All Rise...

Judge Patrick Naugle screams like a little girl.

The Charge

Triple distilled horror…as powerful as a vat of boiling acid!

The Case

Three seemingly unrelated plotlines come together to make the viewer Scream and Scream Again! In the first one a jogger out for a leisurely jaunt suddenly finds himself strapped to a hospital gurney with a leg missing…then another leg…and even more body parts start disappearing! In the second involves the overseas government and an operative named Konratz (Marshall Jones, Murders in the Rue Morgue) who gets mixed up in a possible conspiracy. The third involves a cop (Alfred Marks, Fanny Hill) trying to stop a crazed serial killer who has been sexually assaulting and murdering young women. All of these stories eventually culminate when Vincent Price shows up as a surgeon with more on his mind than just the Hippocratic oath!

Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. You can't get more 'horror' than that. Lee and Price starred in a slew of horror movies over their decades long careers, including such classic hits as House of Wax, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and House on Haunted Hill. In 1970, Lee and Price starred together along with horror icon Peter Cushing in Scream and Scream Again, an odd horror/drama/sci-fi/conspiracy thriller that is long on talent and somewhat short on entertainment value.

I didn't hate Scream and Scream Again, but I was disappointed at what the film turned out to be. By just the looks of the poster art (and the Twilight Time Blu-ray cover)—a naked woman half dissolved in a boiling, bubbling vat of acid—you'd think that the film was akin to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Instead it's a rather lethargic early '70s chiller/drama that is more police procedural than out-and-out horror movie. In fact, while that vat of acid does show up in the film, it's in the most unremarkable of ways. Talk about faulty advertising!

Of the three stories separate plot lines that connects Scream and Scream Again, the best is the mysterious fellow trapped in a hospital bed that keeps waking up missing one body part at a time. Why? The answer is eventually unveiled, though the most interesting moments are what leads up to the reveal. The rest of the film is just sort of generic boilerplate that doesn't really go anywhere interesting. The film is so seeped in 1970s culture that the music score often sounds like something out of a jazz version of West Side Story while long stretches feature driving or in clubs while music plays in the background (it's as if the producers were bound to contractually include friends and family musicians who wanted the exposure).

As usually, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price are both a macabre joy to watch. Price is especially sinister when he shows up at the end in scrubs while one nosey potential victim pokes through a morgue filled with gruesome body parts; Lee's role is less showy and Peter Cushing's screen time doesn't really amount to anything more than a glorified cameo. None of the big name stars show up as much as the film's two main leads (Marks and Jones), which is a disappointment. On the plus side there's a rather lengthy chase sequence through London that was the film's sole highpoint.

It's hard to recommend Scream and Scream Again due to its lethargic place and overly talky screenplay. There are a few moments of genuine creepiness (the final fifteen minutes gave me the intermittent willies) but overall this is one of the slower horror films I've experienced. What's more, there's a fair amount of nudity and that poster looks almost X-rated.

Scream and Scream Again (Blu-ray) is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen in 1080p high definition. This is a fine looking image that often features small (and in a few cases, large) defects throughout the print. Colors are mostly solid with dark black levels. While Twilight Time's work on this MGM title is commendable, it's far from a perfect transfer. The soundtrack is presented in DTS-HD 1.0 Master Audio in English. This is a good reproduction of the original audio track but it's totally front heavy without any surround sounds or directional effects. Also included on this disc are English subtitles.

Bonus features include a commentary track by film historians David Del Valle and Tim Sullivan, a featurette on director Gordon Hessler ("Gentleman Gothic: Gordon Hessler at AIP"), an interview with actress Uta Levka, a still gallery, a radio spot, an isolated score track, and the theatrical trailer.

Scream and Scream Again was not my cup of scalding hot tea. Even with the considerable talents of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, it falls far short of being an actual horror movie. Twilight Time's work on this disc is passable with fair-to-good transfer and a few decent supplements.

The Verdict

More of a whimper, really.

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