The Story:
Once upon a time, a wizard (John Carradine) swore revenge on a town that put him to death. Now, a young boy named Sean Kelly is having terrifying dreams of the sorcerer and the creature Jack-O with the big pumpkin for a head. Before you can say trick-or-treat, Jack-O is resurrected from the grave by a bunch of troublemaking teens, and he begins a bloody rampage to get revenge on the Kelly family…the bloodline mainly responsible for the wizard's death. But Jack-O doesn't discriminate. Anyone who gets in his way gets the axe. Or should I say, scythe. And that's a whole lot of people considering the Kelly family has created a haunted garage that all the kids in town can visit for a few scares. In order to keep things running smoothly at the haunted garage, Sean's parents have hired Carolyn (Linnea Quigley, of Night of the Demons and Return of the Living Dead, just to name a few) to babysit Sean.

Weapon-wielding murderer, Halloween night, a babysitter. All sounds very familiar, doesn't it? Well, of course it does. The most unique moment in this movie is probably its best moment—a totally accidental death that saves Jack-O the trouble. Jack-O looks pretty cool, but you're never going to have any seat-vacating moments. How are the murders and gore? Well, it pretty much goes like this: see Jack-O raise weapon, cut to horrified look of victim, cut to Jack-O swinging, cut to a huge splash of blood on a nearby object, cut to victim holding a bleeding gash. Nudity? Linnea Quigley's first appearance on screen is a sloppily placed scene of her just showering like she's in a Calgon commercial. Fans who love to see her naked will be thrilled as she runs the soap all over her wet, naked body. Oh, and there's also a blatant close up focus on her sister's bare boobs later in the movie. If you love 80s horror cheese, you'll definitely feel you're watching one, because the women's hairstyles and fashions reek of it—despite the fact that this movie was made in 1995!!! And if you consider John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell to be 'star power,' then you are in luck, because they are both in this—both in clips by themselves that were recycled apparently from movies that were never made—you'll have to listen to the commentary for a better explanation of this phenomena, which the filmmakers seem to think was a stroke of genius.

No one's going to think this movie is good in any way, and I don't even think it will get recognition as a good bad movie, but I've no doubt people will get a kick out of watching it during a party or sleepover to make fun of it (not being sober may help).

The DVD

Video:
The aspect ratio is 1:85:1, letterbox. The image is dark, grainy, and soft due to edge enhancement. It could probably best be described as looking like a movie taped off TV onto a VHS at the six hour speed….

Sound:
The sound is not so great. It's a 2.0 Mono audio track. The bass literally shakes the room, but mostly because there are no highs. The sound is muffled and muddy. You really need to crank your system to hear anything.

Extras:
This disc has quite a few extras. Just be aware that there's chapter selection—but there are only six chapter breaks. As for the extras, it looks something like this:

TRAILER FOR THE FILM—same quality as the film itself.

BEHIND THE SCENES—this 5-minute feature is shot on video. All the scenes we are brought behind feature Linnea Quigley, who sort of plays host in many of them.

RETRO WEBSITE—url address for the Retro Media website. GATOR BABES—this is a 7 minute full screen featurette starring most of the cast from Jack-O. This is pure sexploitation goof about Amazon-like women living on an island that is invaded by men. You also get the trailer for the movie Gator Babes, which is letterbox.

COMMENTARY—Director Steve Latshaw and executive producer Fred Olen Ray spend a lot of time bickering about decisions made in making this movie. They talk about the fact that this movie, for some reason, had an hour episode of Phil Donahue dedicated to it. Listening to the commentary, you really get a sense of how much these guys try to defend it being a good film, and all the techniques they used in making it that ended in it not being a good film.

Final Thoughts:
Jack-O is a 1995 slasher taking place on Halloween that looks like it was made in the 80s. It has all the elements of some of the worst copycat slashers of that era, and also stars B scream queen Linnea Quigley. If either of those aspects appeals to you, you may want to get your hands on this one. If you are just on the hunt for a really scary movie, this isn't it. The DVD has low-budget indy release written all over it, with a less than good quality audio and video presentation, as well as extra features that include a really bad sexploitation short by the same team of filmmakers.