Death Screams (1982)

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: The screams of death!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Is this two 40-somethings banging on top of a motorcycle? Or is the woman in a wheelchair?
• Doing it in the woods in a horror movie? You know what they’re going to get. Ticks!
• Ok I’ve rewound this multiple times and turned the brightness on my monitor way up and I still have no idea what happened. They were underneath the train tracks, the train passes overhead, then suddenly they both have a cord around their necks and they’re bleeding from the mouth, and die? Then the woman’s motorcycle chair rolls into a river with her in it. I’d rewind it again but… I really don’t care, do you?
• These opening credits go on longer than most bachelor’s degree programs.
• The long opening credits and the happy snappy neighborhood music make this seem like it was made for TV, but what TV would willingly show it?
• Not that you care because it’s not 2013 anymore, but now would be a good time to tell you that I’m going to attempt something new this year and pay attention to the movie and type fewer notes. Do you really want to read about excruciating minutiae? I hope this is both more readable and time-saving for all of us. Quality* over quantity! (*quality may vary wildly)
• This creep watching the boys’ baseball game looks quite a bit like a tubby Mark Cuban.
• The baseball coaches just cheersed after pouring about half an inch of beer in their mugs.
• Why is there loud shitkicker music drowning out the dialogue in this restaurant scene?
• This woman just got terrified by a train going by. How did she not hear it before it got to her? Is it the train that’s killing people in this? Like some kind of Terror Train?
• She just had a scary and paranoid walk home… then nothing happened, and now she’s peeling apples with her grandma. FRIGHTS!
• Why are there two identical white girl waitresses in this?
• Cat jump scare! Why don’t they ever do that with a hamster or something?
• The town sheriff looks like one of those fat motorcycle twins. Was that his twin’s motorcycle wheelchair in the beginning?

• Hahahaha there’s an adult woman running a kissing booth and she just gave a ten-year-old boy a smooch for a dollar. She’d be instantly arrested in 2023. Man, everything has just gone to shit.
• So far this is like The Funhouse with a group of adults being a little too excited about the county fair. But at least unlike The Funhouse these people aren’t acting like it’s the most crucial event of their lives.
• Now eventually you do plan to have slashing in your slasher film??
• They keep going back to shots of the bodies from the beginning in the river, we are fully aware that these bodies are in the river, stop it.
• It couldn’t be more obvious that this green-pantsed dandy baseball coach is the killer. 
• This flick is legitimately 80% these guys hanging out at the fair and we’re damn near halfway through. Death scream count: 2 (but at once).
• This psycho chick who is furious at the coach for not flirting with her enough at her fair dessert booth just covered his car in shaving cream. She’s way crazier than the killer so far.
• So she runs to the full parking lot and gets an arrow in her back and no one else sees this happening.
• She runs to a different carousel than the fair’s carousel? Is this the carousel capital of America?
• We’re finally done with the fair, I think we’re about to shift gears to a beer blast down by the river.
• If coach isn’t the killer, he’s definitely criminally insane, because he hung his towel up halfway over the shower door, which will just get half of it soaked.
• So it seems like I’m watching some weird edited version of this picture since they cut out an entire booby scene, and I’m wondering if I’m also missing some gore or whatever, but I’m too far in to turn back or care now.
• Ok, there was a machete kill that showed nothing, NOTHING!, so I’m going to pause and resume this when I can get my greasy mitts on the proper version. 
• You know what, who cares, let’s just get this over with.
• On second thought, I definitely missed a booby scene, but I think the kills may just be terrible? Well I’m not rewatching this for a couple of boob. Even for a couple of boobs like Brad and Jim.
• The lead teen looks like the Tom Baker Dr. Who. Today.
• Even after I increased the playback speed to 2x the fat motorcycle twin sheriff still walks at a slower pace than a giant tortoise with four broken legs and a herd of manatees on its shell.
• The comic relief guy may be the least-funny person I’ve ever seen, even moreso than when Bill Maher was on Comic Relief.
• Oh good, a 45-minute scene of the gang walking through the woods to a cemetery that looks like the dumpster behind a Spirit Halloween on November 10th.
• This ghost story is longer than Norm McDonald’s Dirty Johnny joke, and much less intense than Uncle Terry.

https://youtu.be/AVRMnaVwLfE?si=WhGN2rRLUj63Jzuj

• Looks like the comic relief was just brutally murdered while taking a shit in an outhouse but none of it was shown. I feel betrayed.
• I think the music from this movie is from a rejected score for the Jabberjaw cartoon.
• Unless there’s more than one killer apparently the killer has teleportation powers that would make Nightcrawler jealous.
• The last 10 minutes of this are kind of great, just nonstop slashing, and it would be a lot more fun if you hadn’t already dozed off from what preceded it.
• So the killer is revealed, and I legitimately have no idea who it is, because all the white guys in this movie look the same. I think it’s the coach? He’s wearing like a wetsuit for some reason? Whatever.
• Lily slashes his throat, then he jumps out a window and I think lands in the outhouse, where the fat motorcycle twin sheriff just happens to show up and literally blow his head off even though he’s already dead.
• BEST QUOTE: Lily: “Oh god, why??” Sheriff: “I don’t know.” THE END.

Final Thoughts: I don’t know man, there’s not a lot of slashing or scares in this picture until the very end, and everyone in it acts like teenagers when they should all be considering if they should finally just suck it up and start using reading glasses.

Score: 2.5 Crushed Motorcycles (out of 10)