scream for help

After Psycho II, a film that turned out far better than it had any right to, writer Tom Holland was a relatively hot commodity. So much so that he demanded a shot at directing his own screenplay for Fright Night (1985), one of the most beloved horror flicks of the '80s. But that may never have happened if it wasn't for Scream for Help, an atrociously tone-deaf domestic thriller directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish) from Holland's original script about a teenager who thinks her stepfather is trying to murder her mother.

Christie suspects her stepfather, Paul, of staging a string of household accidents in an attempt to keep her mother's inheritance all to himself. And after following him around town for days, her instincts are proven correct. But Paul isn't working alone; and his partners won't hesitate to wipe out Christie's family and friends to get what they want.

With its uninspired voice-over narration and sleazy marital scheming, Scream for Help almost seems like a flawed attempt at teenage film noir (Winner had just directed a remake of The Big Sleep a few years prior). But it's difficult to tell exactly what the movie had in mind since it's awful on so many levels. The acting is atrociously soap-operatic, the staging amateurish and the suspense non-existent (plus a wonky music score from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones).

In the extras included on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray edition, Tom Holland places the blame squarely on Winner, who, to be fair, seems ill-suited for the material. But the script, which plays like a rough draft of Fright Night without the supernatural elements, is a comedy of errors from the opening line...up to and including the moment when Christie's best friend is run over by a car after declaring, "I have my whole life ahead of me!"

A misplaced mess due for rediscovery as one of the '80s most inexplicable films, Scream for Help gets its due in hi-def with an aforementioned interview with Tom Holland, another from actor David Allen Brooks, audio commentary and a theatrical trailer that works way better than the feature itself!