Night Screams (1987) – Allen Plone.

I like saying the director's name aloud...ALLEN PLONE!!! ALLEN PLONE!!!! The 'Plone' part is strangely satisfying, much more so than his muddled/fuddled 80s slasher. I believe PLONE done PHONEd in his torpid Night Screams, bit of a dog's dinner, this one, the bloody parts are surely meaty enough, but it's put together sans finesse, doable if y'all are drunk/blazed enough, and the fridge is barren. Elucidating upon the dopey plot is an exercise in futility; angsty, emotionally unstable, med-skipping jock has a house party with largely unlovely friends, and they are fragged by folk, or folks unseen. The End! That being said, as lowest common denominator slashers go, it's not the nadir, Night Screams is notably less reekingly poo-slaked than 90s% of contemporary horror films. Happily, it's not all shocking mediocrity, the two jug-headed loons that bust out of Leavenworth are pretty live wired skells, and if Night Screams has focussed more on their freakazoidal home invasion antics, the experience may have proved duckier for this particular viewer.

Absolutely worth boggling if y'all are an obsessively list-making, see-every-slasher-ever-made demographic, but even with my increasingly compulsive issues, I struggled enormously with the film's desperate dearth of creativity. To recap, Night Screams is proper pony, but the moderate, pseudo-psychotronic elements arguably include an objectively bangin' dance sequence, we enjoy a tantalizing snatch of the brillo Graduation Day at the start, the squirrelly red head is one lava hot honey pot, and two of the more insipid party goers are enlivened by their watching a vintage John Holmes stag flick; observing lingeringly, and gratuitously soapy jubblies is no quality individual's idea of dead space! Now that I've royally slagged Night Screams, my initial negativity has tempered somewhat, it remains a schlock sandwich, with extra cheese, but, upon reflection, other Slasher fans may well find it far less irksome than I did.