SCREAMPLAY

Edgar Allan (Rufus B. Seder) is an aspiring screenwriter who has just come to Hollywood to make it in the movies…only to wind up working as the janitor at a fleabag apartment complex run by the greasy ex-boxer Martin (played by underground film legend George Kuchar). When Edgar begins channeling his frustrations with his kooky neighbors into fodder for his latest screenplay, the vivid murder scenes he writes begin to happen for real. As the bodies begin to pile up and the line between reality and fiction become increasingly blurred, Edgar, who is convinced that the only way to be a real writer is to suffer, is slowly driven mad.

SCREAMPLAY is a marvel of campy charm, gothic horror tropes, and astonishingly inventive set design and special effects. Wearing its low-budget resourcefulness on its sleeve, but also genuinely atmospheric and transporting, the spell it casts is all the more remarkable given that it was filmed almost entirely within the confines of the 3,200-square-foot South End Boston loft where director Rufus Butler Seder and his Boston Black and White Movie Company (comprised of fellow students from the city’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts) had previously made a bevy of similarly inspired 16mm short films. Conjured from some of the earliest and still-most-effective cinematic techniques – matte paintings, scale models, ingeniously adaptable sets, animation, highly expressionistic lighting, and the good old-fashioned magic provided by charismatic performers (above all, Seder himself in the central role, and of course the irreplaceable George Kuchar, who broke his ankle during filming of the final fight scene) – SCREAMPLAY is a deliriously entertaining demonstration of the power of low budget invention, and a singularly charming (Boston) salute to Old Hollywood.

Premiered (alongside BLOOD SIMPLE) at the 1985 New York Independent Film Festival, initially distributed by Troma (click here for details about our upcoming Troma series), but rarely screened in recent decades, SCREAMPLAY has been newly restored in 4K – scanned from Seder’s personal 16mm print – and is now back in circulation, where it’s poised to charm, delight, and frighten a whole new audience.

Preceded by: Rufus Butler Seder IN THE CITY: A TRILOGY (LIVE IN FEAR; SUN RUN; PHANTOM SUBWAYS) 1977, 6 min, 16mm-to-DCP

Writer, director, and star Rufus Butler Seder and producer and cinematographer Dennis M. Piana will be here in person on Fri & Sat for Q&As following the evening screenings; they’ll be joined on Fri evening by star Katy Bolger!

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