Disoriented

'Scream and Scream Again’ is a ridiculously confusing film which only (partially) comes together after an hour of disparate scenes set in various places with a raft of actors and actresses, many of whom later admitted they didn’t know what was going on either. For all its muddle, however, it’s very effective, and the individual story strands are very watchable, just don’t expect a neat and tidy conclusion.

Starring two Horror colossi (Cushing / Price) and Christopher Lee, the film was directed by Gordon Hessler, who had already made a couple of UK based AIP films with Vincent Price and would later go on to direct the greatest TV movie ever made, ‘KISS Meet The Phantom Of The Park’. The story was based on a 'novel' by pulp writer Peter Saxon (actually, a generic pen name used by several writers), who will be cropping up again on this blog sometime in the future.

Promotional activity at the time made a big deal of the fact that Fritz Lang had watched ‘Scream and Scream Again’ and, when asked his opinion, thought it excellent, although he was 80 at the time and may have misheard the question. Actually, that’s a cheap jibe: the narrative may be all over the place, but, overall, it’s good cinema, with some startling individual scenes.