Screams of a Winter Night

A cheap and unknown, but scary horror movie about some teens who travel to a cabin, deep in the forest. On their way to the cabin they get some warnings from a local drunk who scare them with ghosts and other horrible things which took place there some years ago (I wonder if the people behind "Friday the 13th" got some inspiration here). Inside the cabin and around the fire place the kids start to tell scary stories about a blood-thirsty female student and a legend of an Indian ghost. This stories is what the movie mostly is about, but in the end the teens find them selves right in the middle of a rather unfriendly storm which seems to come from nowhere.

Recommended for horrorfans which liked Friday the 13th.

This is certainly no award winner, but I was very pleased to have found out the name of this film. For many years, I've had a memory of a particular scene where a guy has gone bonkers and is clawing at a green light bulb that is covered in cobwebs. I located it at a local video store (to think, they've had it all these years!). I saw this with my sister and her friend during one a horror movie marathon at our little local two-screen cinema back when I was only 6 or 7 years old. It scared me to death! In watching it recently, it has some spooky parts, but it's definitely not the horrific movie of my memories..... All in all, it's a low-budget trilogy of spooky stories....

When I was 10 years old, I saw the previews for this movie on television. Seeing spooky shows/movies on t.v. and in the safety of my home, I was intrigued as a little girl to see this movie. I begged my family to take us to it when it would come to our local drive-in. It happened to show the week of July 4th in our town. My family and my dad's brother's family all loaded up two full size vans to go see this movie I begged for all of us to go see! My dad and uncle tried to make light of the spookiness for the rest of us by laughing and joking at crucial parts in the movie, but I was already spooked. I got half way through the movie and climbed over the back seat of the van to try and avoid seeing or hearing anymore! It didn't work. I was too curious and would peek over the seat at what seemed to be the worst parts of the film. I was thoroughly scared and regretted that I got what I asked for. This movie gave me more nightmares than any other movie or story I had ever seen, read or heard. Not even the Exorcist or The Shining scared me as much as this movie and I don't know why. The story telling was creepy and the visuals were just enough to frighten!

I have this movie on the absolute WORST DVD bootleg in my entire collection of substandard DVD bootlegs. I remember seeing it though in the early 90's on a professional VHS tape, which more or less did justice to a low-budget 16 mm semi-professional film like this. This is an anthology/portmanteau-style film, but I don't know that ALL the stories were really based on urban legends (and this is definitely NOT the first horror film to mine popular urban legends anyway). This does have, as its first story, the old "couple parked in lover's lane, boyfriend gets out, and girlfriend hears scratching on the roof of car" tale, but it also manages to somehow throw bigfoot into the mix (bigfoot films at that time being very popular among low-budget, regional filmmakers). The second story though, about three guys spending the night in a haunted dormitory, is so idiosyncratically bizarre that it's hard to believe it could even be an urban legend. (The end of this story somehow manages to be jaw-droppingly stupid yet at the same time hauntingly disturbing). The third and final story about a female serial is more ho-hum. It COULD be an urban legend, but it's not one I've personally ever heard.

The "frame story" here is especially effective. A group of young people are staying in a remote cabin and telling each other these stories(strangely, the characters in the scary stories are played by the same actors who are in the "frame story" even though they are not supposed to be the same people)while an ominous "ghost wind" howls increasingly loudly outside. The sound effects are very effective and the ending is GREAT and really makes the whole thing worthwhile.

It really wouldn't surprise me, as another reviewer said, if this movie, like the early 70's stop-motion epic "Equinox", was a great influence on "The Evil Dead". This one certainly doesn't need the deluxe Criterion treatment "Equinox" recently received (complete with the $40 price tag), and it's possible the original elements aren't in too good of shape. But it certainly deserves some kind of halfway decent DVD release. Quentin Tarantino reportedly likes it a lot so maybe there's hope.

I decided to watch this movie because I've heard a lot about it. I figured it must be a pretty good movie, even though I knew it would be a little cheesy (also, I always love getting my hands on rare stuff). I wasn't expecting anything close to a masterpiece, but at the same time I feel like it fell a little short of my expectations.

To start off, give this movie the award for scariest title of all time. If the title alone doesn't make you curious about this movie, then I don't know what planet you're on. The opening scene is also pretty great. The movie is basically about a small group of young adults who go up to an isolated cabin for some time while they take turns telling pretty lame scary stories to each other. At the same time, the very area that they're staying at has quite a frightening legend of its own.

There isn't anything scary in the slightest about the stories they tell. It's really quite boring actually. The bit that I found to be pretty chilling is the atmosphere when they're telling them. You can just tell that something isn't right, so kudos to the director for being able to create that vibe. Unfortunately, that's the only scary part of the entire movie. The rest of it is interesting (I guess), but fails to accomplish the task of scaring you.

The end is pretty bizarre, which makes me wonder if there's more than meets the eye with this movie. Is there some kind of point, or message that they're trying to get across here? Is this supposed to be some kind of representation of how people can turn stories or ideas into a bigger deal than they need to be (especially since that's kind of a recurring theme throughout the film), or is it really as pointless as it seems? I honestly don't know. Either way I'd give it 4/10 because its scary moments did legitimately spook me, but the majority of the movie falls a bit short in my view.

Also to be fair, it truly appears they had NO budget to work with on this film. I think they did okay with what they had.