Don't Scream: It's Only a Movie!

Greetings, salutations, and welcome to my considerations and recommendation of Don't Scream: It's Only A Movie!

Story: 0.50/2 - Direction and Pace: 0.50/4 - Performances: 0.75/2 - Enjoyment: 0.50/2

Total 2.25/10

I can't understand why this conglomeration of movie clips has received a high rating on IMDb. I admit I don't mind the chop-shopped best-bits style of documentary. There were a fair few in the 80s and, along with trailers, were a decent way to scope out future entertainment. The trouble with this bevvy of clips is the mundaneness of the script that poor old Vincent Price has to drone through. Bless him: He does his best - but Pulitzer Prize-winning stuff it ain't. Realising this, the team decided to throw in pre-recorded tidbits from the other horror masters, Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff - both borrowed from other sources or shows. Being the professional he was, Price attempts to build a relationship with the two recordings. Sadly, the timing is way off between the changeovers (an editing fault), so his effort was for nought.

And that leads us to the movie's main problem; the choice of clips. It would appear the guys responsible for this were working on a shoestring as there are a lot of cheap/free, old unknown flicks. Unfortunately, "unknown" usually means bad enough to forget. The one decent movie that rears its head is Pieces, maybe because one of the producers directed it. I would happily recommend you hunt down a copy of that movie and give it a look-see instead of this compilation picture. Next, you have the problem of which segment from the movie you choose to show. Lamentably, the people in charge mostly chose boring shots. Worst still, the clips vary in clarity. Even in the era of the video, it appeared that most of the clips were copies of copies and had degraded in the process. Some were dark, while others were so bright the image had burnt to a glaring white. Then you have the runtime. What works in a movie works for specific reasons. Taking these out of their contexts changes how the audience reacts to the clips. Without editing them for extra excitement, most were dull without the background story to drive them on.

In conclusion, Don't Scream is one Yawnfest of a flick and not worthy of your time - or patience. There are better compilations out there, worthy of your time - Terror In The Aisle is impressive and displays how to splice together clips.

Please check out my Absolute Horror and Killer Thriller Chillers lists to see where I ranked the movie.

Take Care & Stay Well.

This was available on YouTube for a while but is otherwise quite a rare find having been produced for Direct To Video release in the '80's. Director Ray Selfe a largely unsung contributor to the golden age of British exploitation cinema told me that Vincent Price's footage was shot in one day but the budget seems to have stretched to a change of jacket for Mr Price which might have been to boost the production values or Ray may have been mistaken and taken two days to shoot Prices on camera sequences. Apart from VP's presence to tell the history of cinematic horror and in similar fashion to another Ray Selfe production "The Casting Couch" everything else is made up of Public Domain footage from Ray's archive with some stuff from Dick Randall the Producers back catalogue which brings this almost up to date for the time this was made. plus a wild card excerpt from Paul Hart-Wilden's "Horror Film" according to the films credits, which may be "Horrorshow" (1990) from Hart-Wilden's IMDb page. PHW also provided the original story for another Randall epic, "Living Doll". The end credits give 1989 as the copyright date for this but IMDb give 1985 as the production date which seems more likely. Ray also claimed to have been the original , unaccredited, editor on "Friday the 13th" which provides some clips here and suggests some Randall/Spectacular involvement in that not mentioned on IMDb. Which might suggest "Friday the 13th" is actually a British Production!!!

BTW about the same time as this Ray was working on a video release of "Phantom of the Opera" (Chaney) with a music track by Rick Wakeman! another rarity