Scream

A low budget movie. Though this movie was released in 1982, it is definitely a very 1970's type movie.

'Scream', is supposed to be a thriller, but I didn't find it very thrilling. It lacked, in that the suspense lead-ups to the "scary parts" were exaggerated to a point where I lost interest, and the gory parts were very quick with minimal viewing. In my own personal opinion, if the viewers were given more clearly graphic scenes to wet their appetites, it might not have been such a bad or boring movie. Sorry, but I rate this movie from 1-10 as 1. "Awful".

First of all, this movie should only be seen by die hard slasher fans. And I mean, those who can stand almost 90 minutes of mediocrity, terrible cinematography, boring plot, and stupid characters. Yes, there is a "mysterious" killer but that isn't enough.

The plot deals with a bunch of teen rafters that get lost in a Ghost Town. You don't need to know more because before we can understand what's going on; the characters start to get killed one by one in off-screen scenes! So don't expect a serious slasher flick.

The locations weren't that bad, and actually, looked creepy at some points but the horrible cinematography ruins it all.

I found a VHS copy of this crap some time ago and I can only say that it serves for historic purposes only. Otherwise, I don't see the point of watching it.

A group of rafters is terrorized by a mysterious killer in a small Western ghost town.As soon as they arrive and night falls the murders begin.Then a horseback-riding ghostly stranger comes into town lead by a black dog.Painfully slow,almost lethargic slasher flick with solid cast and passable photography.The music is quite atmospheric during the night scenes,but there are so many flaws in "Scream" that's it's hard to enjoy it:paper-thin characters that resemble zombies in coma,agonizingly slow pacing,amateurish editing,incompetent direction and bloodless death scenes.Should I go on?No logic.No suspense.No tension.Just boredom and the lack of explanation in the ending.Who was the killer?We will never know.4 out of 10.A bit better than "Savage Water",but not much.

Let's talk about wasted potential, shall we? Because Byron Quisenberry's "Scream" is one early '80s slasher that literally bulks with great potential and possibilities, yet it somehow ended up as one of the absolute worst genre films of the entire decade; - and that means quite a lot since we all know there was so much junk made in the eighties! Everything starts out promising, and the prologue sequences – with eerie and blood-soaked wooden marionettes of which the eyes spookily move – even had me wonder for a second that I encountered a genuine hidden horror gem. Subsequently, the setting and introduction of the characters are also very interesting. We meet a group of people on a rafting trip somewhere in Texas, and for once they're not horny teenagers on a camping trip or sorority sisters during a college initiation night, but fairly normal and middle-aged people. Unless I missed something, we never even find out what their connection is. Are they friends, colleagues or complete strangers that just individually signed up for a rafting trip? I think the latter, as I did the same thing once when I participated in a rafting trip on the Colorado River in the state of Utah. Anyway, night falls and the group sets up camp in a ghost town by the side of the river. You'd expect a tense and atmospheric slasher feast from here onwards, but this is where things start to go horribly wrong. There's a killer wandering about in the abandoned little town and the number of survivors quickly decreases, but as a viewer you actually haven't got the slightest idea what is going on. Everything is dark and blurry, the characters are unidentifiable and the murders either occur off-screen or in a dull and bloodless fashion. It's fairly obvious that the killer shouldn't be sought among the group members, but there's a lame attempt to link the murders to a kind of folklore myth about a vengeful sea captain. Or something like that, at least, I have to admit that I dozed off a couple of times already at this point in the movie. Fact remains that "Scream" has an intolerably slow pacing and severely lacks in the blood, gore and sleaze department. In the trivia section, there's a little anecdote that states: "Director Byron Quisenberry did not give his actors the ending to the script". Personally I think he didn't even have an ending for his script. In fact, he probably never even had a script to begin with

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