Weirdhouse Cinema: Scream and Scream Again

to behold. It is nineties seventies scream and Scream Again. I could not tell you what this movie was about until about fifteen minutes from the end. And then at the end there's a twist that really does kind of make sense of everything. But up until then, this is one of the most disjointed, confusing movies I have ever watched. Yeah, this this movie throws you into the deep end and and it and it is gonna watch and see if you can swim. It's uh, you're in in a way

to to a major degree. This film is such an immersive experience because of that, because you're it feels like the guardrails are off in terms of structure. Um, so I I greatly enjoyed this one. It's it's one that has a certain standing in the cult film status and among the movie enthusiasts for its weirdness. Uh. Ebert referred to this film is Goddard for the masses, though I'm not sure I completely understand what he's saying though, or think it's the best way to describe the film. But yeah,

it's a hard one to nail down. And it's also one where, if you look at the way it's promoted, you're gonna go into this expecting, oh, it's we're gonna watch a horror film that has Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing in it. Um, well, let's see what this is about. But it's really not that. It's more of a conspiracy science fiction film starring a handful of lesser known actors with some cameos for the most part by these three individuals. I think I can understand what

what he means by good art for the masses in that. Okay, so I guess good art is like French new wave cinema, right, like art films that are non traditional structures Uh, they're gonna they're gonna ask weird existential questions. They're gonna be of a different composition than the films you were used to before. And this is in that tradition. You could say it is structured like an art film. It is.

It doesn't have an easy to follow linear plot like you would see in a standard genre thriller, which is what it sort of turns out to be in the end, even though like it takes you most of the length

of the movie to figure that out. Yeah, yeah, and I and I don't I don't have much familiarity with with Goddard myself, but certainly when I compare this film to like pure artsy cinema, pure uh psychedelic cinema, there's there's almost like too much freedom in some of those type ventures where it just becomes a you know, fall from one weird sequence to the next. This one seems to be to have an intelligent structure. This film is like a slime mold making its way through a labyrinth.

Um you know that there's some sort of logic involved in its path, or you trust that there is, but you're not at sure exactly like how this thing works without a brain. It's a It's a film that I would compare favorably to V three Psychomania. In some regards, you can't really compare anything directly to Psychomania, but I feel like it hits similar notes of the weird. You know. Now, Another thing this film has going for it is this

is very much a Hollywood acid movie. Uh, this is a subject we covered on Stuff to Blow your Mind a few years back. Yeah. The acid doesn't show up until about two thirds of the way through, but then it is the star of the third act. From there on, it's like acid in every scene. Right. And by acid, we don't mean psychedelic, we mean good old dissolving acid, a big vat acid. In fact, the wonderful um of

a promise from the poster. The original poster for this film is triple distilled horror as powerful as a vat of boiling acid. Oh I'm glad they got it up to a boil. Yeah, you want to boil your acid from maximum uh destruction of organic tissues? Um. Without scream and scream again, there would be no Batman forever. Yeah. Also, this poster is pretty great because you also see a body dissolving an ascid it's it's a really really tight poster. I don't know if I put it on my wall,

but it's it's pretty. It's pretty cool. I agree. But wait, what does triple distilled horror mean? Well, most of your horror movies are only um only go through a single or double distillation process. Joe, this film has been triple distilled. This is the crystal Skull Vodka of films. Yeah, yeah, I know, I have no idea what this means. But it's a strong promlemse. I mean, that's really I think the ultimate. I love it when when a film is promoted as is something well beyond anything that can be

tested or quantified. All right, Uh, I'm gonna go ahead and mention where you can where you can watch this in case anyone out there has has heard the pitch and they're like, well I want in on this. Well, you can rent or purchase this film digitally most places. It's also out on DVD and Blu Ray from KL Studio Classics. It's Keno Lorber. They always do a great job with these. I watched it streaming myself. Yeah I did too. Now I think we should issue a disclaimer

near the top. I guess I sort of already alluded to this, but our discussion will necessarily include spoilers for this movie because I think there's literally no way to talk about it that makes sense without spoiling the twist ending, because nothing makes sense until the twist ending, and then it kind of does so, so I don't know, like we we couldn't really have a coherent discussion of the themes or plot of the movie without spoiling it, if

that makes any sense. Yeah, yeah, there's like, what can you say other than I was confused by this scene? And I will also advice We're about to listen to some trailer audio here, but I would advise against watching the trailer for this film before you go into it, because ultimately that's the feeling of being lost, of not knowing where you're going. I thought that was one of the best payoffs of this movie. Yeah, totally, all right, let's have to listen. She wasn't just murdered, if you

know what I mean. Job nobody snapped through a high tensile steel He didn't look all right, Well, shall we get into the people responsible for Scream and Scream again? We must? We have no choice? All right, Well, let's start.

At the top of the director is Gordon Hessler, who lived through German born director of Danish and English heritage, who directed nineteen sixty nine The Oblong Box, nineteen seventies Cry of the Banshee Ones, Murders in the Room Morgue, and the nineteen seventy three Ray Harry Housing Extravaganza of the Golden Voyage of Sinbad, which starred John Philip Law, Caroline Monroe, and Tom Baker. I think Tom Baker plays

a sore sorrow of some kind. John Phillip Waw is Sinbad um and uh, I don't remember who Carolyn Monroe isn't it? But yeah, this one, like all of the Ray Harry house in movies, has some excellent stop motion monsters. I don't know how well this one passes the modern cultural sensitivity test, but the stop motion effects are fantastic.

There's one point where Sinbad's crew seems to that they fight like an animated statue that seems to be based on depictions of like Hindu gods with multiple arms, and these arms are all wielding swords during the fight. Uh, they're just monsters of plenty. It's it's fantastic. Yeah, I got to see that one on the big screen at a drive in theater many years ago. Let's say Gordon

Hessler directed a slew of things. He directed quite a bit of TV episodes of such shows as The Master, That's The Levan Cliff, Ninja Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Chips and more. He also directed a nine five Ninja movie titled Pray for Death, starring eighties Ninja boom um star

show Kasuki. I don't know this one, um, it's one I don't know if I've seen it in its entirety, but it has a very memorable VHS bit of box ar because it kind of looks like the Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and he's he's staring right at you, and you know that he's going to cut you with sharukins and stuff. So I remember this this VHS box aren't staring back at me when I was a kid. Oh, I just looked it up. Yes, the mask on his

helmet looks like a piece of grilling equipment. Yeah, it has sort of a metal face mask going on, very very shredd Or esque. This seems like something there would be an infomercial on this face mask for it's it's how you see her salmon or something. So I haven't seen it myself. I don't think i've seen it. Possible I saw parts of it on TV at some point or another. But if anyone out there is a fan, let us know. All right, let's get to the writing year.

The screenplay was written by Christopher Wicking, who through two thousand and eight a British screenwriter known for, uh, some of the films we listed already, We're gonna hear these titles again and again. Cry of the Band, Murder in the Room, Morgue, Blood from the Mummies, Tomb, Absolute Beginners. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, I read that despite the fact that this movie is based on a novel, a lot of the distinctive ideas and it actually come from the

screenplay adaptation. Like I think a lot of the conspiracy elements that we discover at the end are actually more the screenplay than the book it was based on. Yeah, and the book it's based on is The Disoriented Man

by Peter Saxon. Now you're probably wondering, well, who's this Peter Saxon guy, Well, he's nobody, he's not real it's just a pen name used by various thriller authors from the nineteen fifties through the nineteen seventies, though I've read that The Disoriented Man in particular was mainly written by a writer by the name of Stephen D. Francis and edited by W. Howard Baker, who originated the Saxon brand of pulp. Ah. So, Peter Saxon is kind of a

composite human built out of the parts of other humans. Yeah, I guess you could say that. All right, let's get into the cast on this one. But like I said earlier, though, this one's kind of weird because if you went by billing, you just start with Cushioning and Price and Lee. But

they're not really the main characters. You don't spend a tremendous amount of time with them for the most part, maybe Price more than the other two, but not to say they're not important, but they're not really the main characters. I want to start with the characters that we see

more of in the film. All right, So first of all, we have, um, we have this character name Detective Belaviere, who is played by Alfred Marks, who of one through a British comic actor and entertainer who, in my opinion, is pretty great in this is a tired, grumpy police detective who has seen it all twice, is tired of it all, um, and it's going to let you know

about it. Yes, but he's this is a great performance because the character is he's this bellowing blow hard who has he's just always like dropping little comments about his police knowledge about what psychos are like and he um, he's got a great mustache. He's good in this role. Yeah, now interesting. This is probably his best known film role, but he did do a fair amount of TV and also appeared in such films as Fannie Hill and Ken

Russell's seven film Valentino. Naming this character Belover, I thought it was a great choice. It's kind of Dickensian naming, right. It's it's one of those where the character's name just sounds like their personality. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't. He bellows a lot for sure. Now. The next character want to mention is this Dr David Sorrel, who is I guess as close to a central hero as we get in this film, though I wouldn't rate him as being tremendously

effective at foiling evil. No. In fact, he almost seems to be tempted to collaborate with the evil at the very end, until he's like, wait, the person you were going to dismember is somebody I've met. Yeah, he's way more like you know, as as a hero in a film like this. You know, it's it's courtesy to listen

to a villain monologue a little bit at least. I mean, it would be rude not to right, of course, but Dr Sorrel here, Yeah, he seems to listen a little bit too much and be a little bit too eager. Um He's like, no, no, yeah, absolutely, let's hear all about it. Price is giving a monologue like I am not evil when I build these people out of other people's body parts. Uh, And Sorrel is like, no, that

sounds reasonable. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's fun. It's so this this actor, this is one of those guys that I'm not sure exactly who he looks like, but he looks like body else that I've seen in many more things than I think. That kind of messes with me a little bit. But the actor here is Christopher Matthews. Uh. Dates unknown as far as I could find, but active from nineteen sixty three through two thousand and six, mostly did TV were including roles on Dr Who, Space and

East Enders. He also appears in nineteen seventies Scars of Dracula starring Christopher Lee and nineteen seventy one See No Evil starring Mia Pharaoh. I thought it was an interesting choice that he the character is technically supposed to be a medical examiner. I think we first meet him during an autopsy scene, and I couldn't understand why he just sort of becomes an assistant to the detective for the rest of the movie, like he's going to all the

crime scenes. I I do love it when this happens in a film, um the generally a genre film of some sort, where somebody who should not be present at every stage of like a homicide investigation, just it just becomes baked into the investigation. They just they just hang out long enough and they're just part of it. Well, you know what, you know what happens here. It's taking it too personal. He is he's he's taking it too

personal for sure. Alright, Another another person, this is probably the closest thing we have to a central relatable character in the film is policewoman Helen Bradford, who is frequently just imperil due to the villains of the picture, but is very much a likable screen presence for the most part. I would say, yeah, So she plays an officer who goes undercover because one of the multiple plot threads in this movie is, Hey, we've got some psychotic murderer who's

just who's just killing women and drinking their blood. I know what we need to do. We need to put one of our officers undercover as a as a PARTI er at a London, uh psychedelic rock club, and then she will get picked up by the murderer and then we'll let the murderer drink her blood a little bit, and then eventually we'll get in there and do something

about it. Yeah, and Helen's like sure works through me. So. Helen is played by Judy Bloom, actor Stage, screen and two TV, who I think started off as a child actor based on her dates on IMDb. All right, Uh, despite all those wonderfully villainous names on the poster, Cushing, Lee and Price, Uh, it's ultimately an actor by the name of Marshall Jones that really plays I think in my opinion, the most frightening character in the picture. Uh, this guy by the name of Conrats. Yes, and I

thought this actor was also very good. He has a kind of a void face, a face like a predatory bird of some kind. And uh and he and he uses it to great effect. He is he is much menace. Yeah. He has this, uh, this look on his face most of the movie where it's it's like he just thought of something funny. He could have said in the torture uh inquiry that he was conducting or lier in the day. Oh, I should have said, don't get too attached to it exactly.

Like he's a total total villain. But uh, Marshall Jones performance here like he has a he has a real physically imposing stature. Uh. You know, he looks like he towers over, perhaps naturally, most of the other actors in the in the picture. So yeah, I thought he was quite good in this. Um. This particular actor lived two thousand and seven. Um appeared in the film's Cry of the Banshee in nineteen seventy Murders in the Room or nineteen seventy one. UM, but this seems to be his

his biggest role. Um. If you you know, when you look into the pictures he's he's been in, this is the one that seems to be best remembered, and it seems like the main one where he played a central villain. I don't know that he really played this sort of role in other pictures, but he excels here. He's some kind of high level functionary in an unnamed easter in European dictatorship. Yeah, that has this frightening trident as its icon.

Uh and and and yeah, not not a trident like the like the flag of Barbados, like a scary one that looks like a devil's pitchfork. Yeah. Well, so I actually interpreted that as three arrows, but that would be weird imagery because a bit of symbology of the history of European politics. So the three arrows was a political symbol in uh, like I think nineteen twenties thirties Germany, but it was the symbol of like the social Democratic coalition that because the three arrows I think had something

to do with the opposing Nazism, monarchism and communism. Okay, well, either way it would make sense because I think and I was reading that in the original novel it's it's supposed to be some sort of fictional German regime and they made it. They went a little more vague with it in the in the picture, which I ultimately like, it feels a lot more you know, kafka esque, to not have a particular name for this uh, this country.

It's just the h and maybe it maybe doesn't even have a name, Like that's the degree of the of the totalitarianism here. It's just uh, this place where the trident flag or the triple arrow flag reins. All right. The next major name in this movie is Michael Gothard, who plays Keith Uh, the alleged vampire killer. Let's take your standard Mick Jagger type, but then creep if I him. Yeah, yeah, he's pretty great because he's yeah, he's he's handsome, but

in a dangerous way. You know, he's got that you don't completely trust him, and of course we're led to believe that he's killing people and uh and hunting them for sport. At a discos, he has this ridiculous uh what kind of way he described this shirt that he's wearing. It's like a purple pirate shirt. Yeah, he's wearing like a lavender shiny satin frilly shirt and he's wearing it through a chase sequence that takes up the middle third

of the movie. So it's he's scrambling over rocks, jumping through windows of abandoned buildings and driving around London running cars off the road, all wearing this this purple satin shirt. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a great, great performance. Um. Michael Gotthard, who ninety nine through two uh, went on to be known for a number of other films. This was apparently

one of his big breakout roles. He'd previously been in some TV shows and a few films such as the West German drama Michael Cole host at Dae Rebel from nineteen sixty nine, which start David Warner. Um. But after this he went onto some really memorable roles, including the Demented Exorcist and witch Hunter Father Baret and Kin Russell's The Devils from nineteen seventy one. And then he also plays this, Um, I'm not sure is this a villain or a Hinchman Joe from Ones for Your Eye is

only James Bond film. This was a late Roger Moore movie, and I think he plays an assassin in it, he's like a guy who Oh, now I'm afraid I'm remembering this wrong. I think he's a guy who like he like puts a rifle together out of a briefcase that he carries around. Oh, that's always a good bond villain move the character's name villain or hnchman. And I think you're right. I think it's more of an assassin. Character

is Emil Leopold Locke. Uh. And I I've seen this movie, or at least a large chunk of it, But really the only thing that that really I remember from it our Gothard's signature spectacles in this because uh, he has these. Uh there's a curious shape to them. Uh. And apparently he insisted on wearing them. He was like, no, no, that this character needs something else. Um. And indeed this is also something you see in The Devils his character

and that also has a pair of spectacles on. And there's something about Michael Gothard like he's he's he's a great character actor. Uh. He has been in a number of roles and rememberable, but these two roles that really stand out are ones where he wears kind of weird glasses. They just put him over the top. Yeah, I agree. So in the Bond movie they're kind of octagons, and the way he's made up for the Bond role, he looks. He looks a little bit Jagger, still a little bit

Kinski but all creep. Yeah. Meanwhile, in um, The Devil's I'd say he looks a little bit Warren Zevon, a little bit klaus Kinsky, you know. But but but strong Zevon vines here at least the just the boy the character looks, not so much the way he acts the glasses however, I'm I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable for a seventeenth century Frenchman to potentially have spectacles of some sort, But I don't think they would have looked this modern and stylish. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but

I think this is more of an artistic choice. H Russell's part for The Devil's you don't you don't think this? Uh, this psychotic convent had a had a flower child here and there. Yeah yeah, um, but still very memorable role for sure. Um. He he had a number of other prominent roles. Uh. He appears in the nineteen seventies Three Musketeers movies. He pops up in Life Force, as well as a pair of Michael Caine movies of note, Jack

the Ripper in the Last Valley. His last film before his untimely death was the T and T Frankenstein adaptation starring Patrick Bergen and Randy Quaid as the Monster. I've mentioned this film before on the show because I fondly remember watching it on T and T when I was a kid. I've got to see this sometimes. You bring it up every chance you get, this nest be worth it. Maybe we've we've at least jokingly talked about doing an entire month of Frankenstein movies sometimes. So who knows, Maybe

we'll have to pull the trigger on that. Oh yeah, you get Frankenstein meets the space Monster in there. Oh that's Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. All right. Um, we're not gonna spend as much time with these three, but yes, the three top build actors in this are Price, Lee, and Cushing. Let's start with Vincent Price because he plays his character Dr. Browning, which

is probably, uh probably the most important of these three characters. Uh, I guess you could say, certainly, I think this is the character that had maybe has the most memorable screen time. And uh, it's it's essentially a sort of Vincent Price role. You'd expect some sort of deranged scientist or doctor, but with some fun twists that set the role apart. He does a beard in this movie. Yeah, And and ultimately, you know, we're talking about how he says to the

to our our doctor character. He tells him I'm not evil, um, you know, and and we kind of buy into it, like he's not acting completely evil though he's doing some very um bizarre and um questionable things. Well yeah, mean, he openly admits to doing a lot of murder and stuff, but he he seems to think that it's all for the greater good. The greater good being replacing humans with

like super beings made by experimental surgeries. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, ultimately, like the big reveal is that there is a secret organization, multinational organization, working in the shadows to build new people out of the parts of regular humans and thus create kind of super people who will continue to carry on

this conspiracy in order to make a better world. I think in an earlier draft of this, we discover at the end that that it's actually aliens controlling the whole thing, But then that was taken out, and I'm ultimately glad they did because if it had just been aliens, yes, it would have maybe made more sense. But this movie is so cryptic and confusing getting to the final scenes that I like that a lot of that mystery remains that were left trying to ponder, like what what does

this mean? Like what is a composite person? And why in the context of this film are they so different? Why are they why do they seem to have super intelligence? When we saw where the brain come came from, there's no indication that you did anything to the brain and combined parts of a brain. No, you were just gonna

get Judy's brain and put it in here. By the same token, how does it make them super strong when they're just taking one arm off of a jogger and one arm off of a cop and putting them on a different body, Like was it just like, oh, this jogger happened to have the strongest arm in the world, and we're gonna use that, you know, Like where does the super strength come from? Yeah? Yeah, A lot of

questions remain. Now I won't I won't get into into prices, bio too much here because we've talked about We talked about them previously on The Abominable Doctor Fibes pricelet of nineteen eleven. Famous for such films as The Tingler, The House, and Honor It Hill. He also did a lot of fun TV roles. He was on Night Gallery, he did The Muppet Show, and he did TV commercials for a number of brand ends, including the No Jelly Candy Bar.

Is it now a recurring segment than any time we do a price movie we have to review at least one price commercial. Yes, I think it should be. It's it's part of his legacy, and the no Jelly Candy Bar does not disappoint. It's basically a Vincent Price talking head commercial, like a lot of these are. But I was really intrigued by the product here. I had to I was reading about it on collecting candy dot com. Uh, there's a post about it with a whole bunch of

images from the marketing campaign. It's a bar from the makers of Almond Joy and Mounds that seemed to be it's marketing itself at a at a at a client base that I'm not sure really existed. People who were fed up with their being jelly in their peanut butter theme snack bars and candy bars. They were like, why do they keep putting jelly in here? I want one that's no jelly, that's just peanut butter. This this is

the commercial, the pitch. He holds up the bar and he's like, if you have children, you know the they love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We must dispense with that wretched jelly. Was this a thing? I it just seems it doesn't make much sense to me, Like, uh,

and what are you making? I mean, I don't know, like where do you Was there a jelly shortage that made jelly really expensive at the time, Yeah, or maybe like just the peanut butter lobbying group was trying to like bad mouth the jelly group because they want more peanut butter on those sandwiches and not jelly. So they're probably saying stuff like, well, you know what, jelly is just full of sugar, unlike peanut butter. Slab it on.

They're they're making up the difference with jelly. They're they're cutting into our profits. Yeah. So I don't know if anyone I have no moment I think this was this is a bar that was well done as a product by the time I was born. So if anyone out there remembers the No Jelly Candy bar and can tell us what it was like, let us know that. Again.

This collecting Candy dot Com blog post on it's pretty interesting because there's all sorts of strange promotional material, including a what is it like yes to Nixon, no to jelly pan that one would wear? Wow. Uh So, based on my extensive deep research on the No Jelly Candy Bar, I don't think that it was actually just straight up peanut butter in that candy bar. I think it was more like what you would get inside of a Reese's cup. Okay, so sort of like I don't know what you call

that Pete candy peanut butter stuff. At any rate, it's a mystery. I'm not entirely convinced that the No Jelly Candy bar isn't actually part of the composite uh conspiracy that is uh that is described in this film. Alright, moving on Christopher Lee who lived in this as well. Um, obviously we've talked about Christopher Lee on the show before. This is Dracula, This is Saramon, This is Count Dooku. Uh. This is a guy who's in a ton of Hammer horror movies, and in this film he plays a mysterious

UK government official. I think Christopher Lee's plotline was the most confusing of all of them to me until towards the end. Yeah. Yeah, but it all comes together. Uh, And I would say little he's good in this. This is a role that plays to his strengths. Yeah, calm confidence. He's not quite as as there's not as much twinkle in the eye as he is when he's Lord's Summer Isle, but it's a similar kind of thing he is. He is overseeing some kind of secret process of depravity with

great jollity. Yes. And then finally we have Peter Cushing, who often through and he plays a major Heinrich Benedict. Uh. This is a small but fun role where he plays a higher ranking intelligence operative in that strange European trident country. Um. We we've profiled Cushing at greater depth in the past, I believe in our shock Waves episode. But yeah, another another horror legend. This is uh Dr Frankenstein. This is Grand mof Tar Tarkan. Um. He has no scenes with

Lee or Price in the film. Uh, he's he's tightly contained within this uh, this mysterious European country. It's pretty much just a cameo and it's it's one of a series of scenes where Marshall Jones, the Conrads character, just kills his boss. I think this happens like three different times in the movie. He goes into a meeting with his boss and then within minutes that boss is dead. Yeah. Yeah, he has a he has a signature move which will describe here shortly. Um, a couple of quick, fun and

useless facts here. This is one of only three films to feature both Price and Lee. It's one of only four films to feature Cushing and Price. Lee and Cushing

appeared in the same film and estimated twenty four times. However, going back as far as Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Hamlet, in which Cushing played Ostrich and Lee played a palace guard in an uncredited role, and I believe the only other film to feature all three of these gentlemen was House of Long Shadows from three, which also has John Carradeine in it to boot, but doesn't every movie I have John Krradeine in it I'm sure in this alright,

Let's let's get to the music, because the music is worth worth talking about. Um not, I have to say not so much. The score. Uh. The score is by David Whittaker, who lived one through two thousand and twelve and English composer who scored such films as Dr Jackal and Sister Hyde, Vampire Circus, and The Sword and the Sorcerer. It's an it's a perfectly acceptable score. I can't say anything too bad about it. But also I've already forgotten

most of it. I don't know. The music kind of made an impression on me, and not just the rock music, which I know you're about to get to, but the background music kind of works because of the it heightens the absurdity of the movie. Like there is a scene where character wakes up to find like parts of his body have been cut off, and it's not giving you, like you know, minor chord music stings, the scary orchestral music. Instead, it's groovy lounge music just chugging along during that part.

Doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom doom. Yeah. Yeah, I I than it does work to establish a groovy late sixties nineteen seventy kind of tone, I guess. But speaking of which, let's get to the theme music. Yes, this is one of those those delicious movies that has a theme song in which somebody sings the title of the song. Uh, this is Scream and Scream again performed by the amen corner. This is Welsh garage psych at its best. Yeah, this

is a group. I had to look about. Their only active from nineteen sixty six through nineteen sixty nine, so this movie may have may have done it. This could have been what did the group in as far as I know. But uh, they also appear in the movie. You see them in the nightclub performing this song while

our Vampire Killers stalking about. And uh, the two individuals of note in it, Uh, that's Andy Fairweather Low as the front man, a Welsh guitarist who went on to tour with the likes of Roger Waters and Eric Clapton. And then the keyboard player is Welsh Welsh musician Blue Weaver born seven and he's worked as a session player for the likes of The b Gs and The Pet Shop Boys over the years. Wow, it's so kind of neat. Uh.

If possible, we'll have to clear this with seth. It'd be nice to hear just a little bit of this, uh this groovy bit of theme music. All right, let's get into the plot of this. Let's let's tightly summarize the plot to Scream and Scream Again. That is not possible. There is no way to really explain the plot of Scream and Scream Again. You just need to watch the movie. So instead, I suggest let's talk about some things that

happen in the movie. Uh So, the first thing we see, we we pull up on is this supposed to be in London at somewhere in England. See we see red double decker buses with ads for Crisp apples on them. Oh yeah, it is London, because we see London transit on the side of the bus, and we see a jogger. I think get off one of the busses. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the first confusing things in the movie is here's this jogger and they freeze framing and then they put up starring Vincent Price, and I'm like, that's not Vincent Price. What are you doing? Movie? That's great? Yeah, it's not Vincent Price at all. It's a young guy who has a face that kind of looks like George C. Scott, you know, he always looks like he's about to go. Yeah.

Um uh Mr President, Uh No, it's just a jogger wearing a tank top and and some short orange shorts and he's jogging in a I don't know if you've got the same energy off this rob but he looks to me very uncomfortable and distressed throughout his entire jog. Yeah, I guess he does. But then he's running around, he runs through a field, he collapses, and then we cut to a totally different place. He wakes up and he's like, where am I? And he's in a hospital bed and

uh so he's laying there. He seems to be thirsty. A nurse comes in. She gives him like a tube of water to drink, and then he pulls back the blankets on his hospital bed. After the nurse leaves, and he realizes that his leg is missing, and he screams. So, I guess this is the first scream of scream and scream again, because he will scream many more times. Yeah.

It appears that his leg has been surgically removed in this operating theater where he's being helped and so this scene will be repeated almost exactly like four more times because we just come back and see all of his various body parts disappear and then he screams. Then, seemingly unrelated to this, there is this other plot taking place in this country where there's some kind of totalitarian symbology all around these tridents or arrows. This is with Marshall Jones.

He's wearing kind of a military uniform and he's taking me. I honestly, I had trouble following what was happening in this subplot. It's just, you know, he goes around. He'll take a meeting with some kind of other government official, and they'll talk about oh, you know these uh some kind of military hardware or some kind of espionage situation, and then at the end of the meeting, he does the vulcan neck pinch on this other person, usually somebody who seems to be his boss, and then they go,

blood comes out of their mouth and they die. In retrospect, knowing what we know by the end of the film, I mean, is he kind of maybe like working his way up through the ranks VM, I think that's it. Yeah, I think he's like killing various bosses or rivals and and becoming some kind of supreme commander within this totalitarian system. Then also within this place where we see all these

these arrow or trident symbols. There's a scene where there's just a guy and a lady running through a field and then they get chased down by a jeep full of soldiers and then they get caught, and then the guy is taken to a prison and there are there is what is implied to be like torture and interrogation. Yeah, yeah, we're not we don't have to watch a torture scene in this movie, but yes, it's heavily implied that he's about to torture, and then afterwards he gets dressed down

for torturing. Mystery about it. He's got bosses who come to come to the Conrads character in there, like, hey, you're using too much torture. That's just a little bit over the line with torture. And then he's like okay, point taken, uh, and then neck pinches them and they die. Yeah,

this is that the Peter Cushing scene. That's that's rather nice because like there's a scene to set it up where but then we get the we get Peter Cushing's character and Conrads together and he's like, it's like, it's just too much torture, my boy, we have to worry about optics with this regime. And uh, I'm sorry, you're done. You're through through with without the door with you. And

then he gets the claw and that's it for Cushing's character. Well, wouldn't have Cushing put the paperwork in motion before that meeting? You would think, so, yeah, well this is It becomes more and more clear that that Conrads is perhaps a bit rogue, right, because because at first it seems like that whatever he's doing, it's entirely going to take place within this uh, this fictional nation. But no, he eventually sets uh sets Sale. That's really set Sale. How does

he travel? We don't see it. I don't think he just suddenly shows up in London towards the end of the movie. Yeah, he catches wind of this whole vampire killer thing and perhaps some other stuff and he's like, well, I gotta go there now and start clawing people. Oh oh, but okay. So this brings us to what I would say is the dominant plot thread of the movie, The Vampire Killer plot. So we meet Uh, we meet Belavar, the police inspector, and uh and several other police officers

who start tracking a series of brutal murders. There are murders in which women are being attacked by an unknown assailant and he and there and they're like appear drained of all blood. So one of the first victims, it turns out, is a is an employee of Vincent Prices, and this leads the police to Vincent Price's house and this is the scene where we first meet him and they're like, hey, what about this employee of yours? Can you shed any light on what's going on? And he's

like no, but don't suspect me. Does anything of consequence happened in this first meeting or is it basically just to introduce Price? Basically I just entroduce Price. Uh this Uh, nothing, nothing really happens. In fact, you kind of forget about it until Vincent Price just kind of pops up again later and you're like, oh this character. Yeah. And then so this is also where the medical examiner gets involved.

Dr Serell or sorel Uh He's so he's originally in these autopsy scenes of of the murder victims, but he gets wrapped up in the police investigation itself and starts being along for uh, these these chases and all this stuff and what a chase. What a chase it is. Yeah, so let's lead up to that because this is wow, this movie has such a chase seed. So, because these murders keep happening, the police decide, well, we're gonna set up a sting operation and we're gonna get Officer Bradford here,

Helen Bradford. She's going to pretend to just be like a lady party in at the club, and we're going to see if she gets murdered by this by the vampire killer, which, by the way, apparently they just have her party all night because when eventually she is picked up by the vampire killer and they leave the club, it's just broad daylight, like not like not like don but it feels like it's noon exactly. Yeah, they come

out and this shocked me as well. So inside I think I think that that Welsh rock group is playing or somebody like them is playing. Uh, you know, we're getting the songs. And then they come out the door and yeah, it's just bright sunlight. And then they get into uh the vampire killer sports car. I think the character's name is Keith, the creepy looking guy. Yeah, I don't, Yeah, we don't. We don't find out for later. But this

is is Keith. Yeah, and we've seen him. We've seen seen him murder other women that he had picked up at the club before. Uh so, so we know what's going to happen. And then the cops, of course, are bumbling du faces and they take way too long to intervene while he is drinking Bradford's blood. But they get there just in time. She's not killed. So they like pull him out of the car and you think, okay,

well he's caught now, but no, something strange happens. Instead, they get Michael Gothard out of the car and they say, you're caught now, but he has super strength or something. It's out of nowhere. We've seen no indication of this before. Really, he like fights them all off and he runs away, and this begins a chase sequence that involves driving, It involves running, It involves hiding, It involves climbing, It involves

mountain climbing, It involves boiling yourself in acid. This is a chase sequence that goes on for I would guess literally twenty minutes, right, and you keep thinking it's over too, like, Okay, they got him, and then something will happen and he's on the move again, and we just hope that all of our police officers are able to catch their breath a little bit before they take after him, because again, Keith seems to have supernatural uh strength and agility and endurance.

He's able to do things that humans cannot it should not be able to do his basically Spiderman, and a few of these scenes and I wanted to compare this to the fight scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David in the John Carpenter movie They Live, which is an amazing, hilarious scene, and this chase scene was a lot like it, because, first of all, it's something that just mounts in uh in in hilarious absurdity because of how long it goes on, but not just because of how long it goes on,

because of the fact that it repeatedly stops and you think it's over and then it starts again, so you know, and they Live, they're they're they're like punching, punching, body slam body slam and they stop and talk for a minute and you're like, okay, well, what's happening now, and then one of them will just throw another plush and

it starts up. This chase is exactly like this. They catch him and they're like okay, and then he like rips his own arm off to get out of the handcuffs and runs again and again, all this broad daylight too, which somehow adds to that absurdity because it's it feels like he can't and actually get away and hide as well, especially when they get to the scene where they've cornered him against the side of a mountain with all these loose rocks, and he just starts taking straight his way,

is going straight up the mountain, kind of like Spider Man a few times, just crazy speed, and the cops are just watching him. And then eventually he like tires out or slips and falls all the way back down the mountain again. But how does this whole chase end? Well, strangely, Michael Gothard ends up in his in his satin purple shirt, leading the cops on a chase that ends at Vincent

Price's house. Remember Vincent Price from earlier that random guy. Well, yes, that he shows up at his house and he goes into a barn on the estate and he lifts up like a like a you know, trap door on the ground in the floor of the barn and jumps into some kind of pool underneath the trap door, which turns out to be acid. Like a cop reaches in to try to issue out of there, and it burns his arm.

So he has apparently just plunged himself into Hollywood acid, right, and then they even mentioned it's like, well that cop is gonna lose that arm now, so this is this is powerful acid. There's no not even any attempt to try and like fish Keith's body out of here. They're like, well, that's it for Keith. He's gone completely gone. Ye wouldn't

they get like a metal pole or something. Yeah, Well, later we see that there Vincent Price's character does have a poll for just like shoving things down into the acid V. But that's where we go now, like suddenly they're they're watching this, You're looking down in the yellow acid of V that has just dissolved, and even Keith has just burned a police officer's arm. And then Vincent Price just kind of wanders up behind them and that does doesn't even say anything, he's just kind of like

and he explains it right there. They're like, well, why do you have this tub of of body dissolving acid in your house? And he's like, oh, yeah, I've got a story about the up. Yeah. Basically it's that he does cancer research and uh. And yet remember, folks, always store your medical waste disposal vats of boiling acid responsibly, preferably in a trap door in one of your outbuildings.

This is just standard practice. I know we have some some researchers and doctors out there listening to the show. I mean, you guys don't know how it is. You just you gotta have a vat of boiling acid around in case you need to dissolve any medical waste. When your grandkids come over, you've got to remind him don't play around the acid. Yeah, no running near the acid.

So they see the the investigators seem more or less satisfied with this story, despite the fact that he has also linked to the location at least is linked to an earlier murder. Uh. And they're like, well, how do you know Keith, Like how come like Keith clearly killed somebody who worked for you, and then he came back here to throw himself into a vat of acid. Invincent Prices characters like, well, you know the mind of the psychopath, it has typically has a lot of guilt involved and

um a little very high threshold of the pain. And they're like that it checks out. Yeah, suicide by acid matches the enormity of the crime. Oh it's good. But oh but they're like, but we still have a clue. We can figure out who this guy was because we still have his hand because earlier, after he fell off

the mountain, the cops handcuffed him to a car. Then he ripped his own hand off to escape, and they still have the hand, right, And Vincent Brice's character is a little shocked and perhaps a little worried about this because when we hold not all of Keith was dissolved, that's right. So they go there, the medical examiners are looking at the hand and I didn't fully understand this that they try to explain. They're like, the hand, it's not human or it's not organic. And then the cops

are like, what do you mean by that? And they say, well, it's not exactly artificial. It's synthetic, but I didn't understand the distinction they were making. Yeah, this didn't make a lot of sense because we later find out, yeah, that this is about repurposing of parts of making entirely new people out of pieces harvested from other humans. There's no indication that there are synthetic parts in the process. Or maybe there are and they just don't tell us about it.

I don't know. Well, anyway, someone ends up breaking into the morgue or the police station wherever it is to steal the hand from from evidence, and that they store it in a really secure location. It appears to be on a pillar in the middle of a room. Didn't they put they put something over it when they're like or maybe there wasn't they just shut they shut the door to the room. Yeah, I think it's literally that's it. They shut the door into the room, which is like

glass French doors. Um. But literally, the severed hand in evidence is just on like a platform on a pillar in the middle of the room, and somebody breaks into steal it, and wouldn't you know it, the person who breaks into steal it is that nurse we saw earlier in the movie who was repeatedly coming into the room of the guy who was getting amputated and and screamed, screamed again, that's right, coming together it is. And so this is when things start being like, oh, maybe it

will make sense the end. Uh oh, And and somebody comes in to be like, hey, you can't take that hand, and the nurse just slaps the person so hard it kills them. Meanwhile, our our the closest thing this movie has to a hero, Our our young blonde medical examinator, examinator examiner guy. He's like, hey, what's going on with this case? And the police tell him, well, the case is closed. You know, Keith jumped into the acid and that's that. But he's not satisfied. He's taken it too personal.

He wants to know what's going on with the hand um. So ultimately he and Bradford, the undercover officer who got her blood drank by Michael Gothard, they go to Vincent Price's house together. That's they start. Basically, He's like, you stay in the car. I'm going to go in and find the hand. If something bad happens, just hank the horn and I'll come back. Or if I don't come back, call the police, and so he goes in. He looks around, doesn't find anything. Here's the hawk comes back out, cars

gone books goes back in. Meanwhile, we get some resolution on the political plot. So we see, uh, we see Conrads, the creepy guy from the from the totalitarian state. He somehow gets in touch with Christopher Lee and Christopher Lee. Uh. Christopher Lee appears to be some kind of British agent. The Conrads is from this other country. They clearly have an existing relationship and they may be involved in some kind of double dealing or conspiracy. We're not sure exactly what.

But they meet up in Conrads is like, okay, we've captured one of your spies. So finally we're like, oh, okay, the guy who's getting chased in the other country earlier, Uh, he was like a pilot of a secret spy plane. And he says, you know, it could be very embarrassing for the British government if if this were to get out.

So here's what we'll do. We'll give him back to you, or we'll just eliminate him, whatever you want, as long as you give me all of the police files on the so called vampire murders, and here finally this is connecting to that plot line, and Christopher Lee's character is like, Okay, that works, let's do it. Yeah. So Conrads uh, he goes and he gets all the files that he needs. He poses as a sociologist doing research on psychos and uh, I say that because the movie repeatedly it like it

refers to psycho as a known police phenomenon. And it seems like there's gonna be a clean break here because we we we have we have our our our chief investigator. Here um Bellivar pop in and he's like, oh, here you go. Here's here's all the documents. You can look at him in the next room. And he is to leave and Conrads is like, oh no, I'm I'm taking them with me, and he's like, Nope, you can't do that. So he gets the claw the vulcan neck pinch once again,

and oh Bellaver is dead now. Yeah, but now there's nothing standing in his way. So he takes all these documents and I can't remember we see him destroy them, but it's later revealed that, yeah, he just destroyed all of it. So here we come to the finale. The finale is the young medical examinator. Why do I keep saying examinator, the young medical examiner? Uh? Surrel. He goes back to Vincent Price's house and he's looking around, Um does he what? What? What happens? Actually I can't remember

how he ends up. Does he get captured? Does he just sneak in? He just sneaks in? I think he just sneaks in, Yeah, and just kind of runs into them, right, And Vincent Price's character, the strange doctor, is just kind of like, hey, you seem curious. How would you like a tour? And he's like, yes, please, yes. Well, actually, I really liked the way this monologue was written for Price because he actually explains why he's monologueing. He's like,

I have to do all this in secret. I'm very proud of my work, but because it's I don't get to talk to anybody, I never get a chance to show off. So I'm just excited to tell you about it. And this is also really a point in the movie where I just felt like we had gone past midnight, like there was there were no rules anymore, there was no telling where this film was going to actually go,

which I found rather exciting. Yes, yes, totally. So here we finally get the full plot explained with visual demonstrations, and it is that Vincent Price and some other unnamed co conspirators in other countries are employing secret new surgical techniques to create new humans, composite humans built out of the parts of these murder victims, and and that Michael Gothard Keith, the murderer, was one of his composites, was like the first, uh, composite human he built with like

brain with its own brain function. And the nurse and like other servants in Vincent Price's house are also composite humans. Yeah, so they're all composite humans with super strength are in on this conspiracy. Um. Again, there are a lot of questions you might ask about, like how this is supposed to work and all, But it takes me back to the scene where Conrads is talking to Christopher Lee's character and he's like, look, I'm not going to explain to

you what's going on. You wouldn't believe me if I did, and so we have to kind of trust him on that, Like, whatever the particulars are, it's it's above us mere humans to understand. Yes, though I think it's interesting in that it's unlike normal mad scientist uh plot revealed, because normally the mad scientist reveals himself to be working alone and says, I am the only person who has discovered something and I want to do that thing. And of course it's

something with horrifying implications. That's all the case here, except Price reveals he is sort of in con intact with other people doing this around the world. It's a conspiracy plot. They're they're like, we're working together, though it seems like they don't really know each other. They only have minimal contact because later Conrads comes in and he is clearly part of this conspiracy with Vincent Price, but they've never met before. He doesn't recognize him when he sees him. Yes,

I identify himself. Yeah, and that yeah. I think that something is rather interesting about it as well, because there's no there doesn't seem to be any mastermind behind it all. It's almost like a you know, a headless organization, uh, totally noncentralized. And Conrads character shows up though, and he's like, hey, the vampire killer thing has gotten way out of hand. Uh. Not only did Keith need to be destroyed, not only did did did the documents about Keith need to be destroyed?

But I actually he didn't need to go ahead and shut down everything you've got going on here and including your helpers, including you, including you, Vincent Price, You're gonna go in the acid. So the rest of the movie is various things going in the asset. Yeah, because Conrads and Vincent Price's character they start fighting, and it's this is actually I never expected to see a fight sequence

with with Vincent Price. Uh, that's so so good. Like I was like rooting for him because ultimately Conrads is just absolutely villainous, whereas at least Vincent Price thinks he's the good guy. So I'm gonna I'm gonna side with him. And so it looks like he's going to succumb to the claw, and then he fights back and fights out

of the claw, and you're like, yeah, go Vincent Price. Yeah, I think the characters are equally villainous, but Vincent Price is Vincent Price, so you know, yeah, so I was rooting for him too, so that yeah, it's it's evil spy versus evil spy and they're fighting and who wins. It's Vincent Price. He beats Conrads and he puts him in the acid. But then oh oh, another another party shows up and it is Christopher Lee. Yeah, and he strolls in very cool, very much in command, and there's

this wonderful saying there. There are several different scenes in the picture that are creatively shot, but especially this one where um, he ultimately ends up sort of hypnotizing Vincent Price's character. We get this weird shot that kind of goes up and below Vincent Price's face with kind of a black background, and then he's in the acid. But now it's also clear that Christopher Lee is part of this conspiracy as well, and he must also be a composite.

I don't think they ever say that, but he's got the super strength as well, so he's got to be part of it. Um. So it doesn't seem the conspiracy is defeated in the end. It just seems that these two guys Christopher Sorry Conrads and and Dr browning Vincent Price's character, well, they get destroyed, but the overall conspiracy seems to have been saved by one of its members,

Christopher Lee. Yeah. And they have several lines that allude to the fact that the conspiracy again is is not centralized, and so there's room for sort of heresies within the conspiracy roads within the conspiracy. So what while Conrads seems to have the opinion that like, well, this is not working in a free democratic society, the conspiracy is much further along back where I come from and uh and

tried in Sylvania or wherever um. And meanwhile, uh, Vincent Price's character has has been this sort of uh, you know, rosier glasses view of things about how you know, what we're gonna We need to cut out the bad parts, you know, and we need to make sure we're we're getting rid of the bad composite people. But ultimately we're in the right going in the right direction. But we need to, you know, stop the bad parts of the

plot before it gets goes too far. Meanwhile, Christopher Lee's character like he like basically says, no, it's too late for all that, Like we're we're on the train to uh to uh to horror and in tyranny, and uh, there's no turning back. And I'm not only am I not going to stand in it's in it's way, I am going to ensure that it happens right. So he disposes of the rest and then he walks out and are are sort of human heroes, or at least implied

human heroes. Dr Sorrel and uh an officer Bradford. They are alive and they have escaped because Bradford again was gonna be was going to be dismembered by Vincent Price. But then Sorrel intervened and and like he got her out of there, and they escaped, and they get into Christopher Lee's car with Christopher Lee's like, you know, I'll give you a ride. But um, the ending, I don't

know what you made of this. The two humans were kind of smiling at Christopher Lee as if like they knew what was going on and they were in on it or something, But that wouldn't make any sense given the rest of the plot. I think they were just trusting in him, not realizing that he is at the heart of all the conspiracy as well. They're just yeah, they're just really happy the government's here. But but they do ended on a nice kind of ambiguous note that's

not too doomy. It's not just like and then he cut up our our hero uh and and and the women he saved uh No it's it's it's more ambiguous than that, but it but some doom is definitely, definitely implied. It is a short term happy ending, but long term ominous ending. Yeah. Yeah, And once it really hits, once it sinks in, not only do you scream, but then you scream a second time, and then about six more times, and it's six more, just just to make sure, I

mean again, this movie is tripled distilled. This movie is so strange and so unique, and I'm trying to think what exactly I mean. I guess it's mostly the structure and the fact that it's so baffling for so long is the main thing about it. Uh, that that really makes it so unusual and striking, And the fact that it can be baffling for so long and actually makes sense at the end. Yeah, And you ultimately end up

in a place where the plot holes become features. They become spaces for mystery that work well in a picture like this. And that chase scene is gonna stick with me for years. I'm going to be thinking back to Michael Gothard in that purple shirt, climbing the mountain and then ripping his arm off. It's so good, So yeah, This is a really fun picture that invites interpretations. So we'd love to hear from anyone out there who has seen it, uh, either you know, back in the old

days or has seen it recently. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how things shake out in the movie. Maybe maybe you're familiar with the book and can schime in on that as well. I'm sure it's great literature. Oh yeah, yeah, the Saxon brand. All right, Well, Weird How Cinema publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns, most scientific topics and so forth and just talk about a weird film. And yeah, this was

a weird one. This was a fun one. We hope you enjoyed it as well. Uh, if you want to find blog posts about these episodes, I put up some casual blogs over at some mood to music dot com, and we have a letterboxed account for Weird House Cinema. You can look that up. I think what our user name there is weird House, and I try and keep that updated with what we've covered and sometimes what we're about to cover. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent

audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.