Written by Ed Greenberg and Rufus Butler Seder
Directed by Rufus Butler Seder
Starring Rufus Butler Seder, George Kuchar, Katy Bolger and Eugene Seder
USA, 1984
I had never heard of SCREAMPLAY before, but it turns out this low-budget horror comedy from 1984 is my kinda flick. Within the first few minutes I was reminded of my all-time favorite movie, Tim Burton's ED WOOD. I even began to wonder if Burton had seen this and had it in mind when he made his own tribute to the weirdos of Hollywood.
SCREAMPLAY tells the story of Edgar Allen (Rufus Butler Seder, who also wrote and directed), an aspiring screenwriter who arrives in Hollywood hoping to make it. Instead, he winds up as a janitor at a rundown apartment building populated by a bunch of oddballs, including his sleazy landlord (underground filmmaker George Kuchar). He starts writing a horror screenplay based on the people around him, only to discover that the murders he's dreaming up are actually happening. Is he responsible? Is someone using his script as a blueprint? Or is he just losing his mind?
The movie was made for a measly $50k in Boston, which is pretty remarkable considering how much it manages to get out of so little. It's shot in black and white, with deliberately artificial sets, exaggerated acting and all sorts of old-fashioned camera tricks that make it look like some lost horror movie from the ‘20s or ‘30s. And it’s done well – this isn’t the kind of thing where I have to be charitable to see what the filmmakers were trying to do. This is the kind of thing where they nailed it.
The movie's pretty goofy, and some of the acting is about what you'd expect from a production like this, but the whole thing has a personality that's hard to resist.
Needless to say, I liked this one a lot. It's inventive, funny and clearly made by movie lovers for movie lovers. Like me!
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