Scream and Scream Again **** (1970, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alfred Marks, Michael Gothard) – Classic Movie Review 2829

Director Gordon Hessler’s interestingly conceived and imaginatively done 1970 British science-fiction shocker is notable as the first film to unite the great horror movie triumvirate of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, though alas they do not share the screen.

It is the second teaming of Price and Lee with Hessler after The Oblong Box (1969), but they only share a brief scene near the film’s climax, while Cushing only appears in a brief cameo and not with either Lee or Price.

The title of the movie and its horror stars have given it an reputation as a gory horror film, but any violence is mostly understated or off-screen. The story is not so much a horror plot but more along the lines of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) or Seventies conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View (1974).

Price stars as Dr Browning, a mad scientist who is murdering people in London to get bits of bodies to make superhuman creatures, while Lee plays Fremont, the head of British Intelligence, who seems far from human himself. Cushing is Major Heinrich Benedek, an unidentified official in the Eastern European country. Alfred Marks plays Detective Superintendent Bellaver, at the head of the London Metropolitan Police who are tracking the serial killer who drains his female victims of blood.

The trail leads to Keith (Michael Gothard), who has gone to nightclubs and picked up the women, who have apparently been killed by the same individual.

Even if this is not the gory and lurid horror movie of legend, there is certainly plenty to relish in this fascinating mix of conspiracy thriller and science fiction, with plenty of powerful and exciting sequences. Director Hessler uses all his skills and imagination to keep the involved and complexly structured story as fully as possible under control.

Christopher Wicking provides the intriguing screenplay, which he adapted from the novel The Disorientated Man by Peter Saxon, a pseudonym used by various authors in the 60s and 70s. The movie’s structure is fragmented, alternating between three plot lines that converge in a chilling and unexpected climax. The central set piece of the movie is a nearly 15-minute police car and foot chase through suburban London.

Hessler (12 December 1925 – 19 January 2014) says he got Wicking to rewrite the existing script: ‘That was really a pulp book, a throwaway book that you read on a train. There was nothing in it, just empty pieces of action. But it was Chris [Wicking] who gave it a whole new level by using it as a political process of what might happen in the future. That is what made the picture, he’s the one that came up with all those ideas, yet he still managed to keep the nuances of the pulp fiction novel.’

It is a co-production between Louis M Heyward’s American International Pictures and Milton Subotsky’s Amicus Films. The theme song is by Amen Corner, who appear in the film singing it.

Also in the cast are Anthony Newlands, David Lodge, Judy Huxtable, Peter Sallis, Yutte Stensgaard, Christopher Matthews, Julian Holloway, Kenneth Benda, Judy Bloom, Marshall Jones, Clifford Earl, Uta Levka, Nigel Lambert and Lee Hudson.

Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing star together in House of the Long Shadows (1983).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2829

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