Scream and Scream Again – 1970 | 95 mins | Horror | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Scream and Scream Again (1969) is an unusually gruesome collaboration between AIP and Amicus based on Peter Saxon’s pulpy pot-boiler, The Disorientated Man. Scream and Scream Again offers a twisted view of contemporary youth counter-culture by depicting London’s discotheques as a breeding ground for humanoid, serial killing vampires. Milton Subotsky’s original script was rejected as old-fashioned and subsequently rewritten by Christopher Wicking; fresh from working with Gordon Hessler on The Oblong Box. Despite some skilful direction from Hessler, Max Benedict’s crisp editing, and a story containing a gruesome futuristic horror storyline punctuated with black humour, the films fragmented framing and average script prove its undoing.

By all accounts Subotsky made a nuisance of himself in the studio and was kindly asked to leave. A disgruntled Subotsky later changed the ending of the film, re-cut it, and could never understand why it was a success, later remarking: “Strangely enough, Scream and Scream Again made a lot of money and that was different from any other film we’ve ever done. I don’t know why; it wasn’t all that good.” The films cast boasts three heavyweights of horror but it’s Alfred Marks that takes the acting honours with a simultaneously droll yet deadly serious performance. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing have only brief scenes. Cushing is a lofty party member subjected to a swift deadly touch, Lee is at his most urbane as the head of British Intelligence, and finally Price comes into his own at the film’s climax as a loony doctor, lending a rather touching note of maniacal self-absorption to his portrayal.

The story begins in particularly nightmarish style with a hapless jogger collapsing in a London park and being consigned to a mysterious hospital. When he awakes and turns backs his bed sheets, to his horror he discovers that his lower left leg has been amputated. On every subsequent occasion he awakes from his drug-induced sleep the jogger discovers his limbs are being systematically removed. Meanwhile, in a Nazi-style unnamed East European state, the sinister Konratz (Marshall Jones) is assassinating members of the party that stand in the way of his gradual rise to power. He subsequently heads to London to meet Fremont (Christopher Lee) of British Intelligence.

Back in London, Detective Superintendent Bellaver (Alfred Marks) is instructed to close the case on a spate of sex murders dubbed “The Vampire Murders” when his enquiries extend to research scientist Dr Browning (Vincent Price). Unbeknown to Bellaver, Browning is at work on creating a super-race of ‘composites’, of which sex-crazed serial killer Keith (Michael Gothard) is an unbalanced prototype. When Keith is chased by the police in his red Austin-Healey, he evades subsequent arrest by ripping off his own hand before throwing himself into a bath of acid.