Director David Nelson goes from OZZIE AND HARRIET to decapitation and disemboweling with the slasher DEATH SCREAMS.

With the summer nearly over and the senior class of 1982 preparing to go off to college, a small North Carolina town is losing some of its student body earlier than anticipated. Sheriff Avery (William T. Hicks, THE MIDNIGHT MEN) is already preoccupied with the disappearance of general store stock boy Ted (Larry Sprinkle, KING KONG LIVES) and his girlfriend Angie (Penny Miller, THE HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS) when bratty Sara (Sharon Alley) winds up on the wrong end of an archery arrow after the town carnival. Resisting the overtures of town sexpot Ramona (Jennifer Chase, RICH & POWERFUL), hunky coach Neil Marshall (Martin Tucker, ROCKIN' ROAD TRIP) instead courts pretty cashier Lily (Susan Kiger, THE RETURN) who usually spends her evenings taking care of her wheelchair-bound grandmother Edna (Helene Tryon, HYPERSPACE). When a group of high school graduates decide to have a party by the creek and then tell ghost stories in the cemetery, they soon become the targets of a machete-wielding killer intent on wiping out promiscuous young flesh.

A regional slasher lensed in North Carolina at the famous Earl Owensby Studios – in-house director Worth Keeter (WOLFMAN) handled the film's special effects before he went to Hollywood and helmed several episodic TV shows and low budget features including the "see Pamela Anderson naked" erotic thriller SNAPDRAGON – DEATH SCREAMS was shot at the peak of the theatrical slasher boom and ticks off all of the boxes with horny teenagers, chastising elders, stalking sequences, POV shots, and a have-sex-and-die motif leading up to a body count climax and a "shocking" reveal. The acting ranges from decent to competent, the gore effects are reasonably accomplished, and the score by Clint Eastwood composer Dee Barton (PLAY MISTY FOR ME) sounds like recycled or unused cues from the previous decade combined with more modern Moog noodlings. The film's deficits, on the other hand, might turn off viewers or endear the film to them further. After the usual pre-credits kill, the structure of the film is seriously uneven, with a laborious setup and a carnival sequence that goes on for about a third of them with very little in the way of character development – surprisingly, town slut Ramona gets a surprisingly nuanced backstory involving the sheriff's brain-damaged through suspicious-acting son Casey (Hans Manship, THE FURY) – so the killer does seem insufficiently motived with a couple bits of throwaway dialogue before a climactic flashback that is a variation on the "you're just like all the others" motive for slaughtering horny teens. The last twenty minutes up the gore quotient with an outhouse death that anticipates FRIDAY THE 13TH V: A NEW BEGINNING and another character who falls through a rotted staircase and is pulled out missing their bottom half anticipating a more accomplished bit in Michele Soavi's Italian slasher STAGEFRIGHT.

Released theatrically as DEATH SCREAMS by United Film Distribution Company (DAWN OF THE DEAD), the film fist turned up on VHS first in 1986 as HOUSE OF DEATH from Video Gems with garish artwork featuring severed head, and then more widely under the same title from Media Home Entertainment with more reserved artwork featuring a broken window and a hand wielding a machete. With the negative apparently lost, the film never saw legitimate DVD, turning up in the UK in a video-sourced DVD from Vipco with reels out of order and then stateside in the same transfer from labels like East/West. Arrow Video's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is sourced from an archival 35mm print. The image looks generally cleaner and more colorful, looking best during the daylight sequences while night interiors and exteriors are still problematic because of the original underlit photography. There are some deep blacks here and there but it appears as if the transfer supervisors let some of the shadows lean towards gray to preserve some faint shadow detail. The night scenes can look flat as a result, but the brightness and enhanced resolution does reveal more detail in the effects work than evident before. While not perfect, it is more than acceptable compared to what came before. The English LPCM 1.0 mono mix is clean, making evident some post-synched dialogue, and the highs of the score are generally preserved. The English SDH subtitles were apparently transcribed by someone unfamiliar with American-isms, transcribing "hog heaven" as "hug heaven."

The film is accompanied by a pair of audio commentaries. Filmmaker Phil Smoot (ALIEN OUTLAW) did not work on the film but he did work at Earl Owensby Studios at the time and knew the first track's participants producer Charles Ison (SCORNED) and special effects artist Keeter; as such, he asks them to identify many of the film's Earl Owensby alumni and other North Carolina locals as well as the studio sets and practical locations used in this and other productions shot at the studio. They discuss working with Nelson – whose earlier film A RARE BREED (released two years after DEATH SCREAMS) was also produced by Ison – the film's slasher conventions, the novelty of hiring Playboy Playmate Kiger and not having her do nudity, and the film's gore effects (including a mishap with John Kohler who plays the comic relief fat guy). Smoot is not afraid to point out not only the inanities of the screenplay but also the structural problems of the plot. The second track features podcasters The Hysteria Continues who convey their affection for the film, discuss its confusing release history, the film's influences and scenes that appear to have inspired other slashers, and also note the film's unexpected bits of backstory for the cliché supporting characters.

More satisfying is "All the Fun of the Scare: The Making of DEATH SCREAMS" (32:53) featuring the recollections of producer Ison, special effects artist Keeter, screenwriter Paul Elliott (DOLLY), actors Manship and Curt Rector (DOGS OF HELL), actor/producer’s assistant/assistant supervising editor Alley, and actor/talent wrangler Robert “Billy Bob” Melton. Ison and Keeter tell some of the same stories as on the commentary, Elliott recalls working on a more expensive script for Ison but being asked to do a horror script which would be cheaper to produce and he penned it in a week modeling the slasher on TEN LITTLE INDIANS. He also recalls that Ison could not afford to fly him to the location so he instead conveys his reactions to seeing the changes to his script in the finished film, including the less-effective reimagining of the opening kill. Manship recalls being in Hollywood when he learned of Elliot's screenplay being filmed in his home state and being up for the role of comic relief Diddle. Alley was a teenage model who shot all of her scenes in a day. She hated modeling and was offered the opportunity by Ison to work post-production on the film, including work on the sound mix and dubbing in New York (it is her scream during the title card) leading to subsequent work behind the scenes. Rector was appearing in a film directed by his father being shot at the Owensby studio when he was asked to appear in the film, and he was worried about having to play the boyfriend to seventeen-year-old actress Andria Savio who was subsequently the fourth and youngest wife of Tony Curtis for eight years, worked on the presidential campaign of Al Gore, and is currently an artist.