Census Bloodbath: Write What You Know

Year:
1984
Director:
Rufus B. Seder
Cast:
Rufus B. Seder, Eugene Seder, George Kuchar
Run Time:
1 hour 32 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Screamplay follows aspiring horror screenwriter Edgar Allan (Rufus B. Seder, who is the director, writer, producer, matte painter, sound editor, and special optical effects technician for Screamplay and exactly zero other movies, though he later became notable as an author of Scanimation children's books) moving to Hollywood, where he gets a job as the custodian at the Welcome Apartments, which is populated by a strange cast of characters including faded star Nina Ray (M. Lynda Robinson), bodybuilder and casual drag queen murderer Martin (underground director George Kuchar), wannabe actress Holly (Katy Bolger), and fire-and-brimstone rocker Lot (Bob White).

Whenever one of these people crosses him, he writes a scene in his screenplay, where they are murdered. However, when they do begin to die in the ways described on the page, this attracts the interest of homicide detective Sgt. Joe Blatz (George Cordeiro, who also co-composed the movie with Basil Bova). Meanwhile, down-on-his-luck agent Al Weiner (Eugene "Father of Rufus" Seder) sees this screenplay as his ticket to the big time and encourages Edgar to finish it, no matter the cost.

Analysis: Screamplay is kooky as fuck. Normally that would be right up my alley, but something about it was a little too off-putting, at least with this first-time watch. It's certainly unlike any other 1980s slasher out there, which I give it kudos for. It's in black and white, for one thing. It's also self-reflective and meta in a way that wouldn't really come to the fore in horror cinema until the 1990s, so it's ahead of the curve.

But it's just such a slog. There are multiple reasons for this, one of the most striking being the acting. The best performers in the cast are inconsistent and the worst are downright unwatchable. Plus, more than 50% of them are identical balding white men. In fact, I didn't even know that Martin was a different character from his neighbor Kleindorf (Ed Callahan, who did props for Sweet Sixteen and was a sound effects editor on Elm Street 4, Elm Street 5, and the Robert Englund Phantom of the Opera) until very close to the end of the movie. I just thought his name was Martin Kleindorf!

Another reason is that it is deeply unfunny. It mistakes referencing classic movie titles and stars as having anything remotely satirical to say about them. And everything else relies on gags that are so broad that you couldn't fit them into an airplane hangar. There's very little that is more exhausting than a whole lot of bad comedy, and Screamplay had me coming out of it feeling like I'd just done a triathlon.

Also, its meta pretensions could have resulted in something fun, but they are handled in such a loose, incoherent way that they never land. However, the movie grows increasingly proud of what it's doing, even though it's clearly failing, which greatly increased the already intense sense of distance between me and the story.

So ultimately you're stuck with a movie that merrily rockets up its own ass while flat comic beats endlessly unspool in front of you. I got the sense that, if it was better at doing what it was trying to do, it would be something I liked very much, so that's cool. It's at the very least not generic, which makes it more engaging to watch than something like Sledgehammer. 

And I did enjoy some of the kills, which is not nothing. They're not particularly bloody, but they're presented enthusiastically and some of them are reasonably creative. Really, at the end of the day, Screamplay is not a bad time, but I couldn't fathom why anybody would actually sit down to watch it unless they were doing something as categorically unwise as watching every slasher movie from the 1980s.

Killer: Holly (Katy Bolger)

Final Girl: Edgar Allen (Rufus B. Seder)

Best Kill: Even though it's drenched in homophobia, there is a bizarre and arresting scene where a drag queen who has just mugged Edgar is twirling on roller skates and Martin grabs her head, causing her to break her own neck and spin her head around 360 degrees.

Sign of the Times: Edgar is alarmed by how expensive his $1 cup of coffee is.

Scariest Moment: Lot grabs Edgar's hand and forces him to burn it over a candle in penance.

Weirdest Moment: Nina asks Edgar to fix her tub, he accidentally knocks the faucet off with a sledgehammer (knocking over a bottle of bubble solution in the process), and she assumes that he has drawn her a bubble bath, so she undresses and has sex with him in the overflowing soapy tub before he has a chance to fix his mistake.

Champion Dialogue: “You're still very young looking."

Body Count: 10; because this movie presents both the fictional and "real" deaths of certain characters onscreen, I've counted doubled-up murders as one death, though I also counted characters who only died on the page but survived the movie.

1. Waitress has a pie-slicer slammed into her face, in the screenplay.
2. Drag Queen has her head spun around while twirling on roller skates.
3. Rocky the Dog eats ground beef with glass mixed in, in the screenplay and in real life.
4. Nina Ray is drowned in the tub, in the screenplay and in real life.
5. Lot is lit on fire, in the screenplay and in real life.
6. Nicky Blair drives his motorcycle into a truck.
7. Kleindorf has his hand shoved in the garbage disposal and his throat slit, in the screenplay and in real life.
8. Edgar is strangled from behind, in the screenplay.
9. Holly is strangled in the screenplay and hit in the head with a sledgehammer in real life.
10. Martin is shot.

TL;DR: Screamplay might be charmingly weird to some, but my mileage was limited.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 991