After winning the big game, the football team and their cheerleading ladies are ready to party! But all is not well with star quarterback David, who wishes that the future had something more to offer him than playing with balls. Between the pressure of his overbearing father and the pressure in his head from those horrible headaches, something’s got to give. Only Joni the cute redhead who has a crush on him and David’s best bud D.B. (Ron Thomas) understand what he’s going through. Also, there’s a killer stalking the party taking out the partiers one by one. ALSO also, there’s a pair of freshly escaped murderous convicts hiding in the house contributing to the bloodshed. 

I love regional slasher films. These little independent films made to cash in on a trend that was cheap to produce and usually easy to get funding for sometimes feel like they were made just for me. Maybe it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel (though there are way worse examples out there, hoo boy), but even Oklahoma’s own somewhat dry offering called uh… Offerings (1989) can hold its head high with North Carolina’s excellent Death Screams (1982) if I’m in the mood. And here comes good old Night Screams (1987) hailing from everyone’s favorite horror movie mecha, Wichita, Kansas! 

Director Allen Plone would mosey on down to Tampa to make my city’s own bizarre little horror comedy called Phantom of the Ritz (1988). Vinegar Syndrome, please bless us with that gem! Plone, along with Mitch Brian and Dillis L. Hart, the writers of this film, do that thing that I’ve very slowly come to appreciate with these oddball body count movies. Instead of focusing on the gore, stalking scenes, and the scares, Night Screams spends a lot of time on the characters and their melodrama. While it’s no Girls Nite Out (1982) in terms of a lopsided high school kids hanging out and partying to high school kids getting slashed ratio, this one definitely skews towards the former.

There’s also the matter of how Night Screams feels like two different screenplays shoved together as the party shenanigans run headlong into the escaped convicts on the loose storyline. That I can live with. The worst thing about this movie (which the Vinegar Syndrome release has thankfully fixed) is that the producers wanted to pad out the film with more violence and sex. They did this by featuring clips from Graduation Day (1981) -including the reveal of the killer- and clips from a John Holmes porn film. And no one should ever, EVER have to look at John Holmes if they don’t want to.

So if you want the gritty realism of high school life and a shocking documentary on what it’s really like to be a teenager, then maybe you should watch Cutting Class (1989). I’m just kidding. I just wanted to reference another slasher in this review. Night Screams is a fine example of my comfort food viewing when it’s slasher time. It has all the kooky characters (every party has a Russell), impossibly silly and overly convenient plot devices, a swimming pool at night sequence, hammy acting, corny dance choreography, and bizarre decisions by the filmmakers that make this one utterly unique (were it not for its similarities to other films of its genre). 

The Vinegar Syndrome release of Night Screams is quite the revelation over the old Image Entertainment DVD. The picture and sound are absolutely gorgeous, which I am especially happy about since many of those nighttime scenes were rather hard on the eyes in the old SD version. The most important extra in this release is the “Pre-Release Version” of Night Screams without the bullshit clips from Graduation Day and the porn scenes. This version tightens up the running time and more importantly, doesn’t spoil the damn ending of Graduation Day! Also on the disc is an audio commentary with director Plone and cinematographer Eric Anderson moderated by Ewan Cant. There’s also a feature length documentary about the making of the film and in introduction to the “Pre-Release Version”. There’s also the film’s original trailer on this release.