Girls School Screamers

Beautiful girls alone in a haunted mansion try raising the spirit of a girl who lived there 40 years ago. Good story filled with average actors. Definitely worth a look.

Is there any other film company that has released quite as many stinkers as Troma? Girls School Screamers is yet another woeful offering sent to test the mettle of hardened movie masochists, the movie delivering very little worthy of mention.

The uninspired plot sees seven Catholic School girls sent to a creepy mansion where they are to catalogue the art collection of the late Tyler Welles. Whilst there, the girls hold a seance to contact the spirit of Tyler's niece Jennifer, who died in mysterious circumstances. A not particularly interesting mystery unravels and one-by-one the girls are bumped off by an unseen killer.

Diabolical acting, pedestrian directing, virtually no gore and zero nudity from the girls (T&A is usually a given for a Troma movie) all go to make this an absolute clunker. Oh, and only one of the girls actually screams, to the best of my recollection.

The wealthy owner of a large country estate leaves his house and its contents to a nearby all-girls Catholic college. Seven of the senior girls accompany one of the Sisters to the house to spend four days there cataloguing all the items. However, the house has a dark, tragic past and is rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who died there forty years ago in mysterious circumstances. Before long one-by-one the girls start to disappear.

This was a Troma release, but apparently one they picked-up rather than produced. Originally made as a straightforward ghost story called The Portrait, Troma decided to do some reshoots once they acquired it and make it a supernatural slasher. The result is pretty underwhelming; the kills are lacklustre, there's no tension, the performances from everyone are poor, there's zero nudity (c'mon, it's an 80s slasher), and the finale is confusing. An opening scene with a kid who's entered the mansion on a dare encountering the ghost is pretty effective, but it's downhill all the way after that. No surprise that this is the only film John P. Finnegan ever directed. 4/10.

Troma of course! The movie starts very well but soon it falls and turns into a disaster. The first scene shows a bunch of boys trespassing a supposedly haunted house, when one of them enters, he is scared the hell out by a woman dressed in white. To that point, the movie was promising but after the woman's face is shown the movie turns very cheesy and stays that way until the end. The movie has some really cheesy gore effects and the ghost appearances are also laughable.

The settings are kind of creepy but cannot handle the whole movie. There are also some creepy looking scenes but that's not enough to make a Horror movie good. In fact, the movie gets boring at some point and the viewer stops caring about it.

I watched this long time ago in USA NETWORK and now that I've recently seen it, I cannot understand why it aired every month! Stay out of it even if you are a fan of B-movies. This one does not have an attitude or even moments to make fun of.

7 girls from the local Catholic school are chosen to go inventory the Wells estate, which has been left to their school by one Tyler Welles. It sounds like a fun weekend (I guess) until the girls hold a séance to try and contact Jennifer Wells, a 20-year-old who died mysteriously on the grounds in 1939. Their weekend gets even stranger when it is revealed one of the girls, Jackie (Mollie O'Mara), is a dead ringer for the deceased. This Troma pick up (originally called PORTRAIT) is something you could see Roberta Findlay making, except for the lack of any blood or nudity. Debuting director-producer-writer John P. Finnegan seems to forget he is making a cheap exploitation movie, so there is very little appeal here. There is a tacked on opening that looks as if it was added later to push up the monster factor. Finnegan scored better as writer-producer with the JAWS-inspired comedy BLADES (1989), which is also released by Troma.