Hide & Go Shriek (1988)

The queer content of Hide & Go Shriek (1988) is clear from the opening shot. As the camera slowly enters what looks like an old warehouse, a man shaves… and then puts on makeup. We don’t know the exact nature of his orientation, though. He looks at both the male and female prostitutes as he slowly drives down the street. When he has sex with a woman in an alley, I figured they were a crossdresser the likes of Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill.

The odd thing is… well, one of the odd things about the movie… we neither see nor hear from the killer for a long time. Instead we’re introduced to a group of high school friends celebrating graduation by spending the night in the furniture store owned by one of the boy’s fathers. As you might suspect, this is a horny bunch of kids, paired nicely, each couple with plans for varying degrees of sexcapades, some for the first time, others for repeat performances.

While not as overt as the bromance in last week’s movie, Witchboard, there is nevertheless some homoeroticism happening. An early scene shows John Robbins (Sean Kanan is his first screen role) and David Hanson (George Thomas) lifting weights on the driveway. Writer Michael Kelly and director Skip Schooling miss an opportunity to have them shirtless; however, sweaty David says to sweaty John, “Time to take a shower. Come on.”

David is also a little grabby with the other boys. In moments of danger, he holds on to one of them instead of one of the girls. Then, he’s overly distraught when John becomes one of the victims. Granted, they’re best friends, and he doesn’t seem to have any hesitation with his girl, Judy (Donna Baltron.) No, he plays it straight, pardon the pun, not giving any indication that he really is gay or even confused about his sexuality.

When these crazy kids have the idea to play Hide & Seek, it places them in convenient locations for elimination. It’s then that we meet Fred (Jeff Levine), the ex-convict that Mr. Robbins has not only hired, but allowed to live in the back room of the furniture store… which also looks like the space in the opening shot. He subsequently gives chase, and the survivors fight against him, but it seems too soon and too obvious that he’s really the killer.

In the surprise reveal, we learn the true reason we find Hide & Go Shriek on most lists of queer horror films. It makes sense; however, there are no clues dropped along the way for it to make satisfying sense. A few tweaks here and there to beef up the stories of the adults instead of the shenanigans of the kids and it could have been a real shocker in the vein of Sleepaway Camp (1983.) Unfortunately, for me, I have to focus on a variation of a word in the title of that movie: sleep.