David Nelson’s
1982 slasher flick, DEATH SCREAMS (aka HOUSE OF DEATH), is a head
scratcher of a movie. It begins in typical slasher style with an
off-screen killer garroting a horny couple before dumping their
bodies into a river. From there, the film moves into character
development territory, drowning us in a sea of faces. Though there’s
close to a dozen “teenagers” up for slaughter, we only really
care about a handful of them, in particular the newly minted couple,
Bob and Kathy, the elementary school baseball coach Neil, the large
breasted tramp Ramona, and good girl Lily.
The teens spend the
day at the town fair, playing games, eating snacks and smoking pot.
Bob and Kathy share their first kiss. Neil finally asks Lily out on a
date. They run into the angry teen-hating Sheriff Avery and his
weirdo, mentally stunted son, Casey. After growing bored, the teens
go their separate ways with plans to meet up later for a bonfire
party and maybe a séance in the local graveyard.
But their night
quickly goes to shit when the murderer arrives, machete in hand, to
bump them off one by one.
DEATH SCREAMS
contains about a half dozen victims, but the real killer on display
here is the editing. It’s difficult to tell if DEATH SCREAMS was a
victim of MPAA mandated cuts or if the person in charge of editing
the film just really hated their job. There isn’t a single cut in
the movie that feels clean and the violence, when it finally happens,
is handled so sloppily that I couldn’t ever tell what the hell was
going on at any given time. The opening garroting of the two teens
(and yes, it’s a double strangulation carried out with a single
piece of wire) is the best example. We cut
from their making out faces to their “oh no, we’re being
strangled” faces without a single insert shot of a piece of wire
coming down over their heads. One moment, they’re in ecstasy. The
next, they’re being inexplicably strangled by a piece of wire that
magically manifested around their necks.
All of the murder
scenes are shot like this. We’re very rarely given any indication
that the killer is even present before getting a short, barely
comprehensible shot of something shiny whizzing through the air. A
character then screams and falls over, or the camera simply cuts to a
new scene altogether. There were two separate occasions where I had to rewind the
film (and yes, I watched this on VHS) in an attempt to piece together
just what the hell happened to a character.
The lousy editing is
really only a detriment to the murder set pieces though, as nearly
two-thirds of the film is spent simply following these characters
around as they go about their days. There is no real lead here, no
real Final Girl. It’s very much an ensemble film with a dozen or so
characters all given their own bit of screen time. We get to see Lily interact with her stubborn, overly
protective grandmother. Bob and Kathy’s courtship plays out over
multiple scenes stretching a good half of the film. We see Neil
rebuffing the advances of other women, in particular Ramona, in his
pursuit of Lily. We spend so much time observing the ins and outs of
the social lives of the "teenagers" that we barely get to spend more
than two scenes with our red herrings, the bitter Sheriff and his
model train loving son. That’s a damn shame because what is hinted
at during the film, that Casey was brain damaged in a car crash that
involved some of our teenagers, would have definitely heightened the
intrigue.
But instead of a
believable killer with a proper motive, we’re given a killer with
the most generic backstory imaginable, a bit of “woe is me”
bullshit that might have been interesting had it been referenced at
least once during the first 80 minutes of the film. It just comes out
of nowhere. The revelation of the killer’s identity is especially
annoying here as it turns out to be a character we thought had died
earlier in the film. It’s one thing to have a killer fake their death
to throw off the other characters (ie. MY BLOODY VALENTINE). It’s
another to have a killer who fakes their death for absolutely no reason
other than to throw off the audience. There were no other characters
present when this person faked their murder. They didn’t show up
later pretending to be dead. They just did it because the filmmakers
couldn’t figure out a better way of hiding the killer’s identity
from the audience. That is a major pet peeve of mine.
I could probably go
on for another eight or nine paragraphs, but that would just be time
spent kicking a lame horse to death. DEATH SCREAMS is not a good
film, but it also isn’t what I would call horrible. The first half
is a scare-free slice of teenage life, just light comedy peppered
with a little melodrama. The acting isn’t great, but it’s
passable enough that the characters all stood out as unique
personalities. They’re not insufferable or aggravating. I actually
liked some of the characters. It was when the film decided to go full
blown horror that the problems really cropped up.
Because as a horror
film, DEATH SCREAMS really drops the ball. With the exception of the
opening murder and a mid-film asphyxiation, all the horror bits are
crammed into one 15 minute segment at the end of the film. Deaths
come fast and furious (including one hilariously awful bifurcation),
and as a result, all the suspense and tension is sucked right out of
it. Had the murders been more spread out, had the cast been smaller
and better defined, had the editor actually done their job properly…
DEATH SCREAMS could have been a serviceable slasher. As it stands,
it’s just a curio piece, a heavily flawed oddity only cared about
by completionists and slasher obsessives.