Phillipines, 1999
Review:
JA Kerswell
Often referred to as the Filipino SCREAM (1996), SCREAM AS MUCH AS YOU WANT shares a lot with its North American inspiration but has its own idiosyncrasies and quirks. After a killer with garden shears attacks a group of science students during a trip to the woods, the lone survivor comes under suspicion by others at their university. Panic spreads as the killings and disappearances continue on campus. Although its scattershot approach means it fails to hang together as well as it should, the film skates by with a campy SCOOBY DOO’esque energy.
Class heartthrob Robert (Onemig Bondoc) awakes in a bodybag in the woods just as police clear away his dead classmates, who were ambushed and butchered by a mystery killer in black. Detective Jake (Ryan Eigenmann) is immediately suspicious of him - as are his fellow university students who all gather to gawk at the carnage. However, Robert barely escapes with his life when the killer attempts to murder him again in the hospital.
Jake solicits the opinions of attractive psychology major student Claire (Carmina Villaroel) - which I’m sure is totally standard police procedure. Claire begins a romantic relationship with him, but begins to suspect Jake when she awakes to find him throwing knives at pictures on her bedroom wall. She also narrowly survives an encounter with the killer disguised in a welding mask after he chases her around the university workshop with a blow torch.
Meanwhile, the new biology professor Norman (Eric Quizon, who is also the film’s director) dodges angry parents who blame him for their children’s deaths as he was the one who organised the fateful field trip. His students, led by Ted (Bearwin Meily) endeavour to unmask the killer. However, the college mean girls organise a horror-themed costume party to celebrate the end of term, which proves the perfect cover for the murders to continue …
SCREAM AS MUCH AS YOU WANT takes many of its cues from the likes of SCREAM and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997), including its cast of then-popular young TV actors. It even has a scene where the principal is surprised by the killer and stabbed to death in his office. The whodunnit element is as convoluted as SCREAM, but to say more would be to spoil the surprise unmasking of the killer or killers. However, it takes a much more scattershot approach. The humour is largely silly rather than clever; it is rarely wittily self-referential in the same way that Wes Craven's film is. The closest it gets is with two parents discussing if it might be a good idea to open a new psychiatric facility because everyone today is nuts. Another example is calling three of the characters Norman, Freddy and Carrie. Perhaps the cleverest is naming the horror-themed costume party ‘Patayan ’98’ - with Patayan being a popular Filipino ‘Guess the Killer’ style card game. However, nothing exactly to give Kevin Williamson sleepless nights. Its most explicit lift from a classic slasher is the killer waiting for two climbers at the top of some rocks, which is taken from JUST BEFORE DAWN (1980). In its one stab at originality, the film’s standout macabre moment is when one student tries to climb up a chimney to escape, only for the killer to light a fire below her.
Although it culminates in a fun chase and confrontation scene in a large abandoned house, the film otherwise doesn’t have much in the way of sustained suspense. Bodies just pop up throughout the film; often of people we’ve never even seen before. Overall, the film features too many characters to keep tabs on and fails to provide a central person to anchor the audience.
The film also can’t resist dipping its toe into the supernatural with a largely played-for-laughs seance scene - which, of course, ends with a character finding a random dead body hung from a doorframe. Admittedly, SCREAM AS MUCH AS YOU WANT has a high body count, but not much in the way of actual bloody violence - with most of the kills happening offscreen. It does, however, have a sense of goofiness, which might be endearing if you’re in the right frame of mind. I especially enjoyed Emily (Patricia Javier) and Lucille (Gladys Reyes), who yawn their way through a classmate’s funeral and throw bitchy barbs at their fellow students.
The film was made in 1998 and opened on Philippine screens in January of 1999. In almost a pastiche of the ´floating heads’ posters that typified SCREAM and the post-SCREAM cycle, the image used to promote SCREAM AS MUCH AS YOU WANT featured as many as 19 of them! For a later Filipino take on the slasher see BLOODY CRAYONS (2017).
BODY COUNT 16:
Female 9 / Male 7
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WATCH SCREAM AS MUCH AS YOU WANT (1999)
(Uploaded by the movie's production company. For English subtitles choose auto-translate closed captions (CC)).