Southern fried to a crisp, Death Screams has near the complete line up of early 80's slasher victims, such as the nymph, the comedic relief, the plain one, you get what i'm talking about. Only here, they all have a twang in their speech and I might be wrong, but I don't think there is one black face within a single frame of this film.
Disregarding that jaw dropping revelation, Death Screams has a good thing going on at first with it's combination of soap opera, animal house era teen sex comedy and the Halloween period slasher, with a dash of improvisation to make things that little more interesting. The cast is confident and share a good chemistry as well. Death Screams definitely has that regional flavour, which at least for me makes up for its lack of suspense.
When the kills do eventually happen, they are well executed in their build up, but there is no real follow through, no police procedural. Either this is a real hick town or the killer does an exceptional job at hiding bodies in broad daylight, because no one really catches on to what's happening until the last ten minutes. Yep, it's one of those.
Death Screams has little to no subversion of the genre in mind and does not feature any real exception in either it's music, it's cinematography, or even it's performances. Comfortability amongst actors doesn't always equal engagement. Soon after you realise the film's formula which is to move from mildly improved scenes of white trash teens dicking about to mildly tense murder set piece back to the hicky dicking, then things really start to become a drag.
In conclusion, apart from the climactic last ten minutes where things go completely gonzo, Death Screams is an atypical, mediocre slasher film that luckily for itself came out during the short lived golden age of the genre. Therefore it does retain some nostalgia value due to its contemporaries. I would recommend this to die hard slasher fans and those who constantly on the hunt little known genre obscurities.
Disregarding that jaw dropping revelation, Death Screams has a good thing going on at first with it's combination of soap opera, animal house era teen sex comedy and the Halloween period slasher, with a dash of improvisation to make things that little more interesting. The cast is confident and share a good chemistry as well. Death Screams definitely has that regional flavour, which at least for me makes up for its lack of suspense.
When the kills do eventually happen, they are well executed in their build up, but there is no real follow through, no police procedural. Either this is a real hick town or the killer does an exceptional job at hiding bodies in broad daylight, because no one really catches on to what's happening until the last ten minutes. Yep, it's one of those.
Death Screams has little to no subversion of the genre in mind and does not feature any real exception in either it's music, it's cinematography, or even it's performances. Comfortability amongst actors doesn't always equal engagement. Soon after you realise the film's formula which is to move from mildly improved scenes of white trash teens dicking about to mildly tense murder set piece back to the hicky dicking, then things really start to become a drag.
In conclusion, apart from the climactic last ten minutes where things go completely gonzo, Death Screams is an atypical, mediocre slasher film that luckily for itself came out during the short lived golden age of the genre. Therefore it does retain some nostalgia value due to its contemporaries. I would recommend this to die hard slasher fans and those who constantly on the hunt little known genre obscurities.