Death by Dialogue (1988)

At some point in time a person sat down and wrote a movie, he decided that "Death by Dialogue" was a good title. At some other point in time he pitched that movie to some studio executives and they too decided that it was a good name. Somehow none of these people decided that "Death by Dialogue" might be the most boring name ever.

Death by Flames is a much more awesome name.

Have you ever thought the idea of a killer movie script sounded interesting? Yeah, me either. Though apparently someone did because that's what Death by Dialogue is about.

Our story starts out with a man reading said script, and not soon after he's lit on fire by a woman wearing garters and carrying a flamethrower. And yet somehow this movie makes that really kind of boring. I'm not sure how you manage that but it does. After that you're instantly cut to a scene with some bad 80's music where you meet the characters in the story who might actually matter: Lenny and his friends.

Lenny and his four friends decide to visit Lenny's uncle, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not even really sure if it's specified in the movie why they do this... I mean besides to advance the plot. It just strikes me as odd that a bunch of people in their mid-20s would decide to vacation at one of the dude's uncle's house. I would think the beach would be a lot more exciting... and rarely do you run into any demonic movie scripts at the beach.

Either way Lenny's friend Shelly stumbles across the movie script and that's when shit starts to hit the fan. Kind of. Mostly it's after that when it starts getting kind of confusing... and stupid.

While Shelly is reading the script what she's reading is actually happening, or at least there's little hints to that. And yet when she reads about her friends dying she doesn't seem all that concerned when they're missing the next day. I would like to think that if I found a script that oddly had my friend's names in it, described the location where you were at, and then when I read that they died in the script it just so happens that they're missing the next day I might at least mention it to someone else. Apparently not Shelly though.

Maybe I'm wrong about the movie though... maybe that's not what happened. I can't tell you because this movie has parts in it that make absolutely no sense. Like the two friends who go missing that I mentioned up above. It all starts off with a sex scene where at the end the woman gets blown out a window and disappears. The man runs off into the forest looking for her only to find... an '80s hair band rocking out in the middle of the forest. I have no idea why. I'm not sure it's ever really explained. This is a total Birthday Fish moment. There's several of these kinds of moments throughout the movie. It's very difficult to make sense of a movie that has a habit of making no sense.

There were roaming gangs of hair bands in the '80s

So after a few more deaths our characters finally figure out that it's the evil script. I can't remember if they figured it out or the uncle told them... because he knew about it all along. You know, I don't think if I had a problem with "killer manuscripts" running rampant I would let my nephew and his four friends come out to my house to hang out like lambs to the slaughter. Then again, I'm not a dick.

So after they figure out it's the script killing everyone they have figure out a way to stop it. Just writing that sentence I feel stupid. They wrote a movie about it. Either way the ending is... well horrible. It contains demons and fire and... dirt bikes. Also a whole lot of confusion. It's one of those things you kind of have to see for yourself, but I wouldn't suggest it. It's as bad as it sounds.

All and all the movie was pretty terrible, had a lot of rather confusing parts to it, and also had the worst name I could possibly think of. Also a movie about a killer script is pretty lame.

One thing I would like to point out though. Look up at the top, that's a poster for this movie. I'm not sure if you can read what it says so here it is "Ken Sagoes, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!". That was their big selling point... now you know what you're getting yourself into.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.