Screaming Dead

SCREAMING DEAD is the story of a crazed photographer and his unsuspecting female subjects (aka: victims).

Filmed in an abandoned asylum, it has plenty of creepy atmosphere and dark places, including a hidden torture chamber.

Is it a masterwork of brilliant filmmaking? Um, no. However, it's fairly entertaining in its own schlock-tastic way. Plus, it has Misty Mundae in a semi-serious role, and a semi-scary ghoul at the end.

Recommended for followers of Director Brett Piper...

This is a clever little horror flick and clearly underrated. It demonstrates the idea of split personality when the photographer Roger (Joseph Farrell) meets his 'alter ego' Rossiter (Kevin Shinnick). Whereas the photographer only arranges scenes with the girls that scare them, but don't actually hurt them, the devil in him breaks out and then takes the job to the extreme. Transformed into Rossiter, Roger may at last torture and kill.

Some reviews below give me the impression most people take movies much too literally, so I elaborate a bit of the transformation idea. Check out 1:00:47 when Roger discovers Rossiters machine. Fascinated, he pulls the lever and says "this is ingenious"! We shall see Rossiter stand at the machine later just like that. Check out 1:10:41 when a hand seems to reach out of Rogers brain (or rather: mind) and smashes him against the door so that he 'dissolves' into an unrecognizable pulp. But when in 1:16:00 Sam Rogan enters the room, there is no body on the floor. Roger has disappeared - he was replaced by Rossiter.

Roger was still full of excuses (his artistic purposes), fear and restrictions. His released inner demon knows nothing of this and just does what Roger may only have had (wishful or terrifying) fantasies about. The actually scary idea behind the movie is therefore that once you lose control, you'll never be the same again. If that involves covering Misty Mundae in red paint, it may however seem negotiable ;-)

From the get go i could tell that this movie was going to be like Hell Asylum. It's amateurish with bad acting and cheapy crappy effects. The story is kind of good but of course was never pushed in the right direction. The characters kept saying how creepy and spooky the place was and that it was an old abandoned asylum or something. Abandoned? The place didn't have a spec of dust and it looked quite modern. Bare yes but old and abandoned it wasn't. Whoever scouted for a location for this movie sucked.

I'll briefly give the story. It's about a successful photographer who combines art with bondage and S&M. He's a real sleaze bag and rents a place so he can work on his art with 3 female models and his female assistant but are also joined by a big hulking ug ug kinda guy who works for an estate agency or something and has to oversee this guy for insurance purposes (it's kind of hazy). But needless to say there's an evil ghost in this place.

I watched this while having a few beers and i'm sorry but Screaming Dead is in a word 'dead' and no way could you ever say that this film is so bad it's good! It's so bad it's bad! Apart from a potentially good story gone to waste and nice looking women there's not much good about this movie. There's only one gore effect in it too. I'm giving it an extremely generous 3/10 for reasonable but wasted story, nice looking girls and one good gore effect.

Certainly, if the movie carried a specifically designed tone to make the viewer's heads explode it would've been worse. Actually, halfway through, I was praying for such a tone. I've never fast-fowarded through a nude scene before this movie, but the dialog voided out the excitement from the nudity.

Misty Mundae is an attractive woman; however, it takes more than beauty to save this movie. It would take all the best doctors in the east to save this movie and, even then, I doubt it could be anything more than something to separate channel 357 from 359.

Well, that was what was bad about the movie. What follows is what was good about the movie:

I liked the acting and the directing in this film, but, alas, the script left a lot to be desired. First of all, do you really think that Neal would have as much clout, considering the subject matter of his photographs? I have my doubts that they would end up in all those prestigous galleries, if they did, I'm sure that feminists would picket them or they might be shut down by the authorities for indecency (Can you imagine if he tried to show in Cincinatti, for example?). I would say that if Rogan got fired for telling off Neal that he could take his ex-boss to court and press charges against both of them. After all, I'm sure that even New Jersey must have laws against this type of "art." As it is, the acting, photography and the directing was quite well done, especially considering this being a low budget film, but the script left my suspension of disbelief hanging there.