"Kill the Scream Queen" review

Kill the Scream Queen (2004)

Directed by Bill Zebub

Writing credits Bill Zebub

Debbie D....Victim
Deborah Dutch....Debbie
Isabelle Stephen....Victim
Bill Zebub....Maniac

A maniac kills women for his snuff movie. All of the women are wannabe actresses who can't wait to be tied up and humiliated in the name of entertainment. The maniac, (Bill Zebub), can't wait to accommodate them. He's a talkative kind of killer. He likes to articulate everything he's going to do to his victims. It kind of takes the suspense away when every nasty move is spelled out ahead of time. Zebub says he wants to shock the horror world by killing the useless scream queens that are ruining horror by taking their tops off and screaming on cue. "Kill the Scream Queen" is an attempt to get back to basic exploitative horror by cutting out all of the fluff and getting down to it.

This is an interesting sleaze fest. Zebub strikes me as the kind of filmmaker who takes his horror movies very seriously. In "Kill the Scream Queen" he goes off on many tangents as to why recent horror has been diluted with a bunch of weak flicks, particularly ones that have scream queens. Of course I must disagree vehemently with this blasphemy. Scream queens are great. Why would anyone want to kill them? Of course Zebub exposes his hypocrisy by having naked women in almost every second of his movie and they're usually screaming. Horror movies need scream queens. Where would we be today if Jamie Lee Curtis hadn't screamed her head off in "Halloween"? Women will be screaming in horror movies until the end of time. Don't fight it.

In "Kill the Scream Queen", women walk into an abandoned bar, get tied up, usually get a big, red rubber ball shoved in their mouth and are promptly either raped or killed. But this flick is not just about tying women up, humiliating them and then killing them. Oh no. It's much more than that. Well, not much more. It's also about Zebub trying to bring real porno sleaze back into horror so that he can shock the jaded horror fans. He makes a good run at it. But it's still the same old problem that haunts most B-movies: Bad acting, unconvincing effects, etc. I wasn't shocked by any of the scenes although the exploitation level on this one is over the top. If you're looking for some pure B-movie sleaze, this one will work for you.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 gagged Scream Queens