Scream

Long before Wes Craven used the title "Scream" to launch his successful horror trilogy, little-known director Byron Quisenberry made this "Scream". An inept, boring, badly acted and totally unconvincing slasher movie that many deem to be the worst of its type. Indeed, this film makes the whole Friday the 13th series look like a work of genius.

You know with these movies that the plot is going to be unoriginal, but the film makers usually have enough about them to wring out some shocks. Yes, The Burning is a bad film but it occasionally makes you jump. Just Before Dawn isn't anything special, but it is punctuated by the odd jolt here and there. Amazingly, Scream manages to miss every single opportunity for a shock. It takes an overused but reliable formula, and proceeds to muck-up the potential for terror in every conceivable way. Anyone studying how not to make a film might find this an ideal guide.

Heading the cast is Pepper Martin (he was the guy in Superman II who beat up the weakened Clark Kent in a diner, only to be beaten up in return by the rejuvenated Superman at the end of the film). It's a good indication of how unambitious this film is that someone who had such a miniscule role in Superman II can be entrusted with the leading man label here. Woody Strode is also in the film, but his character is undone by bizarre scripting.

Martin and his fellow vacationers are rafting down the Rio Grande when they pull in for the night at an isolated ghost town. One by one they are picked off by a lurking psychopath. They try various things, like setting traps, but the killer seems to evade them every time. A strange stagecoach driver turns up and starts mumbling on about an old sea captain that got the town up-and-running many years earlier. By the end, it looks as if the violent ghost of the old sea captain may be the killer (it's not clear if this is so, as the ending is dreadfully muddled).

It's hard to imagine how bad Scream is without experiencing it for yourself. The plot could be made serviceable. Some of the cast members are well-known. Even if the film isn't very good, it should have enough mileage to be tolerably bad. But no... this film is something beyond bad. It reaches such depths that you begin to think that everyone involved must be trying deliberately to make the worst film possible. It feels almost as if Quisenberry's intention is to win the worst film of all-time contest. The end result is a truly awful horror movie and, therefore, one of the most irresistible films that a collector of bad films could ever hope to find.

Dull as ditchwater supernatural adventure which was obviously rush-released to cash-in on the FRIDAY THE 13TH inspired craze that swept the early eighties and gave us many a duff budgie! This was let loose in the US under the moniker of SCREAM, which of course, became the title of Wes Craven's blockbuster slasher some eleven years later.

Well it all commences creepily enough; the camera leisurely pans an old looking room until the shot halts at an ancient clock, which stands beside a small statue. As the hour hand on the timepiece reaches 12o' clock, the eyes on the small figure move and suddenly, the words THE OUTING shroud the screen… Skip to 12 tourists heading down the infamous Rio Grande river of Texas, on small boats. The hapless gang of campers - who are cheerily sporting cowboy hats and baseball caps – ditch their rafts and begin to hike up a remote mountain where they find what looks to be a small desolate ‘old western' town. As soon as they've stepped upon the soil, one lassie keeps things routine by stating that she has `the strangest feeling'… Hmmm, indeed! The group set up camp in the abandoned site and settle down to rest for the night. Just after darkness has filled the lonely star studded sky, one unlucky guy heads out for a midnight stroll and to cut a long story short, he ends up hanging from the ceiling with a rope around his neck, killed by an assailant whom we don't get to see! Before long, another victim has been butchered in an inexplicable way and the posse at first suspects that one of there own luckless pack may well be a psychopath. As more of the friends wander off, only to fall prey to the remorseless assassin, it becomes evident that a bizarre supernatural force is at work. Stranded on the secluded region and without any weapons, the band realise that they must somehow defend themselves against this ruthless murderer…

It's a real shame that first (and last) time director Byron Quinsenberry didn't make good use of the advantages that his flick had started out with. Although there were obviously visible financial constraints to contend with, the excellent set location could have been successfully turned into a decent backdrop for a satisfying bloodbath. Instead we got a lazy inane mess of a movie that doesn't even manage to resolve itself…

With 14 typically hapless cast members to ‘cut up', you'd think that there'd be a body count to rival that of a snuff movie, but I'm afraid you wont find that hidden anywhere near here. Instead we get 5 or 6 meagre murders with no special effects or any engrossing gore at all, whatsoever. In the first, a guy gets hung from the ceiling by a rope. We only see his suspended corpse for half a second, obviously because the dummy that they were using was so unrealistic! Another gripe (and don't worry I've got loads to mention) is how we never got time to get to know any of the cast. The only one who was slightly memorable was the traditional annoying fat guy, who was more or less the star, only because he got at least three scenes to himself!

We don't even get an explanation as to who or what is killing everyone and his identity and motives are left unsolved. Towards the finale, an old, strange looking cowboy pulls up on a horse and sits down to talk to the terrified victims. I immediately thought that he would tell us a bit about the assassin or maybe even a loveable clichéd tale starting with something like `Didn't you know the story of…' However as an alternative and totally incoherent gesture, he tells the campers that he used to be a sailor and then gallops off into the gloomy midnight sky! What the hell?! And then to add insult to injury, the most brain boggling ending ever to invade my TV screen left me totally bewildered!

Even fans of eighties cheese will be disappointed; there's hardly any un-contemplated laughs, except maybe for the way that the casualties fall prey to the lacklustre killer. It's a real horseplay filled ride. Watch how one guys gets killed, another goes to search for him, and then gets killed etc. And even when the survivors are aware that there's some kind of strange evil surrounding them, they still find time to wander off into doors that mysteriously open by themselves or go out to find out just what that creepy noise was! Maybe one day I'll find a slasher where the victims actually have brains!

To be fair, I think that this attempt may have suffered some problems throughout its production. Filming began in 1981, and it didn't come out until '85. Maybe that's why there are so many inconsistencies in the story and why it looks so rushed. Still, that's no excuse to release a film as bad as THE OUTING. At times this felt like a helicopter without a propeller because no matter how hard it tried, it never managed to take off! Unfortunately this is one to be avoided.

The best and only real good thing about Scream is the creepy ghost town setting. Even with a very familiar concept, Scream could have been promising but was spoiled by terrible execution to the extent that important components were almost non-existent. The movie is very badly made from a visual standpoint, you can't enjoy the setting properly because the photography ranges between haphazard and indulgent the entire time and the movie is far too darkly lit that you cannot see what is going on properly or work out who's who and who's been killed. The music had its atmospheric moments, but that is a big emphasis on moments, much of it is pretty much one speed and mood which is ponderous and over-bearingly monotonous, doing nothing to enhance what's happening. The dialogue makes next to no sense and sounds very random and improvisatory, almost like an incomplete rough draft, while the execution of the story is most likely the worst thing about Scream, it starts bizarrely in an opening sequence so strange and almost irrelevant it makes the jaw drop. It's also completely predictable and moves at just one pace which is excruciatingly dull, it doesn't explain anything(the ending can't even be called an ending for reasons that have been covered in previous reviews who explain the movie's problems very well), there's no suspense, scares or fun whatsoever, and for a slasher the deaths and the gore are incredibly tame in a way that it doesn't feel like a horror in any way. The characters are underdeveloped ciphers and some of them, especially Lou, are irritating too(the most rootable is actually the unseen and never revealed killer), while the direction is barely competent and the acting is atrocious, the annoying Joe Allaine being the biggest offender, making the most bored-looking zombies imaginable seem more animated. Woody Strode is the least bad and has a decent introduction but that's not saying a lot, his character is far too weakly written for him to count as a saving grace. In conclusion, a real clunker, whether it's the worst slasher is debatable but it's down there. Not to be confused with the 1996 film of the same name which actually is a great film. 2/10 and that is only for the setting. Bethany Cox

Scream (1981)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A group of people pay $100 each to take a raft down a river and spend the night at an old ghost town that was used during the gold rush. Pretty soon each of them is getting picked off so is the murdering someone from the group or an outsider?

There are two ways to look at low-budget filmmaking. You can praise it that sometimes the directors manage to make something special and they end up with a cult item on their hands. You can also bash it because the lack of money usually means there are going to be all sorts of problems with the production and the finished film. SCREAM was one of many slashers that were made after they started to make a ton of cash at the box office but sadly it's certainly not among the most memorable.

Going back to what I said, the biggest problem with SCREAM is the fact that it's obvious they didn't have enough money to do anything. I say that because all of the death scenes are either off screen or shot in a way that you really don't get to see any good stuff. The special effects are what made slashers so popular so when you're watching one without any good effects it almost seems pointless. Of course, gore wouldn't be needed if scares or some sort of tension was delivered instead but that doesn't happen either.

The performances certainly weren't the greatest but at the same time it was a nice group of characters and I thought they were entertaining. It's just too bad that there really wasn't anything around them. The mystery really isn't that interesting and in the end it's easy to see why SCREAM has pretty much been forgotten.

I have to agree with the other reviews. And I LIKE bad horror. I especially get a kick out of bad 70's and 80's horror. I will take The Mutilator, Slaughterhouse Rock, or Don't Go In the House any day! Ever seen Inn of the Damned? Yeah, it's a piece of dung, but nowhere near as bad as this. This movie has no plot, little dialogue, awful pacing, just boring as hell. The whole movie is like a power-outage, all dark and lanterns, and NOT scary. I don't need things spoon-fed to me, but the movie does not explain anything! Where did any of the characters come from? Where is this set? Why is everyone a useless wuss... oh wait, I guess that applies to most horror. But seriously, I was eagerly awaiting all these folks to die just so it would be over. One of the most infuriatingly inane movies I have ever seen. Don't do it.