Scream And Scream Again
In the old days of horror movies before CGI, franchise villains and pretty young people trying to play victims AND give compelling performances at the same time, the meat and potatoes of horror movies was all about the ACTORS, performers who specialized in the mad and macabre whose very names on the marquee would draw audiences into the theaters just to see what kind of twisted antics they would be up to this time. The trailblazers of course included such names as Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, but as the years passed and those names grew older or passed away, a new crop emerged in The 1960s which included such luminaries as Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Horror movies themselves were changing also with the loosening up of restrictions of what could and could not be shown onscreen, relying less on the power of suggestion and the subtlety of these actorsâ performances and more on straight up gore, violence, nudity and sexual content. In 1970, a movie was made that featured roles for Price, Lee and Cushing while also pushing the still relatively fresh envelope of acceptable content, featuring explicit female nudity and the gruesome bloodletting of several characters. The funny thing is that while the three stars were top billed and heavily promoted for their roles in the movie, the filmmakers almost seem to be playing a game of keeping all three of them offscreen as much as possible in order to push the more salacious aspects of the storyline. Cushing himself is reduced to just one scene as a military commanding officer in an unnamed country (possibly Russia or East Germany) who disapproves of certain things going on before being unceremoniously killed (in a role that really could have been played by someone of lesser stature than him without taking anything away from the film itself). The storyline also flexes out into three different directions with no indication of where exactly it is going, starting with a London jogger collapsing from an apparent heart attack only to wake up in a mysterious clinic where he is having body parts removed for no reason. There is also elements of a political intrigue thriller going on here (thus the Cushing cameo) as well as the more traditional (by todayâs standards) horror movie storyline depicting a serial killer who is picking up girls in nightclubs before killing them, raping them and then drinking their blood. Naturally, the police are baffled (in the era before DNA) about who is doing such things and things get even stranger when it appears that the killer is possibly superhuman with the ability to kill a normal person with a single punch. Meanwhile in Cushingâs Gestapo like fictional country, a military officer who seems to have the same abilities is murdering his way through the ranks while rising in command himself everytime he kills all while using what appears to be a variation of The Vulcan Neck Pinch, merely pressing down on the shoulder until the victim goes into a permanent state of death. This is where (eventually) Lee comes into play, playing a high ranking member of the British military who is concerned about spy secrets leaking into Cushingâs country to be used against them. Price (the primary actor of the three main stars) gets involved because one of the serial killerâs victims happens to be a girl who worked for him. He calmly tells the police that his research involves experimenting with various forms of germ culture, but no, as expected, heâs an insane mad scientist who has indeed invented a new form of life that can be classified as a synthetic superhuman (called âcompositesâ) which are âpeopleâ crafted together from the body parts of various human murder victims before getting a cybernetic makeover (similar to Terminatorâs cyborgs) where their muscles and tendons are crafted out of rubber and metal but their internal organs, brain patterns and brains themselves are fully human and functional, albeit they were âbornâ into this world with full fledged human bodies. The interesting thing is that Price appears to be backed up by the government in his work, but the blood drinking sex killer who is indeed one of his creations has created too much of a stir in the media for their liking. The murders for the most part are tastefully done, but we also get a 20+ minute car / foot chase after the police have tracked down the sex killer and find out about his amazing prowess to elude them even after taking a lot of physical damage as well (the composites also have rapid healing powers). The most fascinating thing about how all this works is that these beings are not so much humans who were given these fantastic abilities but rather beings who were never human to begin with and instead were created in a laboratory. Thus it becomes easier for them to view regular humans as just livestock for their consumption (although if the sex killerâs taste for his victimsâ blood was exclusive only to him or rather a common trait for the composites is never really explained) and never mind asking if any of them has anything resembling a soul. The bland and rather boring actors playing the police detectives on the case are also the ones carrying the movie here (and not very well I might add) with the curious point being that during the extended chase scene with the sex killer (who has already successfully killed a couple of cops with knockout punches) why the law enforcement characters donât appear to be carrying any guns who even try to shoot the bastard, preferring instead to stridently call upon him to surrender and (during the car chase portions) sit in the back seat giving orders while practically being chauffeured around during the chase (a far cry from modern day action movie cops), but perhaps these are more the expected foibles of British law enforcement being shown here or at least what they were like at that time. Finally though (to the delight of oldschool horror fans) Price gets to take over the last 20 minutes of the movie completely (after drifting in and out of the story prior to that) after a young, idealistic medical examiner (who along with the rest of the police force has been ordered by the government to stay away from Price) sneaks into his mansion / laboratory on the pretense of âgetting a sample of his acidâ only to be caught by Price and given a guided tour followed by a straight up offer to become part of his research. We also get a nice philosophical defense of the research by Price who feels that these composite beings are the future of life on Earth because human beings by nature have no future due to their tendency to engage in wars and other destructive causes. It all leads up to a final showdown with the composite military officer from Cushingâs country and finally with Christopher Lee himself inserting himself into the action after taking a backseat role behind a desk for much of the film. Is it all a disappointment considering the buildup and the A list horror cast on hand who are barely used? Well yes it is, with Price, Lee and Cushing not appearing in another film together until 1983âs House Of The Long Shadows (which also threw John Carradine into the mix as well), but at best it can be said in the end to be a pretty entertaining Vincent Price vehicle (with Price in later years confessing that he never actually understood the script he was working with) with Price in his mad scientist mode and the idea of the government literally backing his insane experiments being the new component here for all of us to chew on. This pretty much reduces Lee and Cushing to being mere window dressing though and that is part of the problem that people have with these sort of alleged teamups, that being the tactic of keeping the big names separate from each other or just keeping them offscreen entirely (both of which are done here) while allowing lesser name, blander actors to have the majority of screentime. The film does represent British horror movies expanding into more explicit material while the 1960s Hammer films could practically be G rated today much like the Karloff and Lugosi classics of the past, films that are almost family friendly fare but were built on the strength of their actorsâ PERFORMANCES which were usually delightfully sinister and / or hammy and at least here we get to see Price really give an example of what he was capable of when the quality of the movie itself was on the line and only he was allowed to be put into a position of being able to redeem itâŚ
7/10