Running Time:  22 minutes

Writer/Director:  Christopher Alan Broadstone

Featuring Tony Simmons and Gabriel Sigal

Availability Information:  www.blackcabproductions.com

A psychopath rapes and kills a woman in her apartment, and finishes his grisly work just as a more deranged killer stops by intent on the same job.  But as the second killer prefers his victims live, he decides he has to get by on what is on hand, promptly putting his predecessor through the same paces in Christopher Alan Broadstone’s grim short Scream For Me.

Broadstone is the master of the claustrophobic, nightmare setting, as seen in My Skin (reviewed on this site) and others, and this short is enhanced further by clammy 16mm shooting and giallo-flavored colored gels.  Combined with a bruising performance from Tony Simmons—all mirrored shades and 70s sideburns and backwoods drawl—Scream For Me seems to have vomited forward from a 70s grindhouse cinema somewhere.

Simmons, as usual, is a real find; his ravaged face and savage mannerisms are at the rotted core of Scream For Me and Broadstone’s other work.  He is, perhaps, the most talented actor I have seen at this level, and the last person I would like to see walking towards me on a sidewalk.  Gabriel Sigal carries off a difficult role as the weaker of the two killers with sweaty, boggle-eyed aplomb.

But despite its technical expertise and top-notch performances, I felt diminished for having seen Scream For Me.  By not offering redemption, or frankly any real reason, for the actions displayed, I was left as a viewer with a sort of grubby prurience for having born witness to the senseless violence.  Fans of “extreme cinema” will undoubtedly rate this short higher; the average viewer will leave feeling a bit worse for wear.

Three stars.