SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
Directed by Gordon Hessler
Starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee
Excellent, highly entertaining piece of schlock from Britain has both Lee and Peter Cushing in small roles. The real star is Price who plays a strange scientist creating a race of emotionless zombies. It all starts with a serial killer (Michael Gothard who played the sadistic Father Barre in Ken Russell's "The Devils") and one of the longest police chase scenes ever filmed. While wisecracking British police officers are on the lookout for the so-called "vampire killer," Lee plays a British politician dealing with power players from a strange, Nazi-like country nearby. Wearing swastika-like symbols, the leaders of this brutal regime torture prisoners -- and appear to have some kind of strange connection to Price's doctor character, and to the serial killer on the loose in Britain.
With gore, naked cadavers and Price with a zombie-like expression on his face, this is one of the best splatter movies to come from Britain. Tragically, the only real way to see it is in its rare appearances on TV. The video version that was released in the 1980s featured a different music score—and the kick-ass music this featured—including a rock song, "Scream and Scream Again"—was one of the best things about this movie. But in 2002, MGM released the original version of the film to DVD at last. For those of us that hadn't seen the original for over 20 years, it was a revelatory experience. "Scream and Scream Again" stands out as one of the best and most unique horror films of the late '60s/early '70s, combining politics, humor and horror in a way that few films ever had before or ever done since.
David Whitaker's great jazz score makes the movie feel at times like an episode of "The Prisoner." And the film's opening two thirds, where it's difficult to tell what the hell is going on or why, actually works as an interesting mystery. Plus, we have Price and Lee in a movie together and -- bang -- you've got yourself a classic. Director Hessler made a number of horror films with Price in the early '70s/late '60s, but this was easily the best of those, and probably the best movie Hessler has ever made, period. He would later go on to make "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park," the cult Kiss TV movie.