‘Shrieker’ and the Horror of College Housing
I was eight years old and I thought Shrieker was going to be a very big deal. I discovered the two-faced monster from Full Moon Pictures’ movie of the same name the same day I discovered Puppet Master and Subspecies, by opening up a magazine and seeing a two-page spread of Full Moon Toys’ upcoming action figure releases. Puppet Master became my greatest childhood obsession, within days of purchasing that magazine I had rented the original film and my lifelong love of that series had begun. I quickly learned that there were several movies in that franchise, it was something of a direct-to-video titan. So Shrieker being an upcoming movie that was already getting its own action figure could only mean that it was going to be big.
Cut to 2024 and Shrieker is the Full Moon movie I bring up that even Full Moon fans don’t remember. It only makes sense, in hindsight. For the direct-to-video studio behind the likes of Puppet Master, Subspecies, Trancers, Demonic Toys, Evil Bong and so many more, the one-and-done films were always the ones to fall through the cracks. To stand out, movies like that had to be as great as Stuart Gordon’s fantastic Castle Freak, and that’s a high bar. It even took me a few years to see it as a kid, despite my initial excitement. When I didn’t see it at the video store, I eventually found it in the other natural habitat for a ’90s Full Moon flick: late night cable. In retrospect, it is amazing that Shrieker even had an action figure, and has continued to spawn other merchandise, like a terrific Trick or Treat Studios Halloween mask and even a comic book appearance in Dollman Kills the Full Moon Universe. All this for a creature feature that came out after the end of Full Moon’s “golden era” of the early ’90s, that has become largely forgotten, but still has one hell of a sellable monster at its heart.
Full Moon emerged on the scene in 1989 with the release of Puppet Master, and for the first several years of its history, had a distribution deal with Paramount. But that had completely changed by 1998, almost a decade later. That deal had ended and as a result the company had to make and distribute their films on their own for much less money. This same year saw the release of Curse of the Puppet Master, the first Puppet Master without David Allen’s dazzling stop motion effects, instead resorting to stock footage for many of the puppet shots. That’s the climate in which Shrieker was made.
With that in mind, Shrieker probably shouldn’t have worked half as well as it did. Make no mistake, it absolutely was shot on a shoestring budget, quickly, and is by no means a masterpiece. But it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been and, much more importantly, probably far better than it should have been, all things considered. Even for a quickly put together production, it had a lot going for it, particularly David DeCoteau. As a director, DeCoteau has helmed a lot of movies, most of them fast and cheap, but every one of them has a sense of style. Nobody knows how to stretch a dollar like DeCoteau. His exceptional Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, the best of its franchise, looks like it cost at least three times what it actually did. Even 2010’s Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (very much past the days of “classic” Full Moon) looks like it cost twice as much as the subsequent Axis Rising and Axis Termination even though it actually cost less.
Shrieker has the benefit of being a single location movie, which always tends to hide the budget a little easier, and that certainly helps it look and feel a little more expensive than it actually was. But honestly? Even if it looked like crap I think this would have been an engaging movies. It’s just a nice bonus that it doesn’t.
The plot centers around a small group of college students squatting in an abandoned psychiatric hospital so that they don’t have to pay for housing. The place has electricity, running water, the only catch is that you can’t tell anyone about it and you can’t bring anyone back to your place if you’re planning to hook up, because absolutely no one can know about this. Honestly, this is a terrific set up. So many horror films fall into the trap of why characters remain in a situation longer than is typically believable, why don’t they just call for help, or so many other things, and Shrieker truly deserves a shout out for avoiding that by simply focusing on the fact that college kids are broke as hell.
Once the horror starts, who are they going to call? They’re not supposed to be here. They could get in a lot of trouble. And even if they don’t, once they leave, they would still have to pay for room and board. So what if we get eaten by a monster? This place is free.
The core group of characters is where this movie truly has the strongest Full Moon energy. In any other stereotypical low budget monster flick, you would have “the smart one” or “the slutty one,” instead, Shrieker gives you characters like one girl who is an extremely outspoken communist and a guy whose first instinct upon meeting anyone is to tell them he’s not gay, in case they were wondering. That’s also just a nice little stamp to let you know this is a David DeCoteau movie if you hadn’t figured it out by that point.
As our heroine, Clark, settles in, she quickly begins to make some surprising discoveries. There were unsolved murders here in the past, and there’s a whole ass other person living in the basement that nobody knows about, named Robert. He’s the one who gives Clark the info dump on the monster hiding within the walls of the hospital, the Shrieker. The movie is both surprisingly direct for Full Moon while also being a little more complex than it otherwise could have been. For example, Ghoulies, a movie you would think would be primarily about Ghoulies, is about a son inheriting his father’s satanic cult, with servants from beyond who carry out his every whim, as well as haunted Dracula dummies and succubi who strangle you with their tongue. Shrieker, by comparison, is mostly about the Shrieker.
There is, however, a refreshing attempt to provide some mystery that also pushes the film in a more explicitly occult direction. It turns out that the Shrieker only kills an intended target, someone it was called upon to kill, similar to Pumpkinhead except it’s not necessarily out of revenge, it could be for any reason at all. One of these people who found the deal of the century with this place does not want to share it, they want it all to themselves and so they’re killing off each of the others, using occult symbols to mark their targets, as well as to mark themselves as safe.
The script is by Neal Marshall Stevens, who wrote several movies for Full Moon, as well as the script that would eventually become Hellraiser: Deader. Ironically, there’s a nice Easter egg of a drawing of that franchise’s iconic box in Shrieker’s opening credits. Deader also has a repeated line, “Fear is where you go to learn.” That line has its origin in this film, where it is also repeated more than once. That’s a peculiar and interesting connection to note.
The Shrieker itself is the star of the movie, as much as any other monster at the center of any Full Moon outing. Like many of the best Full Moon creatures, it feels like it’s ripped straight out of a comic book. The monster has a stellar design, with hefty clawed hands and two conjoined, half-melted shrieking faces. Its cry echoes through the halls of the hospital, and hearing it announces the fact that you are about to die. It can also walk through walls. The monster design by the late Mark Williams is incredible and a huge reason for any success the movie has had, especially in terms of merchandising.
Some credit also once again goes to DeCoteau on that front, though, because it’s actually only half a monster and you’d never know it. Great as the design is, this was an incredibly cheap movie and they only had money for half a monster, so you only ever see the Shrieker from the waist up, or in the shadows from a distance. The bottom half was basically designed for the action figure. If you take a look at any behind-the-scenes footage from this movie, you’ll see the monster wearing shorts and tennis shoes. But on the screen, it works. That’s the magic of DeCoteau.
Shrieker is a hidden gem from Full Moon’s late-nineties era. It’s got a great hook and a truly terrific creature and for a late-night monster movie like this one, those are truly the only things you need. It’s much more polished than it could otherwise have been, given its means. There was supposed to be a sequel at one point, and even over 25 years later, I’m still hopeful. Heck, if this thing is still inspiring Halloween masks and comic book appearances, then why not? Anything is possible. Sure, Full Moon films have gotten even cheaper over time, but a one-location monster movie never goes out of style, and college housing certainly hasn’t gotten any cheaper, so I’d say Shrieker is as relevant now as it ever was. For better or worse.
