HIDE AND GO SHRIEK (1988)

HIDE AND GO SHRIEK (1988)

Tagline: Close your eyes. Count to 10. And run for your life.

(Horror, Thriller, Giant Furniture Stores) [R]

Yeah, this is pretty dumb huh, yeah…

In this one, a group of teens decides to spend the night at their friend Johns (played by Sean Kanan) father’s creepy multi-story furniture store as part of a graduation celebration. Once there they decide to engage in a game of hide and go seek among other things. Meanwhile, a deranged killer is on the loose and h’s ’killing them off one by one due to being jilted by one of them prior. 

First off this movie spends a ton of time violating a cardinal rule I have about horror flicks. The lighting is just about as bad as it could possibly be. This actually lowers the creepy factor the visuals are just really rough and you can’t see half the stuff that is supposed to scare you. Even the late-night dinner scene is extremely dark.

There also might be more mannequins in this store than in any other movie, even MANNEQUIN. I found this touch was probably meant to ramp up the weirdness in this thing, but it’s extremely odd. They are in a “furniture” store, not a department store. It’s also extremely odd that a furniture store anywhere would have glass you can’t break to get out (especially an old run-down one). What kind of furniture are they putting in this place? A lot of slasher flicks are loaded with plotlines that seem impossible which is fine, but I think this movie could have avoided some dumb moments by just having bars on the outside windows of this place, maybe showing the killer lock them in, really basic stuff.

The acting in this movie is decent to very bad which may be why some of the cast had short careers. Bonnie is played by Bunky Jones who had only 6 projects, 4 of which were horror flicks, Annette Sinclair plays Kim who only had 11 roles. Brittain Frye who plays Randy had just 11 credits but was in SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III. Donna Baltron plays Judy and she does have 19 credits with a bit of everything thrown in there. From what I can see only Sean Kanan who I mentioned in the introduction and George Thomas are still getting roles. 

You know teens are doomed when they have a chance to escape and are dealing with the dumbest cops of all time (finally the cops do end up showing up). Anyway, the plot twist in this one is pretty interesting. I don’t think this is the first-ever cross-dressing slasher but who knows. There also aren’t very many slashers (THE FINAL TERROR aside) where half the cast survives, this is one of those. 

I am guessing this one gets a lot of positive reviews due to the women in this thing, but overall this movie just isn’t that amazing and there is a ton of empty space with mostly unlikeable characters and bad dialog until about the last 20 minutes. I will say that if you are looking for “girls that take no crap”, Judy Ramteize should be on a top 10 list somewhere. We do have other survivors in this but Judy takes no crap when the chips are down. 

If we could have seen most of this movie it might have been better, but for me, it’s going to land in the 3 out of 7 range. As slashers go, this one is just okay, but definitely not great. 

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