80's American Horror Part Eighty-One

10 TO MIDNIGHT

(1983)

Dir - J. Lee Thompson

Overall: GOOD

One of several Cannon productions to feature Charles Bronson as the archetypal tough guy that he made a habit out of, (phoning it in), playing during the last working decades of his life, 10 to Midnight has a sufficient amount of audacious sleaze to appease B-movie trash fans.  Focusing on an aggressively unlikable, nude serial killer whose hatred for women not only compels him to murder them, but also compels him to openly creep on them in movie theaters and prank call them with such romantic, poetic waxing as "Kiss my ass, cunt! I love to stick it to you, that's what I love! Your father's a pig, your mother's a whore!".  In fact, William Roberts and director/co-writer J. Lee Thompson load up the dialog from top to bottom with zingers, plus Bronson's line readings are particularly hilarious as he is in delightful, barely-putting-in-an-effort form.  The running time feels padded here or there and it ridiculous that Gene Davis' over-the-top scumbag villain gets away with as much as he does even when the cops are well onto him at an early stage.  That said, nothing here is any more or less logically egregious than pick-your-80s-action-flick and there are some recognizable faces, nasty violence, and wonderful scene chewing to go around.

SCARED STIFF
(1987)
Dir - Richard Friedman
Overall: MEH
 
Filmmaker Richard Friedman's cinematic output has been exclusively in the schlock terrain and his sophomore effort Scared Stiff delivers the cliches in a predominantly boring and even aggravating manner.  The set up and all of the future plot points are taken from hundreds of other equally unimaginative works where a couple and a child move into an old, large house that is haunted by a deep, dark secret.  On top of this, the male is a complete asshole who never believes anything that his "hysterical" girlfriend says about all of the random and gradual supernatural things that transpire, said male becomes possessed, said child is a quiet damn wiener kid, and there are nightmare psych-outs to name only a small handful of hackneyed tropes on display.  Some of the freaky moments, (though still nonsensical), are visually interesting at least with puppet and/or beast-like zombie things showing up from time to time.  It eventually takes on a more surreal agenda that is clearly inspired by Lucio Fulci's Hell Trilogy and in this respect, the last twenty minutes at least break up the obnoxious laziness of everything else that went on beforehand.

HIDE AND GO SHRIEK

(1988)

Dir - Skip Schoolnik

Overall: WOOF

Another brainless, piss-pour slasher movie in the decade ripe with oh so many, Hide and Go Shriek, (Close Your Eyes and Pray), pits eight horrendously obnoxious, horny teenagers against a deranged killer who obeys all of the deranged killer rules to a tee, this time in a closed-up furniture shop owned by one of the ding-bat victims.  The only feature film from Skip Schoolnik, all of the characters rotate taking their clothes off and getting laid after deciding that they cannot turn any of the lights on in fear of getting caught for crashing such a place of business.  There is a creepy guy living in the basement who is the crystal clear red herring as soon as we meet him and the ultimate reveal of who the murderer actually is ends up being as classy as you would expect, (spoilers, it is a cross-dressing homosexual who hilarious finds his demise by clumsily tripping down an elevator shaft, except no wait...he survives without a scratch so that he can smile into the camera at the very end).  Some of the performances are embarrassingly over dramatic and nearly all of them are annoyingly loud, so as usual, there is no one on screen to root for or care about since they are merely moronic caricatures of every other person in every other movie that adheres to the exact same trajectory.