Allen Plone’s Night Screams enjoys the distinction of being the first slasher shot in Wichita, Kansas. Remember, “first” rarely equates to “best.” Or even “good.” One could sum up where this film falls by using this quick, mid-movie exchange:

Girl 1: “So, where’d you live before you moved to Wichita?”

Girl 2: “In a really nice place.”

Night Screams confuses right from the prologue, as soon-to-be victims watch the ’81 horror movie Graduation Day at home. Rather than show those scenes on the characters’ TV set, Plone (Phantom of the Ritz) chooses to play them in full-screen glory, as if spliced directly into the print; therefore, anyone unfamiliar with that movie may not comprehend which shots are which. (Later, Plone pulls the same trick with a porno to force some nudity into the pic.)

That said, our killer kind of makes up for it with a spontaneous, post-murder rendition of “Chopsticks” on the deceased’s piano. Cut to the opening credits of unknown names and this peculiar tease: “featuring The Sweetheart Dancers.” (Oh, I’ll get to them, promise.)

Night Screams also marks the first and last feature for Joe Manno, in the lead role of David, star of the high school football team and winner of a four-year University of Oklahoma scholarship. While his teammates trade an opened fire hose of homoerotic insults (e.g., “Up your ass!”), he stresses about his full-ride athletic scholarship to Oklahoma, because he doesn’t really want the University of Oklahoma football scholarship, much less to continue playing football, the sport that won him the OU scholarship. And if you think that’s repetitive, get ready to hear it so often from so many people, the film should have an onscreen counter or come with its own punch card.

To blow off steam, David invites his best buds over for a co-ed house party while his overprotective parents are out. Not invited, but looking to crash it anyway, are two escaped inmates from the clink and one newly released mental patient. Are they to blame for David’s friends being slaughtered uno a uno — by pool cue, hot tub, hamburger grill, Glad Cling ‘N Seal — or is David, who forgot to take his anti-anger meds?

The better question: Who cares? Neither you nor I, because Night Screams is so disengaging, its obscurity is deserved. In addition to being nondescript, the students exhibit behavior suggesting they’re occupants from interplanetary craft, from white-guy alley dancing to David acting like a guy on the verge of a Mustang-buying, secretary-banging midlife crisis, not a kid who just wants Dad off his back. Death sequences lack panache and inspire indifference.

Now, because I promised, back to the “nationally famous” Sweetheart Dancers: They’re six young women in sparkly shirts and matching socks who Jazzercise their permed-hair hearts out. They do this as a band called The Dogs performs a song about chilling out. This all goes down at the local club Pogo’s, a really nice place. —Rod Lott

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Move over, turkey! In They Crawl Beneath, the Thanksgiving menu is nematodes! (You and I call them worms.) They’re big, venomous and causing all sorts of shit in a rural garage after an earthquake. They look not unlike House II’s doggy-worm hybrid, minus the cute face and plus all the gnarly teeth.

Whereas most Americans spend the fourth Thursday of November slaving in the kitchen or slugging on the couch, police offer Danny (Joseph Almani, who looks like AI art of “Dean Cain but studious and learned”) is helping his alcoholic uncle (Michael Paré, The Wild Man) work on a car. That’s because Danny’s been dumped by his chipmunk-cheeked scientist girlfriend (Karlee Eldridge, Fired Up), whose job comes in handy when the drunken uncle gets bitten by a huge worm.

From there, you prep yourself for a Tremors facsimile. However, director Dale Fabrigar (Area 407) is working with means presumably below any Tremors direct-to-video sequel, so Danny never leaves the garage. Taking away subplots and flashbacks, They Crawl Beneath is a one-roomer. To get around that, Tricia Aurand’s script gives that nematode venom hallucinogenic properties. While this trick can liven up a scene, it’s also a bridge too far, because the movie is constantly pulling a “JK! Didn’t happen.”

Juggling old-fashioned elements (giant creatures) with current-world issues (ACAB), They Crawl Beneath collapses more often than succeeds, but because it bears competency throughout, I admire its gumption. The practical worms look terrifying, even if the movie is not. For true big-beastie wackadoo this T’giving, put Blood Freak on your viewing plate. —Rod Lott

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Tulsa-based filmmaker Darla Enlow’s The Last Trick or Treater seems calibrated to get viewers into the Halloween spirit. While only around a half-hour, so was Walt Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon. Flaws and all, I embrace it with as much love as went into it. Play it as an aperitif before any All Hallows’ Eve film of your choice.

In the Headless Horseman’s place, this shot-on-video shocker has the hobo-masked Scabby Bobby (Gavin Wells). As terminal cancer patient Morley (Chris Cameron) tells his hospice nurse (Darla Pike, Enlow’s Toe Tags) on Halloween night, Scabby Bobby was a stuttering kid they bullied mercilessly at school. Each Oct. 31, he returns to take vengeance on those who taunted, terrorized and traumatized him, one tormenter per year. Tonight, it’s Morley’s turn, and never has the playground rhyme of “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat” sounded like a legitimate harbinger of doom.

From Scabby Bobby, we go to serial killer Mr. Buttons in Carthage, the bonus movie on Last Trick or Treater’s difficult-to-find DVD. Turns out, it’s a dry run for Enlow’s The Stitcher, her 2007 feature. One more segment and she would have a full anthology of colorfully named killers. We should be so lucky! —Rod Lott

In the Florida Everglades, several locals have vanished; Bigfoot is blamed. Making a documentary about the cases, Sarah and pals hire a self-proclaimed skunk ape tracker to help them investigate. One guess as to whether The Wild Man is shot as cost-conscious found footage.

Director Ryan Justice (Followers) offers a unique climax, in that the cryptic carnage unleashes inside a “gubermint” (to quote the locals) lab facility. Unfortunately, it takes a load of filler to get there, including too many too-long confessionals Sarah (Lauren Crandall, Share or Die) delivers straight to camera — snot-free!

Crandall is fine in the lead, and Michael Paré (Dawn) does his reliable cameo duty, but most of the cast members aren’t convincing as “real” people. Some don’t appear to be trying; in particular, David E. McMahon (Bonehill Road) as the aforementioned tracker seems to approach the material as an SNL sketch — and not a good one. —Rod Lott

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Outside of The Most Dangerous Game, has genre cinema latched onto another concept more often than Eyes Without a Face? It’s the story gift that keeps on giving, as long as you change just enough elements to avoid litigation. Just ask character actor Michael Pataki (The Bat People), who leveraged it for Mansion of the Doomed, his first of two movies as director.

The eventually mad doctor of this early Charles Band production is Leonard Chaney, a successful surgeon played by Richard Basehart (1977’s The Island of Dr. Moreau). When his lovely daughter, Nancy (Trish Stewart, 1976’s Time Travelers), is blinded in a car wreck, Dr. Chaney’s days of reading newspaper articles about meatloaf while she romps in the pool with her beau (Lance Henriksen, Aliens) are over.

Or are they?

Good news: Dr. Chaney restores Nancy’s sight by transplanting another person’s eyeballs! Bad news: They belonged to her boyfriend! But that poor sap doesn’t need them anymore, what with being kept in a basement cage like an animal and all.

Worse news: When Nancy’s eyesight proves short-lived, her father drugs hitchhikers and “job” applicants to swipe more peepers. Pataki more than delivers the ooey-gooey goods in the surgical scenes, with full orbs in their bloody, hanging-optic-nerved glory. As for all the unwitting eye donors now left with hollow sockets, the makeup effects by future four-time Academy Award winner “Stanley” Winston (Jurassic Park) are more convincing than films of this ilk usually got. (You might also recognize the name of the cinematographer: Andrew Davis, eventual director of 1993’s The Fugitive.)

Although Basehart by no means slacks on the job, he’s not as at ease slumming than his more storied, Oscar-anointed partner in crime, Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful), playing his assistant to the hilt. Look for her Blood and Lace co-star Vic Tayback as a detective and Marilyn Joi (C.O.D.) as one of Dr. Chaney’s, um, patients.

Mansion of the Doomed rides its cruel recruiting cycle hard before the blind learn about strength in numbers. Speaking of, Pataki’s second (and final) director’s gig found him mining another well-trod tale for Band in Cinderella, but he made it his own by adding fucking and other things Walt Disney would not have been able to unsee. —Rod Lott

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