Roger Neale is a famous artist/photographer who is trying to push his boundaries even more. To do this he rents out an old psychiatric hospital (in real life the former Marlboro (N.J.) State Psychiatric Hospital) and hires three young women who want to be stars. His main love is fetish work and he wants to incorporate this into his latest work which will use erotic images with a sense of real fear.
What he doesn’t realise is that by doing these horrid things to these women he is unleashing an entity who has been dead for many years and is coming back to do torture his way. Have no fear as tough guy Sam Rogan will look after all the women and stand up to not only the depraved Roger Neale but also battle the entity to the death…again! ‘SCREAMING DEAD‘ is best described as a women in prison film mixed with a haunted house theme. It is not your typical Brett Piper film as it is played rather straight, it is also very serious in tone and dark. Joseph Farrell playing the sadistic artist/photographer Roger Neale was great and you really believed he would do the things that happen through the film. Though the sfx aren’t what you would normally expect from Piper and they do look a bit clumsy it was nice to see him experiment with some different techniques. Some talented actresses are in this film most notably Misty Mundae (‘BITE ME!‘, ‘DICKSHARK‘) and the underrated Rachael Robbins as Maura Holloway who puts up far too much from Roger Neale. If you want to find something different in Pipers catalogue of films then this will be the film for you, but if you are looking for more stop motion animation alongside tongue in cheek humour look elsewhere.

Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins