HideandGoShriek

Hide and Go Shriek (1988)

A group of high school students decide to celebrate their graduation by heading off to the furniture store that one of their fathers owns after hours. They figure that it would be a great place to drink and have premarital sex without being bothered by any adults. Of course this being a movie from the 80s that means they will all be stalked and killed by a homicidal maniac. But who is doing the killing? Is it the obvious suspect, the creepy ex-con that has been living in the building? Maybe the sleazy salesman or perhaps on of the kids themselves? Heck it might not be any of those suspects at all!

This is a terrible movie that somehow manages to screw up the most basic of movie formulas, the slasher film. First of all the story is pointless with wandering around the store aimlessly passing for action in the movie. There are huge plot holes that make no sense and totally ruin any entertainment value the movie has at all. For example if you know that someone has been killing off your friends and you can either stand with your surviving friends with your back to the window or wander off again in the dark store to be ambushed what would you do? Yeah well guess what the characters decide to do. This is just one example of the terribly written plot that will soon have you rooting for the killer to get them all so that the movie will be over that much quicker. Also when the killer is finally revealed it makes no sense. Spoiler Alert: See the ex-con in the basement is a red herring. It is his prison bitch that is in love with him that is doing the killing. A character that is introduced only when his identity has been revealed, which is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen in a movie. Additionally this movie suffers from terrible acting, which is even bad by the standards of the low budget horror film. One particular actor seems to confuse yelling with showing emotion and takes it to a laugh out loud level. Also could they have maybe of hired some actresses that actually look scared when they are being killed off? Kind of ruins the moment otherwise.

The only thing that could have saved this otherwise pointless and annoyingly stupid movie is some decent gore. But somewhere along the line the filmmakers forgot to put any decent kills or good gore into the slasher movie they were making. Seriously who makes a slasher movie without any gore? But that isn’t the only technical issue that this movie suffers from. Many of the scenes in the furniture store are so dark that you can’t even see what the characters are doing. Now part of that might be the VHS tape that I watched, but then again maybe not. All of the screen shots that I’ve seen while researching this review are just as dark and hard to see, so I think that is what it was supposed to look like. A couple of other things I need to mention the canned music, which is inappropriate to the scenes and is just plain bad as well as the sound which is equally as inept.

So to sum up the review we have a poorly written, acted, and shot movie that contains no good death scenes or gore. Truthfully I’m giving this movie a ½ star only because of the prison bitch as the killer twist, which amused me for a second or two. But please let me take the bullet here and don’t waste your time on Hide and Go Shriek.

½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer