Scream (1981)

Great Film overall

Best movie of this year hands down!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Indubitably one of the most hated slasher films of the eighties, "Scream" (not to be confused with the Wes Craven classic that would come fifteen years later) follows an arbitrary group of rafters who are traveling on the Rio Grande through Texas. They decide to get off the waterway and camp out, but find an abandoned ghost town to make use of. Bad idea.I had heard nothing but bad things about this film for years, which is part of why I took so much time getting around to finally watching it. A lot of horror movies from this period get the "worst movie ever made" declaration from some people (mostly those who don't understand the aesthetic appeal of these films that genre nerds love), but most of the time, there is still a fanbase who defends these films. "Scream" is one of the rare exceptions where you will find more or less nothing but awful things said about it.Let's be clear: "Scream" is not a good film. It's artless, bloodless, poorly-acted—its script meanders without purpose, while its characters and their relationships to one another are indistinguishable, and coherence never comes into the equation. Basically, it is a by-the-numbers slasher flick with the singular distinction that it has one single on-screen death. Despite what the DVD cover may lead you to believe, this is not a splatter flick by any stretch of the imagination.So, what then? Well, under the pile of slasher sins this film commits, I can say it has one thing going for it, and that's its atmosphere. The dusty ghost town setting is simply fantastic—it's obviously a studio lot, but the fact that it's obvious makes the film even weirder. The camera pans around the town in darkness, and ominous music really establishes a legitimately creepy atmosphere. It's a strange setting for a horror film that is explicitly non-Western, but again, it just adds to the film's weirdness. The finale is weak and the killer's "revelation" (if you want to call it that) really just further complicates matters, especially as the film is bookended by panning shots of an old living room, a painting, and a trio of "the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker" figurines. This is probably symbolic, given that they have zero bearing on anything else that occurs in the film, but who knows? Yet another instance of the mysteries that are "Scream."Overall, I'd only recommend this film for die-hard slasher fans, who even then will be divided. As a slasher film, "Scream" is definitely one of the downright strangest offerings of the eighties. Many have condemned it, and I don't blame them—it is a classically bad movie. But in spite of its shortcomings, there is something to be said for its spooky atmosphere and the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that it is peppered with. It feels like the writer/director literally had no clue what he was doing making the film, and while that certainly makes it nearly unwatchable in some respects, it also renders the film a marginally eerie anomaly. 5/10.

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

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.

horrendous slasher is awful in every department it is EXTREMELY boring and has some laughable dialog and nothing much happens and you never get to see the actual killer it also has some bad lighting and sloppy direction and badly written as for the gore NOTHING this is just one awful headache inducing slasher and on top of that you have an awful ending to boot this is one of the worst horror movies ever made OKAY i am gonna tell ya right now all the actors suck! and none of them are convincing or likable overall PLEASE!!!!! i am begging you DO NOT RENT THIS MOVIE it's hazardous for your health in fact if you see this at a video store smash it to bits BOMB out of 5