Review of Screamtime

Screamtime (1983)
6/10
pretty decent horror anthology w/ some spooky and clever points in it
21 November 2004
This was a decent horror anthology movie. Two New Yorkers steal some videos from a video store, and take them to a female friend's apartment to watch.

In the first one, an old man loves doing Punch & Judy shows for kids, and takes meticulous care of his puppets at home. His wife is fed up with it; they don't make enough money, and she wants him to burn them and move with his stepson to Canada for reliable work. We then see his family being attacked by a wooden board. Has Punch come to life, or has the old man gone nuts? This one wasn't all that good, but it wasn't terrible.

In the second one, a couple move into a house their father was unable to sell. The wife sees a boy bicycling in the yard that no one else notices. She hears noises, and sees blood in the bathtub, then on a knife in the kitchen, then on the bannister. She starts seeing other people in the house, and then starts seeing those people bloody or dead. This one was quite a bit better.

In the last segment, a young man races motorcycles, and works at a clothing store. He needs more money, which his boss offers to loan him. He takes a job gardening for a pair of old ladies to make the money he needs to pay his boss back. They're quite eccentric, believing in fairies and gnomes, and a pact their 16th century ancestor had with the fairies to help conceal her affairs from her husband. The young man discovers the old ladies have a chest full of money, and he decides to rob them with the help of his younger brother and a friend. This one was pretty good too.

Finally, the wraparound segment brings everything together.
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