Most slasher films feature killers stalking teens in a place
they shouldn’t be. Usually in these
movies that means the woods, an abandoned house, or in a cemetery. In the case of Hide and Go Shriek it's... THE
FURNITURE STORE.
The teens spend the night in a furniture store for a party unaware there’s a
scary ex-con who lives inside. One of
them says, “I KNOW! Let's play hide and seek!” and they take off in every which
direction to hide and/or make out. Since
they’re all split up, it gives the killer a perfect opportunity to do some
hacking and slashing.
A lot of this is just plain silly. Like, why is there such an abundance of
mannequins in a furniture store? They try
to explain it away with one awkward line of dialogue, but you get the feeling
this was originally written to take place in a mall, but a crummy furniture
shop was all the location manager could afford to rent. Then again, if there wasn’t a mess of
mannequins laying around we wouldn’t have the sweet scene where Sean (“Karate’s
Bad Boy” Mike Barnes from Karate Kid 3) Kanan gets impaled with a mannequin
arm.
Director Skip Schoolnik (the guy who edited Halloween 2)
delivers the goods in a competent manner.
He handles the stalking scenes efficiently enough and I liked the
gimmick of the killer dressing up like his victims to lure in another potential
teen. The T & A quotient is also
above average for the genre’s standards.
It’s in the third act that the film reveals itself to be something
truly special. The unmasking of the killer
is positively jaw-dropping. More
surprising is the way the sensitive subject is handled. It’s a lot more progressive than what you’d
normally see in this sort of thing. The
killer is also given one heck of a demise.
Naturally, he comes back for the gratuitous set-up for a sequel. I for one am a bit sad it never happened.
AKA: Close Your Eyes
and Pray.
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