Hide and Go Shriek

The California sun sets over the city, the sound of sirens in the distance, just another day for John and Bonnie, Judy and David, Randy and Kim, and Shawn and Melissa, some of them couples, some of them more than just friends, all of them planning an illicit night partying in Fine Furniture, the department store owned by John’s father, spending time together and alone before coming together for the midnight feast.

Keeping the lights off so nobody outside sees that the apparently deserted building is occupied when it should be closed, a game of hide and seek is suggested, but someone isn’t playing by the rules, separating the players from their friends, stealing their clothes to pose as them in the shadows, luring others away, picking them off one by one…

Originally released in late 1988, Hide and Go Shriek is a low-budget, low concept slasher directed by Angel’s Skip Schoolnik from a script written by Michael Kelly, starring Sean Kanan, Bunky Jones, Donna Baltron, George Thomas, Brittain Frye, Annette Sinclair, Scott Fults and Ria Pavia as the teenagers and Jeff Levine as prime suspect by default Fred, new warehouse worker with a criminal record for armed robbery.

Regarded as a freak by his sneering co-workers and Shawn, sleeping in a back room of the building since he broke up with his girlfriend, something John seems to have forgotten even though they only spoke that afternoon, the reason the octet of obviously wealthy kids choose to party in the cold, bare brick rooms of the store is never stated, but it soon becomes clear that they are not the smartest.

Talking constantly yet saying nothing of worth, Randy in particular the titular shrieker, constantly screaming outrage and threats even when the danger is established and the others have asked him to be quiet for their own safety, they are cackling imbeciles, manic, vapid, vain, entitled and comprehensively incapable of organising themselves as they stumble up and down the stairs, and had the story centred on, for example, the homeless using it as a shelter, it would have been played very differently.

Also released as Close Your Eyes and Pray, the endemic darkness and soft picture of Hide and Go Shriek makes it difficult to follow the fates of the characters with barely a distinct personality between them despite the glacial pace, the concept paralleling the more recent Wake Up but offering considerably less of substance or value and like The Resort seeming to have been conceived around the availability of a central location it then fails to take advantage of, the sole twist which might have warranted attention arriving without flair or fanfare.

Hide and Go Shriek will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 18th April

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