Movie Info
Movie Name: Scream and Scream Again
Studio: American International Pictures
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): January 1970 (UK)/February 2, 1970 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
Yep…what we apparently have here is a severed hand
A murderer (Michael Gothard) is stalking the streets, preying on women in nightclubs as the police try to track down the source. They discover an almost invincible killer and ties to a Dr. Browning (Vincent Price) who seems to be doing strange experiments with genetically manufactured people. The source of the experiments are unknown but…but the results are terror.
Directed by Gordon Hessler, Scream and Scream Again is a horror sci-fi film based on 1966 book The Disoriented Man by Peter Saxon (which was probably actually a penned by three authors W. Howard Baker, Martin Thomas, and Stephen Francess). The movie was fairly well received by critics and has become a cult hit over the years.
Oh no! This Nazish guy is giving a Vulcan Death Grip to Peter Cushing in his small appearance
Scream and Scream Again is just a weird film. The movie at points doesn’t appear to have a plot, characters are unexplained, and the movie is surprisingly gory and gratuitous…as a result it feels a bit different than many of Price’s films.
The story for Scream and Scream Again is where you start having questions about the movie. Price admitted that he wasn’t even really sure what was going on in the movie. It has a bunch of stories that are tied together, but it feels like it is very loose ties. You have a strange country with a powerful police force and the shadowy ties with Christopher Lee. The reason behind part of the oddness was left out of the movie…the figures were aliens in the book and plans to make them aliens were cancelled. It doesn’t necessarily clean up all the weirdness of Scream and Scream Again, but it kind of explains a bit (right?)
…and now Christopher Lee is meeting in Trafalgar Square with this guy for some reason…
The cast of the movie is great. Though the movie is built around Vincent Price, the movie also contains two other horror legends in Christopher Lee as the head of the group funding the experiments and a small role by Peter Cushing. Price’s decision to do his own death scene allegedly led to sinus problems for years due to his “acid bath”.
The movie has that fun ’70s funk style to it. It looks dated but was probably dated when it was released. I love over stylized films that become horribly dated…it adds to the fun. The movie also has some gore and gratuitous nudity which seems to fit with the style of the picture. It is like an English version of an American grindhouse picture.
Nothing like a nice acid bath at the end of a hard day!
Scream and Scream Again is an odd movie that is fun in its weirdness. Price is a bit more toned down in this role and doesn’t get a ton of screen time since he isn’t the one investigating the crime, but the combination of him with Lee and Cushing cannot be ignored by fans of horror (they later appeared again together in House of Long Shadows in 1983). The film is often packaged with The Oblong Box also with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee.
