offbeat surprise enhancing a rep- resentative cross-section of what you were likely to see on the “hor- ror” shelf of your Mom & Pop video store: particularly if Mom and Pop were somehow allied with the long-defunct United Home Video. VOLUME 1 starts with 1977’s SISTERS OF DEATH (86m 55s), directed by Joseph Mazzuca, then just on the verge of a prolific ca- reer as a production supervisor for many an animated television program. Years after a sorority initiation goes terribly wrong (a supposedly blank pistol cartridge kills a prospective pledge), an embittered Arthur Franz (MON- STER ON THE CAMPUS, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVIS- IBLE MAN) invites the surviving members of the incident (led by Claudia Jennings of DEATH- SPORT) to a special reunion at a secret and extremely remote desert location. Thanks to his generous cash bonus, everyone on the list accepts his invitation. Once “The Sisters” are safely in his clutches, he plans to get to the truth of the matter, but his plans are frustrated by a couple of male party crashers (including Paul Carr of THE SEVERED ARM) he’d hired as secret chauffeurs. All the same, the death toll starts to mount due to a combination of Franz’s machinations and the utter lack of common sense dis- played by everybody else inside the boundaries of his lethal electric fence. This pre-HALLOWEEN body count thriller should have lived up to its highly-exploitable elements, but its apparent desire for a PG rating resulted in nothing more than mild teasing and a complete absence of shocks (although the presence of a gatling gun cer- tainly qualifies as a genre-origi- nal highlight). VCI’s unmasked transfer reveals at least one boom mike late into the film and suffers
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from sub-par brightness and clar- ity, as immediately indicated by the fuzzy opening titles. Unfortu- nately, this quality issue remains a near-constant throughout this collection, which apparently makes do with VHS masters more often than not. In addition, one feature on each double-bill disc is subject to a sloppy, badly- timed layer change: in this case, the “surprise” ending is disrupted during the final seconds of the movie!
Having no trouble whatsoever living up to its billing is the co- feature, SCREAM BLOODY MUR- DER (1973, 85m 33s), the one feature directed by Marc B. Ray, who received story credit on the aforementioned THE SEVERED ARM and went on to script 1992’s STEPFATHER III. “The first mo- tion picture to be called ‘Gore- nography’” begins with a young boy running his father over with a tractor, only to lose his own hand in the process. Years later, a hooked prosthesis has served to replace the missing append- age, but releasing the now adult Matthew (Fred Holbert) from the asylum proves far less therapeu- tic: the obsessively jealous Mama’s Boy is soon off on an- other graphic rampage of hard- core violence and surrealism, with nary a moment of comic relief in sight. As mentioned, the film delivers exactly what it prom- ises, but this is one case where its promoters could have prom- ised even more: to this day, VCI has continued to fail to capitalize on the fact that supporting actor Rory Guy (cast as the ill-fated Dr. Epstein) later became better known to horror fans as Angus Scrimm.
While several projects actually vie for the right to be called the first direct-to-video horror movie, there can be no question that United Home Video took the greatest advantage of the upstart
phenomenon in the 1980s (more on that later). SCREAM THEATER VOLUME 2, however, showcases two of the company’s most dis- mal shot-on-tape (but converted to film) efforts. 1986’s TERROR AT TENKILLER (87m 25s) gives us Debbie Killion and Stacy Lo- gan as Debbie and Leslie, two young adults who decide to va- cation at the barely-populated title resort to get away both from “it all”—including violently jeal- ous boyfriend Josh (director Ken Meyer). But while the girls fret about Josh (who immediately finds out where they are and threatens to visit), the movie makes no effort to disguise the fact that the actual decimation of the supporting cast is being car- ried out by the outwardly likable, inwardly puritanical dock atten- dant Tor (Michael Shamus Wiles), who’s eventually drowned (appar- ently by a local Indian legend) but who jumps out of the lake for a surprise freeze-frame ending all the same (sorry... I meant “spoiler alert!”). The deadly pacing and the poorly post-recorded sound- track (which makes what’s re- ferred to as a harmonica sound like a flute) drain away any po- tential entertainment value, while the transfer, which betrays its VHS origins with a tell-tale glitch at 45:17, does poor service to the admittedly attractive scenery. The mere fact that Meyer could capture acceptable com- positions with his video camera puts TERROR AT TENKILLER miles ahead of its execrable co- feature, THE LAST SLUMBER PARTY (1988), directed by Stephen Tyler, who also ap- pears as the “maniac” who es- capes from the hospital to terrorize a gaggle of schoolgirls (one being his own doctor’s daughter) and the “party ani- mals” who invade the title event. When he’s not blatantly attempt- ing to restage specific tableaux
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