Scream and Scream Again

For the first fifteen minutes, I was lost.

Scream and Scream Again cuts between three disconnected plot threads with no context or through-line. It’s not a bad thing. I found it a refreshing change that forced my attention. A warning though, these threads hold many surprises. Revealing them may spoil some of the film’s fun.

As the credits roll, we see a man jogging through a park in 1970s London. He collapses, clutching his chest, and wakes up in a hospital bed. A nurse attends him but refuses to answer any of his questions. The nurse leaves and the man screams in horror as he realizes one of his legs has been amputated.

Cut to another thread involving an intelligence officer named Konratz returning to his unnamed Eastern-European country. The large military presence and proliferation of black and red symbols indicate a fascist regime. Konratz receives a reprimand from his superior, after which Konratz steps behind his superior, places his hand on the man’s shoulder, Vulcan nerve pinch-style, and kills him.

Cut to the third thread. In London, Detective Superintendent Bellaver investigates the rape and murder of a young woman found drained of blood. Accompanied by a young forensic pathologist named Sorel, Bellaver visits the woman’s employer, a cancer researcher.

These disparate plots don’t converge until the film’s final fifteen minutes, which proffers a resolution that still leaves several unanswered questions. Cramming three movies worth of plot into ninety-five minutes means there will be casualties. This will rub some folks the wrong way, but I liked the ambiguity. It provides the film a resonance, allowing you to conjure theories and see if they fit.

If you’re aware of the film, you might be surprised that I’ve yet to mention its three top-billed stars: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing. That’s because they don’t factor much. Like the script’s structure, this isn’t a bad thing, but folks expecting them to lead the film will be disappointed to discover Cushing’s role amounts to a single-scene cameo (where his would-be Eastern European accent comes and goes) and Lee and Price play supporting roles and only share a single scene. Price’s role proves the only one of consequence, and thus his fans will be the least disappointed as he delivers his usual turn and gets the most screen time of the three.

The bulk of the film comprises a police-procedural as Bellaver and Sorel track the so-called “Vampire Killer,” who’s played with a convincing combination of charm and menace by Michael Gothard. A honeypot trap in a London disco snares him, leading to an effective car chase capped with a memorable finale that sees the killer scaling an almost sheer cliff at superhuman speed. The police stand stupefied until Bellaver picks up a rock and throws it, dislodging the perpetrator and sending him tumbling to the ground, after which Bellaver says matter-of-factly, “Right, get ‘em.” Indeed, Bellaver is so competent and Alfred Marks is so entertaining in the role, I wish they would have spun his character into a franchise.

This scene also proves crucial to maintaining the film’s tightwire tone straddling serious paranoid thriller and high concept camp. When the plot threads finally coalesce, the finale proves preposterous on the slightest introspection. But beneath its absurdity, it’s grounded in a conceivable world of political power plays, careerist aspirations, and intellectual arrogance. Viewed through that lens, the fantastical elements take on a satirical quality lampooning the mythical Soviet superman.

Director Gordon Hessler seems to grasp this dichotomy as he often uses a hand-held, documentary-like approach to the procedural elements, further grounding them in a gritty realism. The car chase through suburban London thrills thanks to the shots from the driver’s POV, putting us in the car with the pursuers as they weave in and out of traffic, with each bend or turn potentially masking an oncoming car.

Still, as I said, folks expecting a film led by the three top-billed stars will be disappointed. As will folks hoping for a gothic horror. The setting and Hessler’s style are decidedly contemporary. But fans of British horror should enjoy it, even if they’ve been lukewarm to Amicus’s other efforts. It’s an underrated gem.

A Bit of Speculation

After watching the film I had a thought: were it made by Hammer instead of Amicus a few script tweaks to Scream and Scream Again could have rebooted one of Hammer’s iconic franchises. To discuss further, I’ll need to reveal the film’s finale.

Last spoiler warning.

Still here? Okay, in the finale, we learn Vincent Price has been building “composites,” new people composed of the parts of others. These beings have supernatural strength, feel no pain, and heal preternaturally with no scarring. Gothard was his first specimen to exhibit autonomous intelligence, but clearly wasn’t perfect. A further twist reveals Price himself as a composite, part of a larger network seeking to remake humanity as a better species.

Does this plot sound familiar? In 1970, Hammer released The Horror of Frankenstein, hoping to reboot the franchise without star Peter Cushing. It flopped and Cushing was back four years later in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.

But what if, instead, Hammer had made this movie, with one slight change? What if they cut Cushing’s cameo scene and left his name off the marquee? Then, at the film’s end, after Lee shows up to save the day and vanquish Price (revealing himself as a composite in the process) we cut back to the unnamed fascist state. The camera follows an officer down a hallway into a laboratory similar to Price’s. Standing with his back to us, a man wearing a lab coat works over a table.

“Browning has been terminated,” says the officer with an Eastern European accent.

The man grunts but keeps working, his back still to us.

“Konratz too,” says the officer.

The man in the lab coat offers no response.

The officer adds, hesitantly, “It was him.”

The man in the lab coat stops and turns, revealing himself as Cushing.

“What shall we do, Herr Frankenstein?” the officer asks.

Cushing cracks an evil smile. Cut to credits.

Wouldn’t that be something? Reinventing the Frankenstein franchise as a contemporary paranoid thriller, with Cushing and Lee once again opposite one-another. Later entries could focus on either star, as they fleshed out the world and explored contemporary Cold War fears.

Sadly, Hammer was too late to abandon its period horrors. Their late-to-the-party attempt at contemporary horror, To the Devil a Daughter, made in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby’s commercial success, was their last theatrical feature. Maybe pivoting earlier with a movie like this one might have saved them. Alas, we’ll never know.