Psycho II screenwriter
Tom Holland, years before directing the first Child’s Play movie,
collaborated twice with director Richard Franklin on Psycho II and the
hit videogame kids thriller Cloak & Dagger before ultimately passing
on what would’ve been their third film together: the 1984 British teen horror
flick Scream for Help. Deemed too
low-budget for the then-growing popularity of Richard Franklin, the project
instead went to Cannon Films film worker and British bad boy Michael Winner who
poised it in between two of his Death Wish sequels. Though Winner had a reputation for being a
purveyor of cheap exploitation trash with his Cannon Films tenure, often
branded with being misogynistic if not abusive towards his actresses, Scream
for Help made instead for Lorimar provided the director a chance to give one
of his films a central plucky young heroine in one of his startlingly classier
efforts.
In upper class New Rochelle, New York, seventeen-year-old
Christie Cromwell (Rachael Kelly) grows increasingly suspicious her new stepfather
Paul (David Allen Brooks) is trying to murder her and her mother Karen (Marie
Masters) to make off with their money.
However, no one Christie tells will believe her, including but not
limited to local law enforcement.
Doing
her own detective work, the teenager follows Paul all over the city before
discovering he is having an affair with a younger woman named Brenda (Lolita
Lorre) but not before her brother Lacey (Rocco Sisto) enters the picture. Determined to catch him red handed with
another woman, Christie and her boyfriend Josh (Corey Parker) try snapping
photographs of Paul having sex with Brenda only to learn there’s more to this
brother-sistership than meets the eye, forecasting an explosive all-out home
invasion thriller surprising and violent.
While
sadly the film’s lead Rachael Kelly didn’t have much of a career outside of
this film, appearing on a couple of television programs prior to it, she makes
a resourceful scream queen always thinking her way through tricky
situations. David Allen Brooks as the
stepfather is a good character actor who has only really done small roles over
the years but has a lot to sink his teeth into here. Rocco Sisto as the brother Lacey is probably
the most well-known actor in the piece, appearing in everything from After Hours to Donnie Brasco and Far and Away.
Bypassing a DVD release and going straight to
blu-ray from Scream Factory, filmgoers keen on Michael Winner, the home
invasion thriller and the emerging horror career of Tom Holland are absolutely
inclined to give this clandestine little Winner title a spin. The blu-ray disc comes with a running audio
commentary as well as interviews with Tom Holland and David Allen Brooks. While this didn’t necessarily advance the
careers of those involved in it, on its terms it is a solid little number and
one of the few Winner thrillers that doesn’t completely fly off the handle.
--Andrew Kotwicki