We're gonna find Satan, and I'm gonna show him what a good helper I am.
Setting a horror film on Halloween has been a staple of the genre ever since John Carpenter and Debra Hill sent a deranged killer after a trio of babysitters in 1978. With so many people -- children and adults alike -- running around in masks and costumes, it's that much easier for your maniac to blend in and their activities to go unnoticed. (See also: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.) It also provides the perfect cover for miscreants who want to get up to mischief in the guise of trick-or-treating, as one of the segments of Tales of Halloween demonstrated and Satan's Little Helper stretched out to feature length in 2004.
Written and directed by Jeff Lieberman (of Squirm and Blue Sunshine fame), Satan's Little Helper follows a rambunctious nine-year-old named Dougie Whooly (Alexander Brickel) who's dressed up as the title character of his favorite violent video game (guess what) and becomes the eager sidekick of a serial killer wearing the costume of his boss, Satan. Introduced going from house to house, killing the inhabitants and adding them to their macabre Halloween displays, this Satan never speaks, but performer Joshua Annex communicates everything he needs to with his body language. Besides, Dougie more than makes up for his silence by putting plenty of words in the immobile mouth of his fright mask.
In addition to the mayhem they cause out on the streets (which Dougie doesn't believe is real since it's just like his game), Satan also gets up to some deviltry when his little helper brings him home and introduces him to his sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick) and Alex (Stephen Graham), the boy she brings home from college that Dougie would like Satan to get rid of. At least Dougie has the presence of mind to make his "master" promise not to kill his mother and sister, but it's difficult to tell whether he's the kind of psycho killer who keeps his verbal contracts. (Mom, incidentally, is played by a game Amanda Plummer and is something of costume-making fiend since she not only made Dougie's, but also the slutty Renaissance wench she passes on to Jenna, having worn it the year before, and a Carmen Miranda outfit for herself -- plus an elf get-up for her husband, who gets disemboweled before he has a chance to even see it.)
Just like it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye, the game is definitively over for Dougie an hour into Satan's Little Helper when he finds out his evil overlord really is killing people. (It's not so fun when it's your old man getting his guts ripped out, is it?) At that point, Satan makes off with Mom, who's been immobilized with clear packing tape (which he's also used to suffocate all the cops in town, leading to a state of anarchy within city limits), and together they put in an appearance at a big costume party where he spikes the punch with drain cleaner. That's just a side trip, though, since the real finale takes place back at the Whooly residence, where Dougie has been left all by his lonesome. Home, after all, is where the horror is.