Scream and Scream Again

Scream and Scream Again (1970)

[Meh]
Extremely Trashy

Please excuse the shittiness of this review - I blame it one two things. First thing, I watched this movie two weeks ago (god I'm lazy) and my notes on the subject are maddeningly vague. Second thing, though I usually refrain from any creative activity after I have consumed alcohol... well... I really want to get this done so I can stop thinking about it. Yep yep.

It's about... I'm not really sure. It changes directions so many times I had a hard time keeping up with it but here goes. There is a string of murders being committed. The police track down the perpetrator, who has been drinking the blood of his victims in vampire like fashion, and chase him around for a while. Finally, they wind up in this barn belonging to some scientist guy (Vincent Price), and the murderer jumps in a vat of acid which just happens to be there.

The suspicious nature of these circumstances lead this other guy (I dunno who played him) to investigate, uncovering something to do with robots made out of other people or something really weird and demented like that. Meanwhile, there's this other thing going on set in some weird, facist place and a guy who kills people by way of the Vulcan Neck Pinch.

He sort of shows up later in Vincent Price's lair (as does Christopher Lee, who was previously unrelated to the story) and there is some kind of expository scene where all is explained, but the DVD was sticking like a mother fucker so I have no fucking idea what happened. I think there was another explanitory scene in which Christopher Lee's character is tied in a little better but I was in the bathroom when that happened so, yeah, I have no idea what the fuck this movie is about.

That being said, I thought the movie was actually pretty good. It didn't make any kind of sense to me, but it was sort of entertaining in some weird way.

The chase scene, in which the police pursue the vampire-robot guy all over, is very well done (although actually a low point as far as my level of interest goes - I don't really like chase scenes in movies. I find them boring. I really hate chase-movies (ex: the original Italian Job, that one with Jason Statham, and so forth)), but the climax is absolutely priceless.

After chasing the guy all over, they kind of get him in this quarry where he runs up a hill or something and then for some reason he falls over and rolls down the hill and the head police man guy just goes "Alright, get him" and the delivery is brilliant. Words cannot describe the awesomeness of that scene. It truly is wow.

Although the movie is almost unbearbly tainted by the seventies. The music (this is one of those movies with a 'title song', it is performed while the characters are at this club), and thouroughly awful, the clothing, the hair... everything. It's almost nauseating.

But yeah, it's kind of an interesting movie and sort of held my attention (although maybe not... maybe the plot was really obviously and I just wans't paying attention. Who's to know?). Fun.

END

Directed by: Gordon Hessler.  Written by: Christopher Wicking, based on the novel by Peter Saxon.  Starring: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alfred Marks and a bunch of other people.