Feaure Length Review: 'Hide and Go Shriek' (1987)

As the late 80s dawned, the golden age of slasher movies slowly began to fade away. The once thriving sub-genre was beginning to lose popularity, perhaps due in part to Regan’s moralistic crusade across America and its punishing affects on censorship in the mainstream media. Wide releases such as the Friday the 13th franchise still managed to haul fans back into theatres but for the most part the stalker flick was slicing its last few torsos. Skip Schoolnik’s Hide and Go Shriek is one of the last of the late-80s slashers, plodding behind arguably far better titles like The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine, yet all is not lost in this much worn but far from abysmal dead teenager yarn.



THE LOWDOWN: In a dank and decrepit city apartment building a mysterious figure stands in front of a dangling light bulb, applying women’s makeup. Dressed in a suit and dark fedora, the shape then cruises the local prostitute line up, selecting a skinny blond number at random. During sex, the stranger then brutally murders the young whore in an alleyway and swiftly flees the scene, leaving her body behind on the cold asphalt.



Meanwhile, a group of young high school kids have just graduated from their senior year and are ready to celebrate the end of their youthful imprisonment in style. Rich boy John (Sean Kanan) has devised a plan for the horny young crew to sneak into his father’s fine furniture goods store in town and turn the warehouse into a party pad. Later that night when the naive clan arrive at their destination, they spot slimy dockworker Fred (Jeff Levine) – an ex-con bunking inside the warehouse until he can find a place of his own. Temporarily spooked, the teens quickly dismiss the creepy employee and continue inside the housing depot.



Once inside John gives his peers a tour of the surrounds, making it clear they are all alone until the doors open for business again the next morning. As the beer cans burst and the boobs bounce, the friends engage in a night of pranks and pantyhose, wistfully unaware of a killer lurking in the shadows with a taste for blood and a penchant for playing dress-ups.



THE TERROR TALE & ITS TIMING: Like nearly every slasher film made since Bob Clark’s trendsetting 1974 masterpiece Black Christmas, the formulaic nature of Hide and Go Shriek is almost 100% textbook stalker film. All the elements are there: a murderous past event, the sex-crazed teens, the false shocks, the one-by-one murders, etc, etc. On the surface there’s not much to distinguish the film against the cavalcade of other slasher epics out there. However, by the time the identity of the killer is revealed, Hide and Go Shriek instantly becomes a far more curious movie than you might expect. At the risk of giving too much away, the film’s maniac is perhaps one of the more complex teen slayers the sub-genre has seen. Michael Kelly’s script paints the portrait of a sexually conflicted psychopath whose motive (while perhaps a little too vague) is surprisingly unconventional, opting for something other than just sheer retribution and vengeance. As they try to evade their captor, the doomed teens are constantly subjected to obscure shenanigans and strange behavior on the killer’s behalf, keeping them forever bewildered in their desperate fight for survival. In many ways it is this meddling of the minds which provides the assassin the most pleasure.



DOOMED CHARACTERS: Once again, Hide and Go Shriek follows in the footsteps of the majority of slasher movie cliché’s, offering its young cast of characters little-to-no development prior to their inevitable demise. Thankfully most of the characters are fairly likeable (with perhaps the exception of the Vanilla Ice-inspired Randy, played by Brittain Frye). If there is indeed anything to recommend with regard to the film’s talent lineup, it lies within its eccentric killer.



THE LOOK OF FEAR: The quality of a location can sometimes make or break an audience’s investment in the believability of a film. Given that 90% of the movie takes place at night in and around an aging warehouse, it would have been no easy task to maintain a visually interesting language of photography. Thus, some sequences in the film are slightly confusing as to where the characters are at each given time. Floor upon floor, room upon room the warehouse soon becomes a maze and a tricky one to navigate. This could be in part due to the fact that the DVD copy I was watching was practically a straight VHS transfer, complete with murky shadows and much haze throughout. On the plus side the warehouse locale certainly has its benefits; hallways, corridors, elevators and endless display rooms making an effective environment for dividing up the teenagers into different areas to meet their fates.

Speaking of fatality, Hide and Go Shriek’s kills - while quite effective - are too few and far between. A drowning, two impalements and a decapitation make up the list of casualties, even though there are at least ten potential victims on the menu. That said, Screaming Mad George does a fine job executing(!) the red stuff.



THE SOUND OF FRIGHT: Surprisingly, there are a few effective moments in Hide and Go Shriek as far as its soundscape is concerned. One thing that many slasher films (in my opinion) tend to underestimate is atmosphere. The sub-genre’s very nature is built upon the notion of an unknown predator picking off young innocent lives one by one; a simple yet very real fear that, in the right hands, can be very effective cinematically. John Ross manages to compose a number of eerily potent compositions, most notably during scenes in which the killer prepares for his/her murderous activities. Outside of these few moments, however, the film’s score remains rather monotonous.



FINAL THOUGHTS: As a piece of vintage slasher cinema, Hide and Go Shriek certainly doesn’t break much new ground compared to many of its contemporaries. What does set it apart as a minor curiosity, however, is the genuinely unexpected disposition of its killer and their motes operandi. Otherwise, this slice n’ dice tale is pretty much all dried up before the blood begins to bubble.

Dir: Skip Schoolnik
Writer: Michael Kelly
Cast: Bunky Jones, Brittian Frye, Annette Sinclair, George Thomas
Country: USA
Run Time: 90min
Rated: M+