Are we all watching the same movie here?? I'll admit that SCREAMS OF A WINTER NIGHT is a great title for a movie, and a sound premise which would eventually be put to better use: Nine or ten college aged acquaintances who don't seem to really like or even know each other take a road trip to a summer camp cottage closed for the off season where a gruesome mass murder (oddly heard but not seen during the opening credits) took place 30 years prior. On the way they stop at a local hick cracker gas station operated by what appears to be the evil twins of the Beverly Hillbillies, who try to warn them off to no avail. So far so good.The problem begins when the kids start sitting around telling each other ubran legend-ish scary stories to pass the time. Which would be just fine except that they seem to be telling each other these stories because they don't have anything else to talk about. There is no exposition, no character development, and no visible bonds exist between them except for one couple who don't even have sex on-screen since the movie was only rated PG.Then there is John, the knucklehead who organized the road trip. To call him annoying is complimentary. He is insufferable. The idea was to try and portray his character as some kind of a nerd or dork whose family used to frequent the cottage. The film unintentionally does a good job as setting him up as a potential lunatic who lured his associates to this setting just to brutally murder them all, but no dice. He's just annoying and we don't even get the satisfaction of watching him die in an amusingly ironic manner after being inflicted with his presence for an hour plus.The horror anthology angle is interesting though, and all three of the stories shown have effective moments. The CREEPSHOW films are still the modern day kings of the horror anthology tradition, one that stretches back to the 1940s with the incomparable DEAD OF NIGHT, another classic being Mario Bava's fabulous BLACK SABBATH from 1963 and the overlooked H.P. Lovecraft collection NECRONOMICON: BOOK OF THE DEAD from 1992. Usually a horror anthology has some sort of linking story connecting three or four segments that each tell their own twisted tale of the macabre. The unique angle this time is that the stories are actually populated by the people in the linking segments as sort of alternate identities.Which could have been a great idea except that the people are so unlikeable that the story segments don't serve as a reprieve from their company. There's one really odd part when the "kids" start tapping & clicking out a rhythm which slowly builds into a cacophony that drives one of the females into a rage. I would have cold-cocked them all for being so childishly obnoxious. They don't even seem to be drinking from the empty beer cans they wave around as props, and John's antics of deliberately trying to startle the females in the group quickly becomes unlikely. Somebody would have knocked a couple of his teeth out for being such a dick and split the scene. It isn't funny, it isn't scary, and the tension that builds is not based on fright but a diminishing ability to be patient with him.Eventually the film does build to a satisfyingly gruseome supernatural climax that apparently took so much of the movies' low budget production cost that the filmmakers appear to have literally run out of money while four of the ten were making a frenzied escape through the woods. The movie ends with a freeze-frame of them running hand in hand, and I can't help but wonder if maybe the last few minutes of intended action was abandoned at the film lab when they couldn't afford the processing bill.So again I ask, are we all watching the same movie here? I enjoy low budget regionally made horror movies starring no-name talents and have a particular fondness for anthology chillers. But the legends surrounding the film are more interesting than anything which takes place on screen. One of the college dorms used for one of the story segments is rumored to be haunted, and maverick wunderkind Quentin Tarentino has championed the movie, supposedly owning his own print which he screens for people who don't know any better than to go do something else just because it's Quentin Tarentino showing it. He could show old toothpaste commercials and people would watch in rapt awe.The film was pioneering in the sense that it did beat "Friday The 13th" into theaters by over a year with a story of college kids being menaced at an off-season summer camp. And it also proceeded THE EVIL DEAD with a story of college kids sitting around a disused cabin running afoul of some sort of hyperkenetic supernatural force of evil. But since this evil is never explained and the summer camp angle isn't ever explored as a setting the result is a null-sum gain. They could have been anywhere, the summer camp angle only serving as a device to make it more difficult for them to seek out help when their lamps start running out of fuel. Which might be the most frightening aspect of the movie: Being stuck sitting around in the dark with John and his creepy, disturbing sense of humor & not even having a radio to listen to. A college road trip to a disused cabin with no tunes? Come on.So I just don't get it. My expectations were perhaps a bit high, especially based on the title which suggested a winter time setting and horror hijynx involving snow, sleighs, rusted shovels, colorful scarves, lost mittens, homicidal Christmas elves, maybe a possessed snowman. If you ask me it looks like they made the wrong movie. Great title though!4/10

I have this movie on the absolute WORST DVD bootleg in my entire collection of substandard DVD bootlegs. I remember seeing it though in the early 90's on a professional VHS tape, which more or less did justice to a low-budget 16 mm semi-professional film like this. This is an anthology/portmanteau-style film, but I don't know that ALL the stories were really based on urban legends (and this is definitely NOT the first horror film to mine popular urban legends anyway). This does have, as its first story, the old "couple parked in lover's lane, boyfriend gets out, and girlfriend hears scratching on the roof of car" tale, but it also manages to somehow throw bigfoot into the mix (bigfoot films at that time being very popular among low-budget, regional filmmakers). The second story though, about three guys spending the night in a haunted dormitory, is so idiosyncratically bizarre that it's hard to believe it could even be an urban legend. (The end of this story somehow manages to be jaw-droppingly stupid yet at the same time hauntingly disturbing). The third and final story about a female serial is more ho-hum. It COULD be an urban legend, but it's not one I've personally ever heard.The "frame story" here is especially effective. A group of young people are staying in a remote cabin and telling each other these stories(strangely, the characters in the scary stories are played by the same actors who are in the "frame story" even though they are not supposed to be the same people)while an ominous "ghost wind" howls increasingly loudly outside. The sound effects are very effective and the ending is GREAT and really makes the whole thing worthwhile.It really wouldn't surprise me, as another reviewer said, if this movie, like the early 70's stop-motion epic "Equinox", was a great influence on "The Evil Dead". This one certainly doesn't need the deluxe Criterion treatment "Equinox" recently received (complete with the $40 price tag), and it's possible the original elements aren't in too good of shape. But it certainly deserves some kind of halfway decent DVD release. Quentin Tarantino reportedly likes it a lot so maybe there's hope.

This is certainly no award winner, but I was very pleased to have found out the name of this film. For many years, I've had a memory of a particular scene where a guy has gone bonkers and is clawing at a green light bulb that is covered in cobwebs. I located it at a local video store (to think, they've had it all these years!). I saw this with my sister and her friend during one a horror movie marathon at our little local two-screen cinema back when I was only 6 or 7 years old. It scared me to death! In watching it recently, it has some spooky parts, but it's definitely not the horrific movie of my memories..... All in all, it's a low-budget trilogy of spooky stories....

When I was 10 years old, I saw the previews for this movie on television. Seeing spooky shows/movies on t.v. and in the safety of my home, I was intrigued as a little girl to see this movie. I begged my family to take us to it when it would come to our local drive-in. It happened to show the week of July 4th in our town. My family and my dad's brother's family all loaded up two full size vans to go see this movie I begged for all of us to go see! My dad and uncle tried to make light of the spookiness for the rest of us by laughing and joking at crucial parts in the movie, but I was already spooked. I got half way through the movie and climbed over the back seat of the van to try and avoid seeing or hearing anymore! It didn't work. I was too curious and would peek over the seat at what seemed to be the worst parts of the film. I was thoroughly scared and regretted that I got what I asked for. This movie gave me more nightmares than any other movie or story I had ever seen, read or heard. Not even the Exorcist or The Shining scared me as much as this movie and I don't know why. The story telling was creepy and the visuals were just enough to frighten!