Sunday, April 13, 2014

Scream of the Banshee (2011)

College professor Isla Whelan receives a mystery box in the mail. Inside are a map of section three of the Universitys storage area and a gauntlet.  Research student Otto immediately puts on the iron glove and pretends to punch things.  Because if there's one thing we know about historical artifacts, it's that you should use them as toys, and not worry about treating them with respect or wearing archival gloves when handling them.  I was really hoping when he put his hand inside some old tyme spider monster would bite his finger off.

While trying to locate the marked location on the map, they find a hidden room behind a shelf of boxes. Surprisingly no one seems concerned, or even mentions, that the this shelf full of cardboard boxes containing priceless historical relics and papers has multiple  rivulets of water running down it and soaking everything.  This should cause alarm due to the damage that could occur to anything stored there, and may explain the awful smell they keep mentioning.

The secret room contains a single box which has the word Duncan written on ite.  Professor Whelan writes Duncan on her arm, which is just plain odd for a fifty something year old woman to do.  When they open the box, they find an ancient iron box which they peg as something from templar knights in 12th century Ireland. They also discover that it opens if they jam the gauntlet into it.

Inside is the pointy toothed decapitated head of a banshee, which they assume is probably a person or animal even though it looks like this:


They assume it's harmless.... because harmless things are always locked in iron boxes hidden behind fake walls in secret rooms. No worry of any decayed flesh, ancient molds, or diseases for these archaeologists. And when the head finally screeches, explodes into nothing, and everyone's ears bleed, there is confusion but no concern or visits to the hospital.

But they'll soon find out that when you've heard the scream of the banshee, you're marked for death. Those involved start having nightmares and strange things begin to happen. This prompts them to try to do some research into who Duncan might be, and what that thing was. In a ridiculous scene Professor Whelan suggests perhaps their nightmares are due to this thing being from a LSD experiment. Because as we all know, 12th century Ireland was a hotbed of LSD activity.

There's also some blather about the professor's estranged daughter and her boyfriend. And then we've got the involvement of nutty old former archaeology professor Duncan played by Lance Henrikson.  We were convinced Lance was never going to be in scenes with any other actors, but were proved wrong in the end.  But don't expect to see much of him in the film.  And since this is a Sfyf film, that's pretty much all you need to know.


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