Scream and Scream Again
| Scream and Scream Again | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Gordon Hessler |
| Produced by |
Max Rosenberg Milton Subotsky Louis M. Heyward |
| Written by | Christopher Wicking |
| Based on | the novel The Disorientated Man by Peter Saxon |
| Starring |
Alfred Marks Vincent Price Christopher Lee Peter Cushing Michael Gothard |
| Music by | David Whitaker |
| Cinematography | John Coquillon |
| Edited by | Peter Elliot |
Production company | |
| Distributed by |
Warner Pathe (UK) AIP (USA) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $350,000[1] |
| Box office | $1,217,000 (US/ Canada rentals)[2] |
Scream and Scream Again is a 1970 conspiracy-thriller / science fiction film, based on a novel by Peter Saxon, a house pseudonym used by various authors in the 1960s and 1970s.
It marks the second teaming, after The Oblong Box, of actors Vincent Price and Christopher Lee with director Gordon Hessler. Price and Lee only share a brief scene in the film's climax, however.
The movie's title, and association with stars Price, Lee and Peter Cushing have given it an undeserved reputation as a violent horror film, but the violence in the film is mostly understated and/or off-screen, while the plot owes more to films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or 1970's era 'conspiracy thrillers' like The Parallax View.
The Overlook Film Guide: Science-Fiction, acknowledges it as: "one of the best science-fiction films made in Britain."
Plot
The movie's structure is fragmented, as it alternates between three distinguishable plot threads.
A man jogging through suburban London grabs his heart, and collapses. He wakes up in a hospital bed. The nurse tending him gives him water. She leaves. He pulls down the bed covers to discover both his legs have been amputated. He screams.
An official (Marshall Jones) from an unidentified Eastern European totalitarian state arrives back at his home country. Upon being debriefed by a superior officer, the man steps around the table, places a hand on the man's shoulder, paralyzes him, and kills him.
A Metropolitan London detective (Alfred Marks) and his unit, investigate the deaths of several young women in the city. The women, picked up at nightclubs by Keith (Michael Gothard), have apparently been killed by the same individual, and some of the bodies have been drained of blood.
The centerpiece of the movie is a near 15 min. long police car-chase/foot-chase sequence through suburban London.
Vincent Price plays a doctor whose clinic specializes in limb and organ transplantation.
Christopher Lee plays the head of Britain's -unnamed- intelligence services.
Peter Cushing -third-billed- plays an unidentified official in the Eastern European country; a very brief cameo role.
The three plot lines converge in a chilling - and unexpected - climax.
Cast
- Vincent Price as Dr. Browning
- Christopher Lee as Fremont
- Peter Cushing as Major Heinrich Benedek
- Judy Huxtable as Sylvia
- Alfred Marks as Detective Superintendent Bellaver
- Michael Gothard as Keith
- Anthony Newlands as Ludwig
- Peter Sallis as Schweitz
- Uta Levka as Jane
- Christopher Matthews as Dr. David Sorel
- Judy Bloom as Helen Bradford
- Clifford Earl as Detective Sergeant Jimmy Joyce
- Kenneth Benda as Professor Kingsmill
- Marshall Jones as Konratz
- Amen Corner as themselves
- Yutte Stensgaard as Erika
- Julian Holloway as Detective Constable Griffin
- Nigel Lambert as Ken Sparten
Production
The movie is based on Peter Saxon's science fiction novel "The Disoriented Man". For the most part, the movie follows the novel quite closely.
In the novel, the antagonists turned out to be aliens. According to an interview with Christopher Lee, the characters were indeed going to be revealed as aliens in the movies climax, but all connections to that fact were cut out of the movie before it was released, leaving the enigmatic villains backgrounds unexplained.
Rights to the novel were bought by Milton Subotsky of Amicus Productions who got financing from Louis Heyward head of European operations for AIP.[1]
There was a script but Gordon Hessler says he got Chris Wickling to heavily rewrite it:
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 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 sort of pulp fiction novel.[3]
The theme song for the film was by Amen Corner, who appeared in the film singing it. This was one of their last appearances before Andy Fairweather Low departed for a solo career after a brief career as Fair Weather.
This marked the first time Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee appeared in the same film. The three, however, do not share screen-space. Cushing does not appear with either Lee or Price - only appearing in a cameo. Lee and Price share a brief scene towards the film's climax.
The opening credits list the copyright as 1969, and Judy Huxtable is billed as a "guest star".
An episode of The X-Files, Kill Switch, depicts Agent Fox Mulder in a virtual reality experience during which, like this film's victim, nurses periodically amputate his limbs while he sleeps.
References
- 1 2 Ed. Allan Bryce, Amicus: The Studio That Dripped Blood, Stray Cat Publishing, 2000 p 56-61
- ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1970", Variety, 6 January 1971 p 11
- ↑ George G. Reis, "An Interview with Gordon Hessler", DVD Drive In accessed 27 February 2014