Twists of Terror, originally titled Primal Scream, is a 1997 Canadian made-for-television horror anthology film directed by Douglas Jackson and starring Jennifer Rubin, Françoise Robertson, Nick Mancuso and Joseph Ziegler.
Plot
A collection of three macabre tales, presented by an agoraphobic middle-aged man, named Philip, who lives in a seedy section of Los Angeles. As he sorts through his piles of yellowed newspaper clippings, he relates his paranoid nightmares through three stories.
"The People You Meet" is based on a couple, Joe and Amy, who are on their second honeymoon, when they are forced off the road by a speeding sportscar. They get a lift from an odd local who is not what he seems. They pick up another hiker, who just happens to be a friend of the local, and they kidnap Joe and Amy and take them to an abandoned cabin. It concludes with the man and woman both turning on one another, as they had set each other up.
"The Clinic" finds a workaholic traveling salesman, Crenshaw, who after stopping for gas late one night in a nowhere town is attacked by a vicious dog. He finds sanctuary in a private clinic where he is treated by the young Dr. Roberts and a beautiful nurse. Very strange things seem to be happening in this clinic. Blood on the walls, bone chilling screams, patients dancing in the hall. Crenshaw is told that the hallucinations are caused by a rare form of rabies however it turns out that inmates have taken over the clinic, which is an asylum.
"Stolen Moments" shows a shy and pretty Cindy Craig who has trouble meeting men, living her life in an apartment with a plethora of pets. One evening she goes to a bar and is picked up by two men, they go back to an abandoned house and have sex, but then she murders them and resumes her life as the 'quiet' woman she is.
Cast
Jennifer Rubin as Amy
Françoise Robertson as Cindy
Nick Mancuso as Daniel
Joseph Ziegler as The Host
Christopher Heyerdahl as Darien
Carl Marotte as Joe
Martin Neufeld as Dr. Roberts
Jayne Heitmeyer as Tanya
Andrew Jackson as Barry
Jack Langedijk as Richard
Keath Thome as Bernard
Claudia Besso as Mai
Steve Adams as Sam
Production
The film was based on a screenplay by horror novelist John Shirley, known for his work on The Crow. It was produced by Canadian studio Filmline International (in conjunction with The Movie Network), with American studio Paramount Pictures later acquiring distribution rights. Filming occurred in Montreal, Quebec and Léry, Quebec. The cast consisted of local actors from Quebec and other parts of Canada, aside from the first segment, which features American actress Jennifer Rubin, who had notably appeared in the horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors ten years prior in 1987.
Martin Neufeld, who appears in the second segment "The Clinic", later recalled that he was nervous to be working with veteran actor Nick Mancuso, saying on his website, "I had always been a fan of Nick Mancuso since his Stingray days, a show that I enjoyed immensely and watched regularly. So when I found out that I would be working with Nick I was very excited. Because 'The Clinic' was pretty much going to be a three hander between Nick, Jayne Heitmeyer and myself. But for some reason, I was extremely nervous on the first day of shooting. I only had small scene that day with Nick, and yet I kept missing my mark. I wasn't getting into my light, I was struggling to remember my dialogue, I was sweating bullets, it was horrible. I felt terrible. And of course the worse I felt the more self conscious I became. And that is death for any actor. Thankfully Nick was really cool about the whole thing. We finally got the scene in the can and then I was fine. The rest of the shoot went extremely well."
Release
Twists of Terror premiered on The Movie Network in its native Canada on July 2, 1997. Later in 1997, the film was released on video in Germany and Australia (where it received an R18+ rating for an explicit sex scene in the third segment), and then in the UK and Japan in April 1998.
It made its television premiere in the US, October 17, 1998, on Showtime. It would continue to be aired heavily during the early 2000s, on both The Movie Network and Showtime.
After getting released on VHS by Paramount in the US, a DVD was released in Canada on November 26, 2003.