Shot on 16mm and featuring a cast of students from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, horror anthology Screams of a Winter Night can be excused for having a grainy drive-in aesthetic and mediocre performances. It doesn't, however, excuse the lack of imagination regarding the stories themselves, which range from the extremely predictable to the downright dull.
After two and a half minutes of credits over a black screen, while terrified voices can be heard in the background, the film starts proper as ten friends (who don't seem to like each other all that much) travel to a remote cabin by a lake where they spend the weekend telling each other spooky stories.
The first is a variation of a well known urban legend wherein a couple run out of gas on a lonely road only to meet with a vicious killer (in this instance, a weird, diminutive sasquatch type creature). Tale number two has a group of fraternity pledges spending the night in a deserted, run down, supposedly haunted hotel. And the last story to be told sees a repressed college student becoming a deranged murderess. The film closes with the friends in the cabin being menaced by a malevolent Indian wind spirit (serving as inspiration for The Evil Dead, perhaps).
As a cost-cutting exercise, the characters in the stories are played by the same actors that are telling them, something that adds a little novelty factor to proceedings, but with such unlikeable protagonists, forgettable stories, uninspired direction, and an ending that looks like the makers simply ran out of money or ideas (freeze framing on four of the group as they run for their lives), this obscurity is destined to remain so.
