By Geno McGahee
The 1980s produced a lot of great horror films and I always love when I stumble across from that time that I have not seen. SCREAMTIME was a pleasant surprise that came right out of the 80s and features three tales with a wraparound, making for an entertaining anthology.
We begin with two guys running into a video store and stealing some videos…have I mentioned how much I miss video stores? So, right away, I began thinking back to the days when the mom and pop shops were rampant and you could rent horror movies that you haven’t seen before. It was a great time.
The two guys get back to an apartment and remarkably the fat guy of the two has the attractive girlfriend that wants him in the sack. Amazing! But this is a movie and in the movies fat guys get hot girls.
The three sit down on a couch and begin watching the VHS videos that they stole, each of which became a tale in the film. The first being about a puppeteer that gets no respect. The name of the tale is “That’s the Way to Do It,” and it was very entertaining. The old man just wants to entertain children with his show, but his wife and stepchildren are constantly hounding him about it. They won’t allow him to work his art in peace and soon, he only has the puppets for comfort.
His stepson, a punk, burns down his puppet theater and damages many of his puppets. This starts the killing spree. It appears that one of the puppets is killing all of the enemies of the owner, getting rid of all of his problems. It is rather cool and the ending is much fun. This tale is a really great tale.
The next tale is “Dreamhouse.” A couple moves into this big house and the wife starts seeing horrible visions of murder and death and a child riding a bike in the front yard, circling over and over again. That was pretty creepy. You assume that she is seeing ghosts of the past with these visions, but the really cool twist (spoiler) is that she was seeing future events. This tale was just another great one.
Wrapping up the movie is “Do You Believe in Fairies?” We have some thieves that stumble upon a house owned by two women and they observe them going into a chest where there is plenty of money and gold. It is a crook’s dream and they plan to take the chest and cash in. They sneak in and strange things start happening, but they are not detoured. Suddenly, a bunch of garden gnomes appear and then they multiply. Soon, they are surrounded by them and then attacked. This is yet another great tale. I didn’t think that it was as strong as the others, but it was still very enjoyable.
The wraparound tale ends with the tales that they just watched intruding on reality. They did this in AFTER MIDNIGHT, another great anthology, and I’ve always enjoyed it. They do not do it enough.
SCREAMTIME is a fantastic anthology with three great tales. It may have flown under the radar, but it is worth a watch today. If you can find it and you will be able to if you have EPIX, watch it. I highly recommend it!
Rating: 8/10
