Hide and Go Shriek

Hide and Go Shriek
Directed by	Skip Schoolnik
Written by	Michael Kelly
Produced by	Dimitri Villard
Starring	Bunky Jones Brittain Frye George Thomas Donna Baltron
Cinematography	Eugene Shlugleit
Edited by	Tim Alexander Mark Manos Amy Tompkins Adam Wolfe
Music by	John Ross
Distributed by	New Star Entertainment
Release date	November 1, 1988 (1988-11-01)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	Unknown

Hide and Go Shriek (Also known as Close Your Eyes and Pray) is a 1987 American horror suspense film. It was directed by Skip Schoolnik, who had already served as an editor on several films, including Halloween II. Screenplay by Michael Kelly. The film was given a limited theatrical release with an R rating; an alternate video version, containing only a little more violence, was released unrated.

Plot

The film begins with a unidentified man dressed in a suit and tie and applying women's makeup in an old and dingy city apartment. The man then puts on a dark fedora hat and switches off the lights. The scene then cuts to the man cruising down a street in his car where he picks up a blonde prostitute. While having sex with her in an alleyway, the man discreetly flips out a jack knife and stabs her. He then gets into his car and drives away, leaving the prostitute for dead in the alley.

John Robbins, David Hanson, Melissa Morgan, Bonnie Williams, Randy Flint, Kim Downs, Judy Ramerize, and Shawn Phillips are a group of friends who have recently graduated from high school. To celebrate, they plan to have an end-of-the-year graduation party together at the furniture store owned by John's father. With the help of John, they are able to sneak in to the furniture store right before closing time.

John's father Phil Robbins and his co-worker Vince are closing the store up for the night and talking about the new dockworker Fred and Vince admits he is afraid of him as Fred was an ex-convict who was recently released from prison on parole and is also temporarily living in the basement of the store as he has nowhere else to live. Phil assures Vince that Fred is harmless and that nobody has tried to break into the store since Fred has been there, although Vince believes that the real reason nobody has tried to break in is more likely due to the fact that "new shatterproof windows" had been installed in the store recently. However Phil assures Vince that Fred is a good guy and that there is nothing to worry about.

After the two men leave in their cars to go home, the scene cuts to Fred getting food from his fridge and cooking it on his frying pan as he watches television. He is unaware that the group is in the store. It is also revealed that he has snake tattoos on both of his hands.

After John shows the gang around the store and advises everybody to keep the lights switched off so that nobody catches them, Kim suggests playing hide-and-go-seek in an attempt to make things more fun. However Kim and her boyfriend Randy appear the be the only ones taking the game seriously as the other couples; John and Bonnie, Judy and David, and new couple Melissa and Shawn, all use the game as an excuse to make out and have sex. After Kim finds John and Bonnie having sex she declares the two of them "it" and they start a new game. During the second round, things between Melissa and Shawn start to heat up. Melissa leaves to go change into a negligee dress which was given to her by Kim. As she's freshening up in the washroom, the lights in the bathroom suddenly switch off. Melissa, feeling slightly uneasy asks if it's Shawn and when she gets no response she turns around only to be bombarded by a man who grabs her and claps his hand over her mouth while Melissa tries to scream for help. The man then dunks Melissa's head into the sink which she had previously filled with water and in the process, the man whacks Melissa's head on the sink tap, knocking her unconscious and drowning her. Her body is then carried away. Meanwhile Shawn, unaware that Melissa has been murdered, is fed up with waiting and goes to look for her. During his search someone in a dress runs by him giggling. Shawn, thinking it's Melissa, runs to her only to find a strange man wearing the negligee Melissa had. Before Shawn can even ask who it is, the man rushes foreword and grabs Shawn and holds him in the air before throwing him down onto a home decor item with giant spikes which pierce through Shawn and instantly kill him.

After the second round of hide-and-seek, everybody goes to eat dinner. During dinner the rest of the group notices Shawn and Melissa are missing. They decide to go look for them although they believe Shawn and Melissa are just fooling around. After finding mannequins and furniture disarranged, John starts to get angry as he didn't want anybody to make a mess of the furniture store. Frustrated at not being able to find them, the rest of the group eventually decides to go to bed.

Bonnie and John are having sex when "Shawn" comes in and whistles at them to get their attention. After mooning them, an angered John runs after him. Upon entering the second floor of the building, John sees a man in a blonde wig applying makeup. Not recognizing the man, John confronts him only to spark a fight between the two. After the man knocks John down, he temporarily disappears, only to reappear seconds later and kills John with a mannequin arm. The man then drags John's body away with the arm still in him. Meanwhile Bonnie has become slightly anxious due to the fact that her boyfriend hasn't returned and hides under the bed. She becomes even more nervous when someone with a snake tattoo on the left foot appears at the edge of the bed. The man is just Fred, checking up on the store as he had heard noises earlier. However since Bonnie doesn't know who Fred is, or the fact that he lives in the store, she panics and believes he is the culprit.

Meanwhile Kim and Randy are asleep in bed. Kim suddenly awakens and realizes that she has to go to the bathroom. Seconds after Kim leaves, the anonymous man shows up at the foot of the bed and watches Randy sleep, while eyeing his clothes. When Kim returns, she spots Randy dressed in his clothes and asks him if he had to go as well. Kim suddenly realizes that it isn't Randy and frightened, she tries to get away but the man grabs her and tries to force himself on her. Panicking, Kim grabs a vase off a nearby coffee table and smashes it over the man's head, hindering him and giving Kim a chance to escape. Her screams wake Randy up and Randy realizing his clothes are missing, finds an extra pair of pants from a nearby closet and tries to follow his girlfriend's screams. Kim runs to the store elevator and desperately tries to get to the second floor. She almost makes it but unfortunately at the last second, the man discovers her and hops onto the elevator with Kim still inside it as she screams. Randy, in his desperate search to find Kim suddenly runs into a terrified Bonnie, who informs him that John went looking for Shawn and has been gone for a long time. She also informs Randy that there's somebody else in the building with them, and that he has a snake tattoo. Randy decides that their best bet is to find Judy and David so that way the four can all stick together and to ensure that nobody else goes missing. The two then head to the second floor to look for David and Judy.

Judy and David have just finished having sex and are now sleeping in bed. Upon hearing Bonnie's and Randy's screams Judy and David awaken, and when David calls out to them and asks what's wrong and Randy informs them that Kim is now missing and that he last heard her screaming on the elevator. Concerned, Judy and David get dressed and meet up with Bonnie and Randy and together they investigate and look through the store in hopes that their friends are only playing a big prank on them. Upon taking the elevator to the first floor, it's revealed that Kim is on top of the elevator; bound, gagged, naked and not able to call for help.

During their search they find "Kim" dancing then running away giggling. Angered, Randy almost runs after the pervert until Bonnie reminds him that the last time someone [John] ran after somebody dressed as one of their friends, they went missing. Randy then regains his cool and the four continue on. Upon finding the doors locked and the phone lines disconnected the four try to break the windows with Randy trying to smash to windows with a table. However, as mentioned by Vince earlier in the film, the windows are not only completely shatterproof, they're completely soundproof as well. Desperate they search for anybody who may possibly be on the streets in the early morning and when they spot a wino rummaging through some trash they frantically try to scream to the man for help and make themselves noticed and when the wino does spot them, since he can't hear them screaming he thinks the four are merely waving at him. When a police car stops by to check out the wino, the group tries even harder to get the police to notice them but do to the windows being both soundproof and shatterproof, the police officers take no notice and drive away, much to the group's dismay. Judy suggests that maybe it's time to take a stand and that if nobody can help them, that the four of them should be ready to fight back whoever's messing with them. David then suggests that they go back down to the office where they can get some objects to use as weapons.

In the office, Judy tries to turn on the lights but the power suddenly cuts, sending the emergency lights on. A panicked Bonnie runs away trying to find some other exit and thinking she's found a way out, she opens that door only to find Melissa and Shawn's dead bodies. A traumatized Bonnie then falls to the floor screaming in agony while the bodies fall on top of her. Her friends realize and are just as frightened and upset as her. After David and Randy help Bonnie to her feet the four run to a storage room where mannequin body parts are stored. Upon looking for Mannequin arms and legs to use as weapons Bonnie grabs the mannequin arm used to kill John and when she realizes it's covered in blood, John's body, which was hidden behind a board, falls to the ground, startling Bonnie, David, Judy and Randy.

As the four are mourning over the death of John, Fred comes upstairs after hearing noises in the store and mistaking the group for robbers, attacks them. Thinking he is the killer, Bonnie, David, and Randy beat Fred with mannequin body parts and tie him up while Bonnie just watches. Thinking they have finally captured the culprit, the group retreats to the second floor where Kim is still on top of the elevator being beaten by the real killer. She is able to get her feet and arms loose enough to kick and stomp the elevator in an attempt to get her friends to notice and she manages to punch the killer. While her friends try to investigate the noises Kim turns over and screams down to Randy from the top of the elevator. The four try to help her and Judy even tries to stop the elevator so that Kim can get down but it ultimately doesn't succeed and the killer holds her head out as the elevator continues to rise which decapitates her. The elevator halts and her severed head falls to the ground in front of them. As the four cry over Kim's death, the elevator suddenly starts moving again and the four jump off and run into a bedroom where they sit to catch their breath.

As they're trying to decide what to do next, the real killer slowly rises from behind the bed post and realizing that this is really the man who killed their friends, they attack him but in the process the killer slashes Randy across his chest with a straight razor and subsequently flees the room. While Bonnie looks after Randy and his chest, David and Judy prepare to fight. The killer runs towards them but at the last second Fred comes to the rescue and tackles the killer. The identity of the killer is finally fully revealed and his name is Zack. Zack was Fred's lover from prison and is still in love with him and had come back for him. Zack had killed Melissa, Shawn, John, and Kim and tried to kill the remaining four because he believed that the kids were coming between him and Fred. Fred, repulsed by what Zack has done, tells Zack that he wants nothing to do with him and also informs Zack that he's going back to prison. This angers Zack and a fight ensues between them, eventually having Zack to pull out a combat knife. Suddenly the lights turn on and the group finds the killer gone, with Fred mortally wounded, with Zack's combat knife through his neck as Fred passes out. Zack appears one last time and Judy, seeing that he dropped his straight razor, picks it up and tries to stab him with it. Although Judy misses, Zack steps back and slips on a puddle of Kim's blood and falls down the empty elevator shaft. Suddenly the police show up along with John`s father Phil. While the group was snooping through the store with their mannequin parts earlier in the film, a man running a newsstand from across the street had seen the four inside the store and mistaking them for thieves, had called the police.

As paramedics bandage up Randy`s cut and tend to Fred's wound Mr. Robbins asks Fred what happened and Fred tries to tell Mr. Robbins what happened while he was in prison and how he tried to start a fresh new life and put his affair with Zack behind him once he got out; but he succumbs to his wound and dies. When everyone leaves the store it's morning and Bonnie, Randy, David, and Judy are being helped into an ambulance along with Mr. Robbbins. However Zack's body is never found. When the ambulance leaves, a second one follows from a distance. It is then in which it is revealed that the driver is Zack, who somehow survived his fall, dressed as an EMT, whom he killed in order to obtain the uniform. He watches the first ambulance go, then looks directly at the camera and smiles sadistically, implying that Randy, Judy, David, and Bonnie will most likely end up like their dead friends as the screen then cuts to black.

Cast

• Bunky Jones as Bonnie Williams
• Brittain Frye as Randy Flint
• Annette Sinclair as Kim Downs
• George Thomas as David Hanson
• Donna Baltron as Judy Ramerize
• Scott Fults as Shawn Phillips
• Ria Pavia as Melissa Morgan
• Sean Kanan as John Robbins
• Scott Kubay as Zack
• Jeff Levine as Fred
• Michael Kelly as the alley Wino
• Ron Colby as Phil Robbins
• Donald Mark Spencer as Vince
• James Serrano and Lyons as the cops in the police car
• Robin Turk as the prostitute in the opening scene
• Joe White as the man behind the newsstand

Production

Hide and Go Shriek was filmed in an abandoned warehouse in downtown L.A. in the early summer of 1987. Filming took about three weeks, and post production took about the same. The film was ready for a brief theatrical release in the fall of that same year. Annette Sinclair, who plays Kim Downs in the film, was asked to do the makeup on the plaster cast of her head used for the decapitation scene so that it would best match her own makeup. The writer of the movie, Michael Kelly, makes a brief cameo in the film as the wino outside the store towards the end of the movie. Screaming Mad George did all the special effects in the movie, some of which had to be cut for the theatrical release due to its graphic nature.

External links

• Hide and Go Shriek at IMDb