Watch Screams of a Winter Night For Free

Purely Joyful Movie!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Shot on 16mm and featuring a cast of students from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, horror anthology Screams of a Winter Night can be excused for having a grainy drive-in aesthetic and mediocre performances. It doesn't, however, excuse the lack of imagination regarding the stories themselves, which range from the extremely predictable to the downright dull.After two and a half minutes of credits over a black screen, while terrified voices can be heard in the background, the film starts proper as ten friends (who don't seem to like each other all that much) travel to a remote cabin by a lake where they spend the weekend telling each other spooky stories.The first is a variation of a well known urban legend wherein a couple run out of gas on a lonely road only to meet with a vicious killer (in this instance, a weird, diminutive sasquatch type creature). Tale number two has a group of fraternity pledges spending the night in a deserted, run down, supposedly haunted hotel. And the last story to be told sees a repressed college student becoming a deranged murderess. The film closes with the friends in the cabin being menaced by a malevolent Indian wind spirit (serving as inspiration for The Evil Dead, perhaps).As a cost-cutting exercise, the characters in the stories are played by the same actors that are telling them, something that adds a little novelty factor to proceedings, but with such unlikeable protagonists, forgettable stories, uninspired direction, and an ending that looks like the makers simply ran out of money or ideas (freeze framing on four of the group as they run for their lives), this obscurity is destined to remain so.

Quinton Tarantino included this flick in his 2007 LA Grindhouse Film Festival, and the print was not only from his personal collection, but he introduced the movie himself at it's first screening. His praise followed the lines of the review appearing at the head of this IMDb comments section: this was innovative in 1978 (I saw it first in its test market run, before it got national distribution). Tarantino asserted the belief that it was the first of the "kids-go-to-the-lake" scare flicks; that it was innovative in its "stories-within-the-story" for the genre; and, that for the dollars, the acting, directing, camera work and special effects are pretty damn good. And they're both right. It cost less to make and test market than the production of the average regional TV spot today. More trivia: note the name of the sound mixer: Ron Judkins. Two-time Oscar winner. William Ragsdale: "Fright Night", etc. And look up Gil Glascow in IMDb; he's worked steadily all these years.

This is certainly no award winner, but I was very pleased to have found out the name of this film. For many years, I've had a memory of a particular scene where a guy has gone bonkers and is clawing at a green light bulb that is covered in cobwebs. I located it at a local video store (to think, they've had it all these years!). I saw this with my sister and her friend during one a horror movie marathon at our little local two-screen cinema back when I was only 6 or 7 years old. It scared me to death! In watching it recently, it has some spooky parts, but it's definitely not the horrific movie of my memories..... All in all, it's a low-budget trilogy of spooky stories....

In the era of the DVD, when video stores already pressed for space now find themselves in the position of having to clear out mucho shelf space to make room for both VHS and DVD copies of the newest Kate Hudson film, many odd and obscure VHS films that have sat for ages are now disappearing.Sure, many of these films will probably be refurbished on DVD someday, but will these releases trickle down to the rental market? The answer to such a question could really hurt the horror industry in the long run.For instance, how many people would buy a DVD special edition of "Screams of a Winter Night" if they haven't paid 99 cents to rent it first? If the answer to that is zero, like i think it is, than distributors who dare to spend lots of money attaining the rights to obscure films like this will end up taking a bath when no one buys them.So, I guess it all comes down to the rental outlet. Which is where my interest in this movie began. One of my local video haunts is a semi-major chain, at least in my area. And it's one that has the biggest rep for stocking odd and offbeat VHS films. But I had noticed that within the last few months, many of these films were being sold off to make room for DVD's like I mentioned earlier. So, in and effort to see as many of these "targeted for deletion" movies before they were gone, I started renting them A through Z.By the time I reached "Screams," most of these movies were already gone, either bought by geeky film dweebs like myself, or just carried away by the staff."Screams" caught my eye thanks to it's thick black clamshell VHS box (an increasing rarity) and odd picture of an indistinct monster trudging through the woods. The title of the film was written in a jagged font that remined me of those off beat comics from the 70's like Marvel's "Man-Thing" or DC's "House of Mystery." The text on the back promised an anthology film, and since I have always had a weak spot for those, I gave it a chance.I'm glad I did. Over the course of around 90 minutes, I knew I had found that dusty, out of print VHS rarity: The nugget of gold amongst the dirtpan.The Plot: A group of college students about to graduate travel to a woodland cabin for some R and R. Once there, many of the girls start to feel uncomfortable (something which I'll come back to) after which the guys start telling "true" horror stories they heard from someone who heard them from someone else.The three tales include:1. A couple taking a late night drive start hearing scratching noises on the roof of their car. 2. The best of the bunch, and oddly enough, the one people rag on the most, has three frat pledges fufilling their dare to spend the night in an abandoned hospital with a rep for having a haunted second floor. 3. A quiet and shy college girl turns out to be a psychopath, much to the surprise of her roommate.What surprised me the most was the material in between the stories. There's something really unsettling about this gathering, and the way they all interact with each other. Has anyone out there ever been to a party of some kind where you could just tell the vibe wasn't right? Well, that's what this is like. From the way the girls seem to be uncomfortable around the guys, to the way that the guys seem to be divided into little sub-groups, there's just a feeling that their little trip wasn't going to go well even if evil, supernatural things didn't happen.As for the stories, yes, that first one is real moldy by today's standards. But you have to keep in mind, that while talk of "urban legends" are pretty commonplace today, back in the late 70's, these legends were just that: Legends, not the stuff of Discovery Channel debunking programs, or community college courses.It's the second one that really got me. Dark and dingy, with the characters pretty much spending the whole telling cowering near the stairway to the second floor, there's a real feeling of danger as each one of them goes upstairs and dosent come back. The director could have easily copped out and just not showed what the evil green light was, but he did. And while the revelation of the light is a common snickering point among reviewers, I have to admit, something about the unexplainable nature of the explanation has stayed with me to this day.Add some colorful touches such as the opening sequence: A dark screen backed with increasinly nightmarish sound effects that follow a linear pattern (something which has been done recently in movies like Cabin Fever and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and an impressive finale where chaos breaks out.I've seen movies that try to scare by cranking up the wind machine and having the cast yell before. "Screams" is just about the only one where I really felt fear for the characters. These actors may have been amateurs, but when called upon, they really do make the ending of this one sing with apocalyptic passion. I almost expected at least one person to survive only to throw open the cabin door only to find a yawning black abyss."Screams" is no four star classic, don't get me wrong. But it is proof that not all zero budget cheapies are made equal. I can see I'm not alone on this one. The call for a DVD release here is small, but definitely there. Hopefully, we'll get what we want someday.As for the copy I rented, I hovered over it for months, waiting for a "sale" sticker to appear on it. I showed up one day, and it was already gone. Oh well, I hope it found a good home.As long as it didn't get bought by the same jerk who snatched "Her Summer Vacation" out from under me too. I'll probably never see that film again, no matter how popular DVD's become.That's another story though.