E.I.’s first foray into a straight horror film (as opposed to the softcore sex parodies that they’re best known for) has its heart in the right place and it tries really hard, but sadly sort of fizzles out despite a few highlights here and there. But let’s start from the beginning… 

When the movie opens, an unidentified young lady (A. J. Kahn) is strapped to a rack in a torture chamber where a photographer named Roger Neal (Joseph Ferrell) greedily snaps away, taking pictures of her, shall we say, stressful situation. From here we learn that this is all staged, it’s part of Roger’s motif as an artist, he specializes in fetishy bondage photos and does quite well for himself with this material. Roger goes about setting up his next shoot by hiring three pretty ladies (Misty Mundae, Heidi Kristoffer and C. J. DiMarsico) to accompany him to an abandoned hospital where he’ll take even more provocative photos of them but what he doesn’t realize is that a killer is on the loose and he’s got a taste for blood! 

The problem is, while Roger may not have realized it, the audience surely does. Despite the fact that there is a limited amount of fine female skin on display (though not as much as you might think), the movie is so completely predictable and poorly scripted that we know exactly where it’s going before the characters in the movie do. Therefore, there’s no suspense. 

Brett Piper paces the movie well enough, things happen quickly, but the low budget effects don’t do the film any favors. One thing that the movie really does have going for it is the location. The movie was shot in an actual abandoned psychiatric hospital and it is just as creepy a setting as you’d expect it to be. The cameras do a pretty good job of capturing the naturally odd ambience that this setting provides and because of that, the movie looks really good and gives the impression that it is a more lavish production than it actually is. The other bonus is that the girls are cute. Base as it may sound, it’s more enjoyable to watch attractive young women running around than unattractive fat guys and E.I. knows this and capitalizes on it. There’s a market for this type of horror movie and they’ve very much catered to it with this movie. 

In the end, it’s a shame that The Screaming Dead wasn’t more than it turned out to be. It had a great set, a nice looking cast and a filmmaker who has proven himself capable of turning in some decent low budget fare before and after – unfortunately this one just didn’t come together.