If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Looking for an uninterrupted sex romp, a gang of teens head to the furniture store owned by the father of one of their group. Once there, they begin a game of hide & seek. . . the game comes to an abrupt halt when a cross-dressing murderer begins to stalk them down one by one.Overall, this was a pretty good 80s slasher, but it lacked much of what 80s slashers really need: good gore and/or violence. While there are a few kills, they're pretty tame (from drowning to an unseen stabbing with a mannequin's detached limb). There are some pacing issues as it moves from fun & fast to dull & slow without much transition. The acting isn't too bad, but the characters get annoying at times. The writing wasn't terrible either, just nothing impressive. The film isn't terribly original, but the idea for the killers was something fresh, and in the end, it turned out to be a slightly above-average teen slasher worthy of a look for fans of this subgenre.If you're looking for an easy 80s slasher with a bit of a twist to it, give it a look. You could do worse.Final verdict: 6/10.-AP3-

"Hide and Go Shriek" came out towards the end of the 80's where the Slasher Genre was going stale and many of them going straight to video. Hide And Go Shriek though was one of the last and one of the best titled, even though it is a fun ride there's just not enough of the teens die.A small group of teens have just finished high school and are heading for college and are about to celebrate they're last summer as youngsters, so they get the idea to have a party in a furniture store which is owned by one of the teens father. Unbeknownst to them, a tattooed ex-con, who works at Fine Furniture, lives in the back. The teens set up shop and begin a night of trysts and games of Hide and Go Seek. But someone else has stayed after hours and they begin playing a deadly game of dress-up and die.Hide and Go Shriek plays its hand with an unusually sleazy manner. Not that the murders are particularly graphic, but there's enough homoerotic subtext to keep even the most practiced film geek on their toes. From an early and hilarious scene involving two boys working out together before one of them says "see you in the showers," and takes a healthy bite out of a banana to the killer dressing in drag, it's a feast of euphemisms and cross-dressing.It would be easy to say that this movie was oddly cast with untypically regular looking kids with a penchant for dinosaur earrings, surfer shorts and skinny ties, but alas, it was only the end of the 80s where stone-washed was a household word. With a mixture of good acting and bad acting, the killer and the bimbo (Annette Sinclair) stand out as the most interesting and talented of the bunch. But Rebunka Jones (credited here as Bunky!) comes across as the most memorable character in the film. In all her banana clip glory, she sneers and leers so much you start fantasizing about her ugly demise.All in all "Hide And Go Shriek" is a fun enjoyable ride, it certainly has it all irritating teens, nudity, bad acting interesting death scenes even though too many of the teens survive adding less tension to the final scenes, a definite must see if you're a fan of the 80's horror scene.

Hide and Go Shriek is probably a slightly better than average slasher movie. Kind of damning with faint praise really but it does what one would want from a slasher movie and doesn't really excel or stand out in any particularly negative or positive way. The plot revolves around a group of eight teenagers, four couples, who decide to have a post-graduation party in the furniture store, which is owned by the father of one them, one night. Unfortunately for them there is a killer in the building along with a scary looking ex-con who is an employee of the store and living there temporarily who might have some connection with the killer. Naturally they get up to the usual slasher teen hijinks and are picked off one by one.It would kind of redundant to go into a detailed plot description of Hide and Go Shriek as it follows the standard formula or the slasher pic with little straying from the formulas. It begins with a pre-credits sequence in which we see the killer, a dude in cruddy tenement slum putting on a suit and liberally applying makeup to his face, although we don't actually see a proper shot his face, before picking a prostitute and knifing mid-coitus. I initially thought that there would be some kind of twist revealing the identity of the gender confused killer given they make such a point of not giving us a good look at his face but nothing like that happens. After this we are introduced to our leads before they move quickly to the slaughter point, were they are to be locked in for the night and are slaughtered. There're a fairly unremarkable bunch, complete with eighties big hair and styles, all quite bland and whitebread- there are no token dorks or ethnic minorities and are conceivably a group of individuals who might actually hang out together. I will give the director credit for casting a slightly hotter than average group of actresses and for getting three out of the four naked during the movie, with the fourth coming close. I think he should have, purely for the completion's sake.... no other reasons, honest.For the first two thirds of the movie the plot seems to revolve around reason for the group of characters to split up. Playing hide and seek (Twice- once would have seemed a strange thing for a group of supposedly seventeen year olds to be doing but twice, even stranger), splitting off to have sex and looking for the missing members of the group once the killer finally starts to pick off some of their number. It actually takes a while and the kills are fairly thin on the ground as the killer spends a lot of time hanging around and acting creepy and menacing in the shadows watching the teens. The setting is actually quite good but the building seems like an odd choice for a furniture store- multiple stories, a seemingly labyrinthine layout, a clunky service life. The cat and mouse stuff is kind of fun. The killer has a penchant for disguise, namely dressing in the clothing of his victims in order to lure the others to their deaths. He particularly favours the woman's clothing, making use of the wigs from the store manikins, and at one point puts on the lacy black lingerie one of the girls had brought to surprise her boyfriend. Needless to say he is surprised. Just another thing you will never see Jason or Michael ever doing. For the most part he keeps to the shadows and when we do get a good look at him in the climax he is again wearing a lot of makeup and in S&M getup. He is certainly one of the more memorable killers from a generic eighties slasher.To the films credit once it hits the fan and the teens realise what is happening they act in a reasonable manner for this kind of movie. They actually stay as a group and don't split up, even the more panicky ones don't completely spaz out and run off on their own at any point, and try to get out of the building. Despite a few bad decisions they do behave in a fairly rational manner for characters in this kind of dreck. The conclusion is over a bit too quickly and there is a very predictable 'twist'.On the whole Hide and Go Shriek is an amusing runaround if you're in the mood for a cheesy and derivative eighties slasher. It has all the components you could ask for- gore, cheesy synth music (Reminded me of the works of John Carpenter), bad acting, gratuitous nudity, eighties fashion victims and a memorable and hammy bad guy.

BIG spoilers, but you shouldn't care... Skip Schoolnik's Hide and Go Shriek is a strong contender for the price of absolute WORST slasher-movie of the 80's. Simply every aspect of this is film is very wrong and downright pathetic, which makes it all the more surprising to see that all my fellow reviewers on this site are so mild in their opinions! This thing is hopeless right from the start, with the introduction of the most insufferable ensemble cast ever! These teenagers don't only look stupid; their personalities don't make the slightest bit of sense. First we see two males in a gym, weightlifting and driveling about graduation parties. Okay, they're standard high-school jocks that act tough and talk dirty, it seems, but instead they're total wimps! One of them constantly tells his virgin girlfriend that it's OK to wait with sex until she's ready and the other one is terrified to mess up his daddy's furniture warehouse. The next male that gets introduced is supposed to be the obligatory sex-addict, yet all he ever nags about is his 6$ haircut. The last male looks like a typical dork, and you expect the others to pick on him, but no, he's actually part of the team! The same goes for all the girls. Judging by their looks and exhibitionist-tendencies, you're expecting a troop of sluts and bimbos, right? Wrong again, because these ladies talk about how sacred marriage is and they're even giving away their own sexy lingerie to a chubbier girl so that she's more likely to have sex with the aforementioned dork. What kind of teenagers are they? The stupidity of these youngsters is made complete when it turns out they have their very own friendship dance-ritual to Aerosmith's "Walk this Way". The gang has finally finished high school and they plan a wild celebration in the furniture store owned by John's dad. Their idea of a graduation party is – get this - to play hide & seek! How old are they, twelve?? After the game, and ignoring the fact some of them already vanished, they all have dinner together and go to bed early. I stand corrected; they're actually seven years old… Then, of course, there's the homicidal maniac who – thank God – consistently murders our teenagers one by one. The death sequences are the only redeeming moments and you should enjoy the elevator-decapitation scene as much as you possibly can because the denouement is totally retarded again. Naturally I'm not going to blab the killer's identity here, but you better prepare yourself for the most retarded…incompetent…implausible…ludicrous…craziest ending in low-budget horror EVER! One of the many reasons why 80's slashers are so popular is because you can participate in guessing who the killer is. You simply can't do that here and people who carefully paid attention to every small detail will feel cheated and furious. Total laugh-riot.