The Day After Halloween has it all – except leftover trick or treat candy

Okay, so this 1979 Australian movie was not originally called The Day After Halloween – that is supposedly a U.S. rename because of the success of Halloween. The movie also goes by the titles One More Minute and Snapshot. Snapshot is probably the best title for the film, not only because it’s about a young woman who gets into the modeling business, but also because it’s a snapshot of her life and a snapshot of the modeling world. What it’s not is a snapshot of a slasher. This is a suspense/stalker film; only like two people die in the entire film.

Watch the first five minutes of The Day After Halloween to see one of those two corpses. The movie starts at the end before taking us back to how it all led to this moment of the discovery of a crispy corpse by firemen. Seems like a very promising horror movie. But that’s not exactly what we get.

This is more the story of a naïve young woman named Angela who becomes the victim of everyone: her friend gets her into the soul-sucking world of modeling then tries to make lesbian moves on her; her mother kicks her out then steals the money she makes as a model to support herself; her ex-boyfriend is stalking her; a photographer totally objectifies her and takes advantage of her innocence.

Other than any relation to the October 31^st holiday or November 1^st, this flick is jam-packed with bizarre situations. The photo shoot on the beach in which Angela shows her boobs uses a horrible 70s mellow rock song called…“Angela.” It’s like the poor man’s Player, Ambrosia, or Chicago. Angela is followed by an ice cream truck. Her place is vandalized then she finds a pig’s head in her bed (scariest scene in the movie). She goes to a nightclub where the crowd boogies down to a cover version of Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven.” There’s a bizarre performance by a freaky guitar-strumming dude who seems to be half in drag. And speaking of dragging, even with all this insanity—the movie, while atmospheric, is rather slow and boring!

Suddenly, at the end (which brings us back to the beginning), it feels like we get half-a-dozen whodunit twists thrown at us, there’s some last minute gore, and…wait. Did a couple of lesbians just walk off into the sunset?