Amicus Strikes!

 

 (imdb)

AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! -1973-Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) goes to live in castle Fenn Griffin with her newlywed husband Sir Charles (Ian Ogilvy) and almost immediately is terrorized by a severed hand that seems to come out of a painting of one of his ancestors. She also sees visions of an eyeless apparition missing a hand. She meets Silas (Geoffrey Whitehead), a woodsman. She asks the family lawyer (Guy Rolfe) for help but he's killed. Charles is apparently hiding something. Neither of them seems so happy when Doctor Whittle (Patrick Magee) tells them Catherine is pregnant. When their maid decides to spill the beans to Catherine, she's thrown down the stairs. When her aunt insists Catherine leaves, the hand strangles her. Everything seems to point to Silas but he seems to have done nothing. When Catherine really begins to act hysterical, Dr. Pope (Peter Cushing) is called in. It seems he shouldn't have bothered. No one will help him. When Whittle decides to tell Pope something he's strangled by the invisible hand. Eventually Charles tells all. A former lord (Herbert Lom) raped a bride and cut off the groom's hand (Silas' ancestor). The ancestor cursed him. 

This well-made but often forgotten Amicus production was more influenced by "Rosemary's Baby" than anything else. Director Roy Ward Baker made VAULT OF HORROR the same year.

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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. 

Thanks for reading!

The Horror! The Daughter of Horror!

DEMENTIA/DAUGHTER OF HORROR-1955-”Come with me into the tormented haunted half lit night of the insane. This is my world. Let me lead you into it. Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad”. 

So says the unnamed narrator of this weird low budget quickie (this version runs 55 mins.) that seems to have inspiration from both German expressionism and Ed Wood! It features no spoken dialogue, only narration (dementedly provided by Johnny Carson's future late night sidekick Ed McMahon!)

An insane woman called The Gamin (we know she's insane because the narrator says so) wakes up in bed fully clothed. She goes to a dresser draw, pulls out a stiletto and smiles. After encountering a child and seeing a wife beater arrested in the hall of her apartment she buys a newspaper from a smiling dwarf (who else but Angelo Rossitto?) with the headline: “Mysterious Stabbing”. The look on her face seems to say she knows all about it already. She walks down a dark alley and when a street drunk harasses her a police detective (Ben Roseman) viciously beats the drunk with a blackjack while she laughs insanely. Then she encounters a well dressed sleaze with a pencil thin mustache who tries to put the moves on her. After buying a flower from a haunted looking flower lady the detective introduces her to The Rich Man (Bruno Ve Sota). The Rich Man takes her to dinner, then a bar and finally a nightclub (the police detective is also hanging out there) where The Rich Man stares  obsessively at a dancer. This all goes on with no dialogue what so ever. Only music and a few sound effects! The mysterious narrator then returns while the pair are driving in The Rich Man's car to inform us that The Gamin is going to have a flashback about her parents. And what a flashback! 

It takes place in a graveyard! Here we learn how her abusive drunken father (who looks like the police detective) murdered her slutty mother after he finds a cigar in an ashtray (apparently dad doesn't smoke) and then she stabs her father to death! We also meet a hooded figure in a suit with a lantern who calls himself (?) "the demon who possesses your soul". He has the voice of the narrator so now we know who's relating the whole thing...

Later she and the Rich Man go to his apartment (the detective is watching them the whole time). He plays the piano and she fixes him a drink but he's more interested in the meal his butler brings him. After nourishment it's time for hanky-panky. But our heroine will have none of it. When he tries to kiss her she stabs him and pushes him out a window. His butler doesn't seem bothered. He just laughs. She runs away but then realizes when she stabbed the Rich Man he grabbed a pendant she was wearing around her neck. Fortunately, she happens to run right into his dead body with the pendant still clutched in his hand! Despite the corpse being surrounded by "the ghouls of insanity" she gets the medallion back but only after cutting off the hand that holds it. She runs away again but the police detective is following her. She escapes him and ditches the severed hand in the flower lady's basket. 

When she is finally trapped in an alley, she is saved by the sleazy guy with the pencil thin mustache who takes her into a night club he owns. He magically dresses her in a gown while Shorty Rogers and His Giants play on stage. She goes out to meet the denizens of the club who are either passed out drunk or jiving spasmodically. Comedian Shelly Bergman (perhaps the only one still alive associated with the production...?) appears briefly as a very frantic one. The Gamin gets into the groove and joins the band on stage. Then the police detective shows up and displays some handcuffs. Once again her madness takes over and everyone in the club accuses her. The Rich Man (minus his hand) even shows up to mock her! Everyone crowds in on her with clutching hands and bizarre close-ups and flashbacks occur. Suddenly she wakes up in bed. Was it only a dream? She opens the dresser draw and there is her pendant wrapped in a severed hand and it's alive!

For years the only thing I knew about DOH is the clutching hand scene which is being shown on screen in the movie theater (the marquee also says BRIDE OF THE MONSTER is showing) in THE BLOB. It's really a weirdly avant garde film noir that's saved by it's short running time. The images presented are strange and must have taken many an audience in the 50's by surprise. 

I read a number of stories about credited director John Parker the most persistent being that he didn't actually exist and featured player Bruno Ve Sota actually made DAUGHTER OF HORROR. But more recent research seems to say that Parker was real and wrote and produced it while Ve Sota "probably" directed it. 

Lead Actress Adrienne Barrett may have been Parker's secretary. IMDB says she made only one more movie THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...31 years later! But since that movie is an Australian production I wonder if it's the same actress? A lot can happen in 31 years I guess. Jazz trumpeter Shorty Rogers was a very well known musician and later became a composer and arranger. He even arranged Ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith's first solo album in 1967. Ve Sota (who's real life wife Jebbie plays the flower girl) appeared in low budget movies and TV. He is the credited director on 3 films including the much maligned but great THE BRAIN EATERS! 

Whew! Thanks for reading (if you read this far!)!