David seems to have such a bright future. He is the star running back on his high school football team, offered a scholarship to play for Oklahoma. He's got plenty of girls wanting to jump his bones if he so desires. Yet, we can see that without his pills(for "hyperactivity"), David isn't easy to be around, prone, as his mother says, to violent outbursts, rubbing his head as if a migraine was about to rumble his skull a loose. Two escaped lunatics, led by the sadistic Snake(John Hines), kill police officers, a cook and his wife at a diner, soon finding themselves at the home of David's parents, waiting inside the wine cellar as a prom party commences upstairs. Joni(Megan Wyss)is David's girlfriend, very thin-skinned and sensitive to any negativity offered her way. David's friends aren't that fond of her and Joni can sense that they would prefer him dating someone else. Lisa(Janette Caldwell)is the only high school girl who treats Joni with any class. Meanwhile, a serial killer is picking off David's friends one at a time as the escaped crazies seem idle in the wine cellar until the time for which they could go on the attack.
Director Allen Plone drags out the opening in tedious fashion, incorporating a lot of footage from the slasher GRADUATION DAY, this movie a couple is watching intently before being dispatched by a kid who uses a butcher knife, playing a piano tune shortly afterward. He later adds footage from pornos as extra filler. By 1987, the slasher genre was on the decline, and movies like NIGHT SCREAMS were just polluting an already worn premise regarding a psychopath destroying teenagers using various weapons applied in other films before this one. The ax to the head, death using a sauna with a trapped victim inside, electrocution in a hot tub, butcher knife to the back and torso, strangulation, fireplace poker, etc. Even the "escaped loonies" sub plot is old hat and shopworn, and, to tell you the truth, there were times where I almost forgot about them even being in the movie. The best scene, to me anyway, is the gratuitous blood shed of the diner murders as Snake just goes berserk, shooting everything in sight, before finding himself locked away in the wine cellar, just a few other scenes remaining of any worth featuring this character. Hines has this hilarious scene where he's rambling off some dialogue while pouring water over his face that should tickle the funny bone, he's not exactly a Shakespearian actor or anything. Joseph Paul Manno, as David, spends an awful lot of time either sulking or angry. No nudity except for the porno footage, with characters in NIGHT SCREAMS mainly kissing and groping. The identity of the killer will be of no surprise, I think, particularly to those who have seen any number of these kinds of slasher fare.
Director Allen Plone drags out the opening in tedious fashion, incorporating a lot of footage from the slasher GRADUATION DAY, this movie a couple is watching intently before being dispatched by a kid who uses a butcher knife, playing a piano tune shortly afterward. He later adds footage from pornos as extra filler. By 1987, the slasher genre was on the decline, and movies like NIGHT SCREAMS were just polluting an already worn premise regarding a psychopath destroying teenagers using various weapons applied in other films before this one. The ax to the head, death using a sauna with a trapped victim inside, electrocution in a hot tub, butcher knife to the back and torso, strangulation, fireplace poker, etc. Even the "escaped loonies" sub plot is old hat and shopworn, and, to tell you the truth, there were times where I almost forgot about them even being in the movie. The best scene, to me anyway, is the gratuitous blood shed of the diner murders as Snake just goes berserk, shooting everything in sight, before finding himself locked away in the wine cellar, just a few other scenes remaining of any worth featuring this character. Hines has this hilarious scene where he's rambling off some dialogue while pouring water over his face that should tickle the funny bone, he's not exactly a Shakespearian actor or anything. Joseph Paul Manno, as David, spends an awful lot of time either sulking or angry. No nudity except for the porno footage, with characters in NIGHT SCREAMS mainly kissing and groping. The identity of the killer will be of no surprise, I think, particularly to those who have seen any number of these kinds of slasher fare.