Scream And Scream Again (but not for a sequel)

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN-1970-A guy jogging during the credits collapses after the director's name is shown. In a hospital bed he seems very confused. He's even more shocked to discover one of his legs is missing. Then a spy named Konradz (Marshall Jones) kills his boss with what resembles the Vulcan nerve pinch. Another scene change and Bellaver (Alfred Marks), a snotty uptight police superintendent visits Dr. Browning (Vincent Price) about the murder of his female assistant. Back at the hospital (?), the jogger finds his other leg is now missing. At a disco, Keith (Michael Gothard) meets a young woman (Judy Huxtable,credited as guest star) who he winds up beating, then killing. Meanwhile in some military dictatorship Konradz kills his superior (Peter Cushing) after being reprimanded for torturing a girl.

Back to the jogger who is now missing both his arms. Then we are introduced to Fremont (Christopher Lee), head of some British intelligence department who seems to know what's going on. The police catch Keith sucking blood from a woman's wrist and he knocks them all around and escapes. The police follow and trap him on a mountain which he falls off of but isn't killed. They handcuff him to a car fender but he cuts off his own hand to escape. He goes to Dr. Browning's practice and jumps into a vat of acid. Upon examining the left behind severed hand the coroner Dr. Sorel (Christopher Matthews) comes to the conclusion that it's artificial. At night a nurse steals the hand. While this is going on Fremont seems to be trying to negotiate a plan to get back a captured spy plane pilot. Bellaver is killed by a phony police psychologist. When Sorel's girlfriend (Judy Bloom) is kidnapped, he investigates Browning's complex and finds his lab packed with lots of frozen severed limbs. Browning is making artificial humans (called “composites”). Sorel seems to accept it all until he sees his girlfriend on the operating table. Browning (who it's revealed is also a composite) and Konradz have a showdown. Somehow Browning escapes Konradz's death grip and throws him in the vat of acid. Fremont shows up and makes Browning take an acid bath too then speaks ominously “It's only the beginning”. Apparently Fremont knew everything that was going on and perhaps was setting up a sequel? Maybe not. 

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN is so disjointed with lack of any coherent plot or even a central character it almost seems like two (or three) separate story lines spun together. Also this was touted as the first screen teaming of Price, Lee and Cushing when in fact except for a few minutes in the finale where Lee and Price finally meet none of them have any scenes together! This meeting was similar to they confrontation in THE OBLONG BOX which was made the year before by SASA's director, the German born Gordon Hessler, a kind of journeyman filmmaker going through a "making Hammer like horror films for AIP" phase, although SCREAM  was produced by Hammer's chief rival at the time Amicus. Hessler would make THE CRY OF THE BANSHEE (also with Price) and a remake of THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. Later he would do a lot of American TV. The Amen Corner (with Andy Fairweather-Low) do a song. 

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