Screaming Yet Again ...
I first caught this film on late night television many
years ago as an impressionable youngster. I remembered it fondly (and not without a laugh) as a quirky, kitschy horror/sci-fi/political thriller whose odd parts (forgive the bad pun) were held together by shots of a runner in a hospital bed, screaming as he progressively loses his limbs. Years later, when I rented this film, my views changed very little. Time has passed, and the movie appears even more dated than it did when I first watched it in the early 1990s. Dated, quite often in a 'good' way, too. For example, check out the hilariously inappropriate jazzy/60s music that permeates the scenes of murder, violence and intrigue (though the singing in the nightclub has been removed from some video copies, presumably - as one other reviewer suggested - to avoid copyright problems). The film's loose series of episodes added a nightmarish feel to the proceedings. The subplot with the runner losing his body parts is just brilliant, and Marshall Jones gives a delightfully awful performance as the sadistic Konratz, stomping around a Nazi Germany- type country that seems unrelated to the runner or the investigation into a series of vampiro-sex crimes. Then Vincent Price pops up as a Mad Doctor Type, and Chris Lee as a government agent ... That these episodes are ultimately not sewn together satisfactorily in the conclusion (forgive the second bad pun) is a disappointment. I know, I know, this film is trash, it's not to be intellectualised. But there's a fine line between being cryptic and mysterious, and just teasing your audience for no real purpose than to tease them. I would make a joke here about SASA not being the sum of its parts, but you know what I mean ... Nevertheless, still kitsch fun, some laughs and cringe at that jazzy music score. Time to scream again?. 
Weird psychedelic pulp gem from 1970
From the golden years of pulp horror comes an obscure oddity that keeps
you guessing right to the end. Is it horror? Is it action? Is it espionage? It's very difficult to say, but doesn't really matter in the end. Very entertaining with a refreshingly non-linear plot (some might say too non-linear), mix up some ruthless dictator types with a vampire killer at large in England, throw in a mad surgeon complete with acid bath, add a pinch of a groovy pop group singing "Scream and Scream Again" and you about have it. Vincent Price does what he does best as a mad doctor, Christopher Lee is suitably British as a dodgy diplomat, but the star of the show (for me) is Alfred Marks doing a rather clich. |
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