It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Let's talk about wasted potential, shall we? Because Byron Quisenberry's "Scream" is one early '80s slasher that literally bulks with great potential and possibilities, yet it somehow ended up as one of the absolute worst genre films of the entire decade; - and that means quite a lot since we all know there was so much junk made in the eighties! Everything starts out promising, and the prologue sequences – with eerie and blood-soaked wooden marionettes of which the eyes spookily move – even had me wonder for a second that I encountered a genuine hidden horror gem. Subsequently, the setting and introduction of the characters are also very interesting. We meet a group of people on a rafting trip somewhere in Texas, and for once they're not horny teenagers on a camping trip or sorority sisters during a college initiation night, but fairly normal and middle-aged people. Unless I missed something, we never even find out what their connection is. Are they friends, colleagues or complete strangers that just individually signed up for a rafting trip? I think the latter, as I did the same thing once when I participated in a rafting trip on the Colorado River in the state of Utah. Anyway, night falls and the group sets up camp in a ghost town by the side of the river. You'd expect a tense and atmospheric slasher feast from here onwards, but this is where things start to go horribly wrong. There's a killer wandering about in the abandoned little town and the number of survivors quickly decreases, but as a viewer you actually haven't got the slightest idea what is going on. Everything is dark and blurry, the characters are unidentifiable and the murders either occur off-screen or in a dull and bloodless fashion. It's fairly obvious that the killer shouldn't be sought among the group members, but there's a lame attempt to link the murders to a kind of folklore myth about a vengeful sea captain. Or something like that, at least, I have to admit that I dozed off a couple of times already at this point in the movie. Fact remains that "Scream" has an intolerably slow pacing and severely lacks in the blood, gore and sleaze department. In the trivia section, there's a little anecdote that states: "Director Byron Quisenberry did not give his actors the ending to the script". Personally I think he didn't even have an ending for his script. In fact, he probably never even had a script to begin with

A bunch of folks on a rafting expedition set up camp in an old abandoned ghost town. However, said town isn't as deserted as they initially expected and pretty soon people are getting picked off by a phantom killer. Sound good? Well, alas it just ain't. Flatly directed by Bryon Quisenberry (who also wrote the talky and uneventful script), with mild gore, no nudity, tame offscreen kills, a sluggish pace, drab and dumb characters who stupidly venture off on their own so they can be easily dispatched by the killer (serves 'em right for being so idiotic!), a meandering story, a frustratingly muddled conclusion, and a severe paucity of both tension and spooky atmosphere (things perk up a bit and get fairly creepy in the last third, but by then it's far too little much too late), this extremely stiff and static stinker proves to be quite a painfully languid and laborious chore to endure. Worse yet, veteran thespians Hank Worden, Gregg Palmer, and Alvy Moore are all wasted in lousy nothing roles. In addition, extra points need to be detracted due to the insufferable antics of irritating comic relief bozo Lou (played with an appalling lack of charm by Joe Allaine). Even the always welcome presence of the ever-awesome Woody Strode as a mysterious sailor fails to alleviate the numbing tedium. Joseph Conlan's monotonous and grossly inappropriate score sounds like it belongs in a generic 70's cop show. Richard Pepin's decent cinematography manages to wring a modicum of gloom-doom mood from the cool rundown location. A total snorefest.

I watched this recently and noticed that it has the same title as Wes Craven's horror smash hit "Scream", but don't fooled this has absolutely no connection to that Wes Craven masterpiece.The Plot = A group of holiday makers go on a rafting trip down a river stop in at an old ghost town to spend the night. Soon their rafts disappear, and then they begin to be eliminated one by one by a mysterious killer.Oh my god this has to be the world's most boring-est slasher movie ever, talk about a total waste of time, I usually can find the good points in bad Slashers but not in this one, there ain't any redeeming features what so ever, everything in this was bad, badly acted, badly lit, non interesting characters that I couldn't tell apart, the music score sounds completely ripped off from other movies, deaths off-screen which I hate when they do that and stupid subplots (like the bikers turning up and that black guy on the horse and carriage and dog) who neither offer nothing to the movie and that pathetic ending which made this pile of crap even crapper.All in all this pile of rubbish makes movies like Don't Go Into The Woods Alone decent, this should stay dead and buried and never see a DVD release, if u come across this stay well clear.

First of all, this movie should only be seen by die hard slasher fans. And I mean, those who can stand almost 90 minutes of mediocrity, terrible cinematography, boring plot, and stupid characters. Yes, there is a "mysterious" killer but that isn't enough.The plot deals with a bunch of teen rafters that get lost in a Ghost Town. You don't need to know more because before we can understand what's going on; the characters start to get killed one by one in off-screen scenes! So don't expect a serious slasher flick.The locations weren't that bad, and actually, looked creepy at some points but the horrible cinematography ruins it all.I found a VHS copy of this crap some time ago and I can only say that it serves for historic purposes only. Otherwise, I don't see the point of watching it.