Screamtime

Two guys steal some tapes from a rental store and stop by a female acquaintance's place to watch them. The first one, involving a loser puppeteer, is pretty stupid. The second one has a couple moving into a new home. The wife begins seeing things that lead her to believe the place is haunted. This segment is a good one. There's one effective shock about midway through it, as well as a terrific ending that took me by surprise. The third and final tale finds a biker working for two rich old women who say their house is watched over by fairies. Naturally, he figures they're just senile and decides to rob the place. This story was quite fun, though it felt like the shortest of the three. Of course, the weak opener seemed to be the longest. Most anthologies do have at least one stinker, but it's worth seeing for the second and third bits, especially the second. The wrap-around is amusing as well.

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.

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Screamtime; here's the breakdown of my ratings:

Story: 0.75 Direction: 0.75 Pace: 0.75 Acting: 1.25 Enjoyment: 1.00

TOTAL: 4.50 out of 10.00

I do love a good horror compilation - Sadly, Screamtime is not one of them. And the reason for the movie's downfall would be the stories and the direction.

The first story, "That's The Way You Do It," offered the best opportunity to give the audience a good scare and a nasty twist or two. However, writer and director Michael Armstrong opted for the all-too-commonplace dark thriller route. However, what he does splendidly is to build the image of a dysfunctional family. A single mother moves in with an older man who makes his living by performing Punch and Judy shows on the Brighton seafront. Into this new relationship, she drags her angry and bullish son. Suffering from idolism where his father is concerned, he sees the new bloke as a wimp and a freak. The guy plays with dolls for a living, after all. He makes it his job to bully and break the puppeteer, even if it means destroying the man's livelihood. Armstrong doesn't go for the shock factor in the writing, though he and Stanley Long don't do too badly putting it into the filming. Deducing the outcome of this tale was easy, especially if you've read or watched a few dark thrillers and horror shorts.

The second story, "Dream House," is the best. Here we watch as the wife and mother of a family is slowly driven insane by the strange apparitions within the family's new home. It isn't until the final segment that we realise the truth behind her supernatural events. It's this reveal that slid a sliver of ice down my spine. The one letdown of this story is that it's woefully short. If Armstrong had included similar strong characterisations as he showed in the first tale, this little piece would have been near perfect.

Then we get to the strangest and weakest story of the picture, "Do You Believe In Fairies?" A guy looking to make a quick quid takes a job in the home of two old dears. The rumours about the town have this pair of women distrusting banks and keeping their money, jewels, and valuables under lock and key somewhere in the house. Taking a job as caretaker-come-gardener gives him the ideal opportunity to search out the treasure. Unbeknown to him, the two old dears are not what they appear to be, and they have ulterior motives for hiring him. Sadly, Armstrong has opted for a more humourous tongue-in-cheek approach for this short. It works where the ladies are involved, but it makes the rest of the story a tad too light and jovial. I would have used the women's upbeat personas to add extra darkness to the narrative; therefore, the reveal would have been more chilling and not, Oh Yeah - Of Course!

The directors are not the best filmmakers I've seen. On the whole, they tend to use a standard approach. There's not much in the way of eye candy or captivating cinematography, though both attempt to draw the audience's attention to the pivotal scenes by utilising intriguing and varied camera angles or employing dark shadows. Sadly, it feels contrived, and along with the below-par tales of terror, it actually takes power away from the stories.

The best thing about this collection is the cast. We have some steady regulars of the British stage and screen. Unfortunately, they are not enough to lift this movie above its averageness. Jonathon Morris, who later went to star in Bread, shows what a talent he was as the bully-boy of the first tale. Dora Bryan and Jean Anderson are perfect as the old dears. But David Van Day, who plays their caretaker, displays the reason he left acting for singing and Bucks Fizz.

Screamtime is your one-watch movie - but it shouldn't be too high on your watch list. In fact, it should be quite near the bottom, just above "Watching Paint Dry." It was okay to pass a wet afternoon, but I can't see myself watching it again.

Now leave Punch and Judy alone, and put down that truncheon. You need to check out my Absolute Horror and Obsidian Dream lists to see where I ranked Screamtime.

Take Care & Stay Well.

For some reason, three British short films were turned into an anthology with framing segments about two stereotypical Noo Yawkuhs who steal some videocassettes from a Times Square video store and hide out at a friend's apartment to watch them. I found this movie on some lists of 80s slashers, and I was pretty confused for a while about why. The first story is about a cuckolded husband, his mean loser stepson, his shrewish wife, and a killer puppet. The third story is about fairies. But the second story, "Dreamhouse" is pretty fantastic. Newlyweds move into a house and the wife starts seeing things. She even consults a psychic who assures her that there are no ghosts in the house. What the wife IS seeing is the twist of this segment, and it's pretty fun. I'm still not sure that I'd put this one on a list of slashers, but that second story makes it worth a watch.

"Screamtime" is one of those anthology films, like "Creepshow," and while it's not as good as the George A. Romero classic, it's effective.

The plot is about two guys who steal three videos from a video store. They go back to one of their girlfriend's apartment to watch them.

The first video is about a "Punch and Judy" puppeteer whose family wants him to get out of the puppeteering business since it doesn't make much money for the family. Then his stepson burns down his puppet show stage and soon after is murdered on the beach, seemingly by the Mr. Punch puppet. Then later at his house his wife is also murdered. Has Mr. Punch come to life, or is someone else to blame?

The second video is about a married couple moving into a new house. The wife begins to see grisly visions of a murder that seems to have been committed there. But is the house really haunted?

The third video is about a guy who competes in dirtbike races, but needs some money. So he gets a job working odd jobs at the house of two elderly women. They tell him about the fairies that guard the house and the garden gnomes that work for them. He dismisses what they say, but takes an interest in the money, gold, jewels, and other valuables around the house. So he gets two of his friends to help him rob the place that night. But the fairies and garden gnomes really are alive and attack the intruders.

Finally, the video tape thieves and one of their girlfriends get attacked by elements of the three videos they stole.

If you give this low budget movie a chance you may be pleasantly surprised by it. The three films were shot in England with the connecting device about the video tape thieves shot in New York City. The puppets in the first video are creepy looking. The ending of the second video will shock you. The third movie gets a little spooky in the dark house; tiny floating lights fly by the camera unseen by the burglars, a room is suddenly full of garden gnomes, etc. This movie is perfect for horror movie connoisseur.