Pert boobs abound in this typical low-budget slasher fare from the fag end of the original genre cycle. A cast of unknowns (both then and now) play a bunch of horny teenagers who hit on the idea of spending a night in the huge furniture store owned by the father of one of the boys. The store has beds on every floor and, uncaring of any nasty stains they might leave for prospective buyers, the kids make good use of them. However, while they're busy getting their jollies and playing hide-and-seek, a deranged killer is finding grisly if relatively unimaginative ways of knocking them off.
It's obvious the makers of this film were working with a budget tinier than the brains of its teenage characters, so Hide and Go Shriek earns some plaudits for holding its own in an overcrowded genre. There's nothing new or unusual here, but at least the acting is mostly acceptable and director Skip Schoolnik (who would go on to work on the Buffy and Angel TV series) manages to engineer a couple of suspenseful moments after a noticeably slow start which is presumably intended to develop some viewer identification with the characters but which fails badly. I did like the way none of the kids really acts stupidly once they realise that they're being stalked by a crazed killer, though, even though some of the guys were so annoying you're almost looking forward to seeing them get offed. They stick together, arm themselves with mannequin limbs strangely, there are a *lot* of mannequins in this furniture store and decide to fight their corner. The film is shot almost exclusively in darkness, which both belies the low budget and makes it difficult to see what's going on at times. The version I watched on the Horror Channel is a bowdlerised version, I think, as one of the scenes immediately following the murder of the store-owner's son makes no sense at all, and the gore factor is pretty low. The killer's 'demise' is horribly weak and rushed, as if the makers used all their imagination devising the deaths of the teenagers and had nothing left for the killer, and optimistically sets itself up for a sequel that never arrived.
Really good stalk-and-slash horror films are pretty rare, largely because the genre is one in which large returns are regularly recognised from a minimum outlay of finance. There's little incentive for innovation, and anything new is done to death within a couple of years. Hide and Go Shriek will probably entertain those undemanding fans who like their horror cheap and dark and regularly interrupted by naked teenage girls; anyone else will probably lose patience with both the one-dimensional characters and the film long before the killer is unmasked.
It's obvious the makers of this film were working with a budget tinier than the brains of its teenage characters, so Hide and Go Shriek earns some plaudits for holding its own in an overcrowded genre. There's nothing new or unusual here, but at least the acting is mostly acceptable and director Skip Schoolnik (who would go on to work on the Buffy and Angel TV series) manages to engineer a couple of suspenseful moments after a noticeably slow start which is presumably intended to develop some viewer identification with the characters but which fails badly. I did like the way none of the kids really acts stupidly once they realise that they're being stalked by a crazed killer, though, even though some of the guys were so annoying you're almost looking forward to seeing them get offed. They stick together, arm themselves with mannequin limbs strangely, there are a *lot* of mannequins in this furniture store and decide to fight their corner. The film is shot almost exclusively in darkness, which both belies the low budget and makes it difficult to see what's going on at times. The version I watched on the Horror Channel is a bowdlerised version, I think, as one of the scenes immediately following the murder of the store-owner's son makes no sense at all, and the gore factor is pretty low. The killer's 'demise' is horribly weak and rushed, as if the makers used all their imagination devising the deaths of the teenagers and had nothing left for the killer, and optimistically sets itself up for a sequel that never arrived.
Really good stalk-and-slash horror films are pretty rare, largely because the genre is one in which large returns are regularly recognised from a minimum outlay of finance. There's little incentive for innovation, and anything new is done to death within a couple of years. Hide and Go Shriek will probably entertain those undemanding fans who like their horror cheap and dark and regularly interrupted by naked teenage girls; anyone else will probably lose patience with both the one-dimensional characters and the film long before the killer is unmasked.