Not for Young or Sensitive Viewers, Sometimes Confusing but Not the Worst Movie Ever

According to a small sampling of Vincent Price fans, Scream and Scream Again, a 1970 British science-fiction horror film, is among his worst. Personally Price seemed to consider Green Hell from 1940 his absolute worst, but it’s doubtful how many of his fans have actually seen that one. I couldn’t find any copy in any condition from any source anywhere. I came in to Scream and Scream Again with pretty low expectations but was interested to see a film with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing. I found the movie confusing in places but not entirely incomprehensible and certainly not the worst I had ever seen, whether among the worst I’d have to consider more than I care to.

First, Peter Cushing fans will be disappointed. He has only one brief scene and it isn’t with Vincent Price or Christopher Lee. Incidentally, both Price and Lee were born on May 27, different years, and Cushing on May 26, and they once enjoyed a joint birthday party in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, possibly during the filming of this movie.

Early on there are scenes of police rule in an Eastern European totalitarian state. These were filmed in England and didn’t have enough of a different vibe for me to understand this was not a science-fiction film about a future England under police rule. It took me at least half the movie to work this out, around the point the British Christopher Lee character, Fremont, is talking to the Eastern European character, Konratz, played by Marshall Jones. Konratz has a bad habit of giving people a sort of Vulcan nerve pinch, but in his case it is a death grip and the victims keel over with blood trickling from the mouths.

Also early on in the film, people are being kidnapped off the street and waking up with their limbs amputated. One victim is slowly dismembered while alive and keeps waking up to another limb missing. Another part of the plot is that a “vampire killer” is picking up young women at clubs in which some truly awful music is played, raping and murdering them, and drinking their blood. By placing wires and a tracking device on a would-be victim, the police chase the killer, who displays superhuman tendencies. He tears off his own hand to escape and runs to an estate where he jumps into a vat of acid.

The estate belongs to Dr. Browning, played by Vincent Price. The hand is analyzed and turns out to be both biological and synthetic. It is then stolen from police custody and a person who tries to prevent it is killed. Vincent Price is wonderful as the mad scientist who believes he is doing the world good by creating super beings using Frankensteinian methods. He has a little more screen time than Christopher Lee and one scene with him.

As for objectionable content, well, just about all of it. Numerous people are killed, often in bloody ways, there is nudity of the victims in the morgue, marks of violence on them and discussion of rape, the music in the dance club is a near crime, and several people dissolve in the vat of acid. Not for young or sensitive viewers but again, the plot is fairly clear by the end, it is well filmed and acted, and not at all the worst movie ever.