Hide and Go Shriek (1988)

A group of eight obnoxious teenagers decide to celebrate graduation by partying overnight in a furniture store. That night, they are hunted down and sometimes killed by a psycho.I see that some people speak highly of this one, but frankly, I don't see the appeal. It's a very routine slasher that has barely anything interesting to offer. The cast & characters are monumentally annoying, spending a lot of their time lamely attempting to scare each other. The girls are sexy and there is some nudity; there's also decent gore by Screaming Mad George. "Hide and Go Shriek" can also boast the novelty of a killer who is often changing costume (shades of "Terror Train"), sometimes appearing in drag. Director Skip Schoolnik (one of the editors on "Halloween II" '81) gamely tries to create as much atmosphere as he can from the setting, and the movie does have some effective lighting courtesy of Eugene D. Shlugleit. But it's a fair amount of effort wasted on a mostly blah script.At least in this one, our killer doesn't have a run of the mill motivation. It is amusing once it is revealed just who they are. But "Hide and Go Shriek" is rough going for a while, as it is boring and inane in equal measure.If you're a devoted aficionado of all things slasher related, you'll want to see it for completions' sake, but don't get your hopes up high.Four out of 10.

An ex-con who works (and lives, thanks to a stupid owner) in a furniture store. When a group of hormonal teens decide to party in said furniture store after hours, (one of them is the son of the aforementioned stupid owner and has a set of spare keys) they're in for trouble when the homicidal transvestite ex-con lover of the ex-con living there comes calling to strike up the Brokeback relationship, in this horribly dated late '80's slasher horror film. This being a typical by-the-numbers slasher flick that doesn't really deviate from the clichéd path in the least, I was surprised that it was still moderately entertaining to an extant, even if the guys were all wussies.My Grade: C- Eye Candy: Donna Baltron, Bunky Jones, and Annette Sinclair all get topless

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.

If you saw CHOPPING MALL, you'll don't have to watch HIDE AND GO SHRIEK (HAGS). It's basically the same thing: horny teens sneak in a large furniture department store and stay there for the night, having sex on the many beds on display. Instead of killer robots, HAGS has a killer transvestite. The killer's storyline is not to be believed. It's basically about an ex-con and his prison bitch, the latter killing the teens because he thinks they'll get in the way of their love. Yep, major eye rolling!!!The acting is bad. One of the characters, played by Bunky Jones I believe, has a nervous breakdown when the killings start. Someone should have killed her right on the spot instead. The cinematography is horrendous. Everything is the dark so you don't see what's going on half of the time. Everyone is nude or undresses at one point during the entire movie. This usually doesn't bother me but I definitely didn't want to see that 14 year old boy in his underwear. Yikes. The music was terrible. Zero atmosphere or style. Good title though.The only reason I watched this is because I'm a horror film completist. If you're not then you definitely do not have to watch this boring movie. Watch CHOPPING MALL.