right to be—by his wife after she learns he had a vasectomy behind her back.
• Our Witches Are Different: Bobbie has red skin and multiple arms with clawed fingers, and is able to switch between this form and a human disguise instantly. After she kills Jack, she ends up melting to death for no given reason, unless you count the fact she can't find children to eat anymore.
• Wicked Witch: Bobbie's true form is of one, and she breaks it out to assault Jack whenever he tries questioning her.
• Would Harm a Child: A notably young trick-or-treater dressed as Hansel comes to Bobbie's house by himself, and Bobbie tries to lure him inside to do God knows what to him. Thankfully, Jack manages to get the boy's mother to the house before things get too far.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Bobbie asks Jack the question after smacking him with one of her extra arms.

This Means War

• Breather Episode: After the rollercoaster of the previous story, this one gets things flowing smoothly again by playing things for comedy. Until the ending.
• Call-Back: The trick-or-treaters from "Trick" can be seen admiring Boris' decorations and watching his fight with Dante.
• The Cameo: [adult swim] voice actor Andy Merrill, known for playing Brak and Oglethorpe, is among the neighbors who gather to watch Boris and Dante's fistfight.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Boris, upset that his new neighbor's Halloween decorations have outshined his and annoyed at the music he's blaring during his party, destroys his property and assaults him, ending with both getting impaled on a sharp piece of wood.
• Escalating War: The titular "war" is between neighbors over their Halloween decorations. As the story goes on, they resort to sabotaging said decorations, and then things get completely out of hand.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Dorothy from the next segment is one of the spectators at Boris and Dante's fight.
• Friend to All Children: Even if he's not the most sympathetic person, Boris goes out of his way to turn his front yard into a cemetery for the admiration of the trick-or-treaters passing by.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The story ends with Boris and Dante accidentally impaling themselves on a broken piece of standing wood in Boris' front yard.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though he's abrasive and controlling, Boris sincerely takes pride in his Halloween decorations and wants the children of the neighborhood to find them amusing, as well as not wanting them to be scared off by Dante's music and notably more gruesome decorations.
• Nice Guy: Though Boris assumes him to be a nuisance with a horrendous attitude, Dante shows himself to be pretty chill, even complimenting Boris' decorations and how he gets into the spirit of Halloween as much as he does. Boris doesn't take this in, only thinking of the rocker's words and tone as mockery, and it's only when he gets violent does Dante get violent in return.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One neighbor at Dante's party starts taking bets on the outcome of his and Boris' fight, but he promptly hoofs it when the pair kill themselves and the cops arrive.
• Sudden Downer Ending: What starts as a comedic battle over Halloween decorations ends in a murder-suicide.
• Title Drop: Dante tells Boris that wrecking his sound system "means war", just before he knocks the head off his talking skeleton.
• Villain Protagonist: Boris is a controlling jerk who resorts to property damage, assault, and murder-suicide over his neighbor's decorations overshadowing his own. He's also shown to be sexist when he tells Dante's scantily-clad girlfriend to "close the dairy" because it's after dark.
• Vomiting Cop: When the cops arrive to find Boris and Dante Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, one of them immediately throws up.

Friday the 31st

• An Arm and a Leg: Dorothy and the killer each lose an arm during their final battle.
• Bloody Hilarious: The whole film is this trope, but this story takes it to its logical extreme.
• Broken Record: Aside from a little "Hi!", the little alien constantly repeats "Trick-or-Treat" throughout its screen time.
• Captain Ersatz: The killer is a big, deformed man wearing a mask and wielding a machete, a dead ringer for Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series.
• Chainsaw Good: The killer uses a chainsaw to cut off Dorothy's arm during their final fight.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Though the tiny alien is an adorable little thing that constantly asks for "treats", its crushed remains posess Dorothy and kill the killer. He emerges from her mouth at the end to take the killer's head as his treat.
• Evil vs. Evil: A Hillbilly Horrors Serial Killer faces off against the corpse of his latest victim, possessed by an alien with a taste for human flesh.
• Human Jack-O-Lantern: Dorothy discovers the severed head of her friend Casey, which the killer has stuffed inside a jack-o'-lantern.
• Machete Mayhem: In the opening scene of the story, the killer wields a machete as a Shout-Out to his source material.
• Made of Iron: Much like Jason himself, the killer survives being stabbed with a pitchfork, getting bashed in the head with a hammer, having his neck punctured, and losing an arm, only finally keeling over when he's decapitated.
• Off with His Head!: Dorothy is finally killed this way, but not before her body does the same to the killer in its death throes. The alien then emerges from her severed head and takes the killer's head as his treat.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: The killer unleashes a high-pitched scream as he flees from the posessed Dororthy.
• Shear Menace: During her showdown with the killer, Dorothy stabs him in the neck with a pair of scissors.
• Stock Sound Effects: The alien's spaceship, and its gooey remains, make some notably cartoony sounds when they appear onscreen.
• To Serve Man: The alien turns out to have been trick-or-treating for human flesh, and he settles for the killer's severed head.
• Villain Protagonist: The backwoods Serial Killer.
• Whole-Plot Reference: This story is basically Jason Voorhees vs. a Deadite. The design of the possessed Dorothy is very similar to the Evil Dead makeup effects, and the gore is in the Bloody Hilarious style of Sam Raimi. The Necronomicon and the severed head of Pamela Voorhees can even be seen in the killer's hideout.

The Ransom of Rusty Rex

• Big Eater: Rusty will eat anything he can get his hands on when he hasn't been fed, ranging from candy bars to a severed head.
• Call-Back: The UFO from the previous story flies over the Rex house in the opening shot. Hank and Dutch also stop at the same convience store Mordecai robbed in "The Night Billy Raised Hell" for some food.
• The Cameo: John Landis plays Rusty's "father" Jebediah Rex.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Jebediah is freed from being Rusty's slave, and by the looks of the ending, Hank and Dutch won't be able to break the law again.
• Everyone Has Standards: Though Dutch is fine with robbing banks, he's clearly hesitant about kidnapping Rusty, and is only persuaded when Hank convinces him that Jebediah's company can easily handle the ransom and that they're not going to hurt Rusty, only hold him until the ransom comes in. He's also easily fooled by Rusty pretending to cry to get himself freed, but changes his mind when the imp pukes at him.
• Giggling Villain: Rusty largely emits giggles and laughter after he's unmasked. The only exceptions are when he makes the cries of a child to dupe the crooks into being let go, and screeches when he's set on fire.
• Groin Attack: To get back at Hank for shooting him, Rusty punches him in the balls.
• I Have No Son!: Jebediah tells the robbers, over the phone, that Rusty isn't his son, but an imp who's been treating him like a slave ever since he dressed up as a trick-or-treater and took over his home five years ago.
• The Imp: Rusty is one of them, clinging to people he gets close to, raising all sorts of hell, and eating anything in sight when he gets hungry.
• Lecherous Licking: Rusty does this to Dutch's head with a lengthy tongue, grossing him out.
• Manchild: Dutch, the nicer of the robbers, tries to trick or treat with a flimsy princess mask he's wearing as a disguise, only to be told to get lost.
• Pity the Kidnapper: Hank and Dutch abduct what they believe to be the son of a prominent millionaire. However, their victim actually turns out to be a malicious imp that has been plaguing the millionaire's life for years, and now that it's gone, the millionaire has no intention of ever taking it back.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Rusty clings to people he takes a liking to, following them everywhere and coming back whenever they try to get rid of him.
• Villain Protagonist: Hank and Dutch, a pair of bank robbers who try to take up kidnapping.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: While wrapped up in a sack, Rusty spews bile in Dutch's face when he fakes crying to gain freedom.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Rusty cries like a child when Hank and Dutch prepare to throw him in a swamp. Dutch is fooled and tries to check on him, only to get a face full of bile.

Bad Seed

• Attack of the Killer Whatever: To be specific, a killer pumpkin.
• Big Damn Heroes: As the pumpkin goes in for the kill, Bob, the forensic tech who made a 3-D printing of its jaws, comes to McNally's rescue by tossing her a shotgun to finish it off.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Bob and McNally are led to a warehouse in the Clover Corp. factory, housing thousands upon thousands of potentially deadly super-pumpkins waiting to be sold.
• Bookends: A pair of chocolate-coated officers at the station mention to McNally that Mikey from "Sweet Tooth" was arrested for supposedly killing his babysitter.
• Call-Back: This story, being the final one in the film, manages to link together elements from the previous stories, such as Lynn's "hysterical blindness" from "Grim Grinning Ghost", Boris and Dante's fistfight from "This Means War", Mordecai and Mr. Abaddon's convenience store robbery from "The Night Billy Raised Hell", and the UFO from "Friday the 31st", all of which are mentioned in reports that Captain Zimmerman shows to McNally. A missing person poster in the station also depicts the little girl who lost an eye in "Trick", revealed to be named Jacqueline Lantern.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Captain Zimmerman peppers his only scene with plenty of f-bombs and a couple of "bullshits" thrown in for good measure.
• The Cameo: John Savage plays police captain J.G. Zimmerman, and Joe Dante plays Prof. Milo Gottleib, creator of the killer pumpkin.
• Cassandra Truth: McNally doesn't initially believe that a jack-o'-lantern suddenly came to life, bit its carver's head off, and scurried out the door. However, she slowly grows to believe the theory when Bob produces a 3-D printed replica of the jaws of Ray's killer.
• Da Chief: Captain J.G. Zimmerman, as played by John Savage.
• Karma Houdini: Milo and the rest of Clover Corp are free to keep producing killer pumpkins waiting to be sold.
• Man-Eating Plant: The supernatural element is a self-mobile, man-eating pumpkin.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Near the end of the story, the man-eating jack-o'-lantern hides from McNally in a backyard where a pumpkin carving contest took place, disguising itself in a display of jack-o'-lanterns.
• Noodle Incident: Seeing Ray's headless body being loaded into a body bag is said to remind McNally of the case of a man who stuck his head in a blender.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We have no idea what Milo and the rest of Clover Corp did to give the pumpkin and others of its kind sentience and man-eating tendencies, but it worked.
• Off with His Head!: The pumpkin comes alive and bites Ray's head when he carves it. He manages to tear his own head off in a desperate scramble to free himself.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Milo doesn't see anything wrong with breeding killer pumpkins so his company can sell them for profit, only interested in doing his job.
• Refuge in Audacity: The sketch artist taking Ray's wife's deposition drew the pumpkin as a six-year-old's crayon drawing, yet it's treated completely seriously by nearly everyone except McNally. At first, anyway.
• Rugged Scar: McNally has such a scar on her right cheek, as typical for a seasoned detective like herself.
• Shout-Out: Clover Corp is likely a reference to Silver Shamrock Novelties.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Ray and his wife, who respectively carved the man-eating pumpkin and called the police after it killed her husband.
• Would Hurt a Child: The pumpkin hides itself among the jack-o'-lanterns on a porch that a young trick-or-treater checks out. It fills its mouth with chocolate coins to entice the kid to come closer, where upon it graphically eats him in front of his horrified mother.

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