Some of your universe's critics are, shockingly, bored by Scream and Scream Again. For example, reviewer Alestrel writes, "One of the worst (most incomprehensible and boring) films I've ever seen." Reviewer happinesspatrol writes, "Scream And Scream Again is a mess of the worst kind." And reviewer ricpantale writes, "This movie is so bad that anyone who enjoys it is beyond help." (Parenthetically, I personally must be "beyond help.")
Read of for the truth about Scream and Scream Again...
A middle-aged man wearing a tank top and red running shorts jogs through a park in swinging 1969 London as the opening titles roll. Suddenly, he hugs himself and falls to the ground, only to wake up in a large hospital room attended by an unspeaking red-headed nurse. When she leaves the room, he throws off his sheets to find, accompanied by upbeat jazz music, that his right leg has been amputated. He screams, understandably.
The film cuts to a different plot (spoiler: the film frequently cuts, ingeniously, to different plots) in which a man named Konratz drives to the border of an unnamed European country whose border is staffed by men wearing black and red armbands with a symbol that recalls a swastika (as well as a devil’s pitchfork). The man’s car and papers are inspected as he crosses into the fascist country. “Welcome home,” the border guard tells Konratz.
Konratz meets with his superior, showing him a folder that indicates that something called a K718 can be programmed to misdirect something called a MX12. However, his superior realizes Konratz should not know anything about whatever K718 is. Unfortunately for the superior officer, Konratz puts his left hand on the man’s shoulder and administers what can only be described as a Vulcan neck pinch…a fatal Vulcan neck pinch.
Back in non-fascist Britain, police officers including mustachioed Inspector Superintendent Bellaver discover a female murder victim in a forest. “Is it murder, sir?” asks a newspaper photographer.
“Is it murder?” Bellaver mocks the man. “Don’t be so bloody stupid.” The inspector and another detective drive to a big country house, where they interview Vincent Price, a doctor who employed the murder victim. When Dr. Price asks what his employee has done, the inspector replies wittily, “She hasn’t done anything. Putting it crudely, someone’s done here.”
The film cuts to the victim’s autopsy, performed by an elderly doctor as well as Dr. David Sorel, a young pathologist. Describing the violence performed on the victim, the old doctor says, “I haven’t seen anything like this in donkey’s years.” Then he instructs the young Dr. Sorel that he should never confuse a person with a corpse (i.e., do not get attached to dead people).
Inspector Bellaver returns to the police station where his no-nonsense approach applies both to the investigation and to the sandwiches provided for policemen: “How long have these been around? They’re curling up like Charlie Chaplin’s boots.” He also concludes (about the case and not the sandwich) that the “Bloody problem is that there’s no motive for a sex crime apart from the sex.”
He meets with Dr. Sorel, who tells him the woman’s cause of death was loss of blood due to the severing of the jugular vein. Also, she had been strangled before death, and there are two puncture wounds on her wrist. Bellaver sums it up: “Strangled, head bashed in, throat cut. Doesn’t sound like it was for the sex at all, does it?”
“Psychopath?” Dr. Sorel hypothesizes.
“That's about it,” Bellaver agrees. “And the psycho’s the most difficult of all to get. “There’s hardly ever any rational motive, just the animal compulsion to kill, that’s all.”
Back at the mysterious hospital room, the jogger discovers that both his legs have now been amputated.
Meanwhile, in the film’s other plot set in the fascist country, soldiers prevent a young man and woman from hiking out of the country. They kill the man and take the woman captive. Konratz interrogates her using bolt cutter to cut off one of her fingers.
In a darkly comic transition, the filmmakers cut from the woman’s scream to a man screaming in a London nightclub—he is singing the song “Scream and Scream Again” from the film “Scream and Scream Again.” At the club, two young women fancy a young man named Keith. They follow him off the dance floor, where Sylvia asks him to buy her a drink, but he counters by offering her a ride in his car, which she accepts. As they drive, she fondles his gear shift (not a euphemism, but clearly a suggestion). They stop, he assaults her, and she runs across a bridge and into a narrow brick tunnel, where he scratches her face and starts to strangle her.
In another clever transition, the filmmakers cut to the fascist country where military officer Peter Cushing says, “I am utterly appalled.” Major Cushing interviews Konratz about his interrogation of the young woman, believing Konratz’s use of torture looks bad for the military government of the fascist nation. “This time you have gone too far,” Major Cushing says. “You are corrupt. Perhaps you always have been, I do not know. In any case, I shall have you relieved of your duties. You are far too unbalanced for a task that is perverse enough as it is.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Konratz puts his hand on Major Cushing’s left shoulder, applying again the fatal Vulcan nerve pinch.
(In a clever subversion of expectations, this scene is the only one in which Peter Cushing, third-billed after Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, appears; it lasts 3 minutes and 17 seconds.)
Back in London, Bellaver has received orders from his superiors to try something bold to catch the killer, so he decides to round up the most attractive female officers to use them as bait.
In a quick interlude, we catch up with the jogger from the park and find that he now has had all of his limbs amputated.
The film cuts to another plot, this one featuring Christopher Lee as a British intelligence official (amusingly reflecting Mr. Lee’s real-life service as an intelligence officer in the British military). During a meeting, Mr. Lee receives a phone call that British technology (presumably code-named K718 or MX12) that is supposed to blow up a plane and its crew doesn’t work, and “somebody, somewhere has got a live airman on their hands.”
In the fascist state, that live airman is prisoner of Konratz and his team. Konratz is informed that the man has withstood all interrogation.
Back in the police morgue in England, Bellaver and Dr. Sorel discover that the murdered woman have lost all their blood. They then enact their plan to use policewomen, specifically Helen, to lure the killer by going to a club and getting picked up. She goes to the same club where Sylvia was abducted, which has the same house band playing, though they are unfortunately not singing the song “Scream and Scream Again” from the film “Scream and Scream Again.” She is almost immediately approached by the killer and she lures him out of the club by provocatively saying nothing, only nodding her head. When they emerge from the club, it is (somewhat surprisingly) broad daylight. The killer drives her away, and they are followed by a police car.
Thus begins the film’s famous car chase sequence, a highly original series of starts and stops that lasts nearly one quarter of the film. The killer drives off the road and into a forest, where he strangles Helen and bites her wrist, sucking out her blood. The police find him and Officer Griffith punches him while another plainclothesman says, “Like a bloody vampire.” But the killer is surprisingly strong and manages to hop into his convertible and drive away, beginning the high-speed portion of the chase. The police use a tracking device in Helen’s shoe (it remains in the car, fortunately for the police, while she has been rescued). The police car, with Inspector Bellaver inside, chases the killer’s car through the countryside for five minutes, while the police make helpful remarks such as “he’s turned off to the left” and “we’re still with him, sir.”
The next phase of the chase begins when the killer parks his car at a quarry, fights off three policemen who use tactics that would not be out of place on a middle school playground (e.g., grabbing his arms so they can punch him), and then runs up a cliff.
Soon, however, the killer falls off the cliff and he (or perhaps a dummy dressed like him) tumbles down the rocks. This is not the end of the chase, even though the police handcuff him to the bumper of one of their cars. As the officers share some cigarettes, the killer shockingly rips off his own hand to run away again.
Philosophically speaking, all things must end, and this is true even of the chase sequence in the middle of Scream and Scream Again. The killer finally reaches his destination: a shed on Vincent Price’s estate. As the police catch up, the man throws himself into a vat of liquid hidden under the floorboards. A uniformed policeman reaches into the liquid but pulls it out immediately, yelling, “My hand!”
“Acid!” concludes Dr. Sorel.
Later, Bellaver questions Vincent Price about the vat of acid, which Dr. Price says is for destroying dangerous germ cultures and infected tissues he is studying. The inspector is understandably suspicious that not only was the killer’s first victim working for Dr. Price, but also that the killer committed suicide by going straight to an acid bath on the doctor’s property. Dr. Price has a convincing answer: “He must have known Eileen and, well, perhaps she told him where she was, and maybe they used the out-buildings to meet in, and she may have told him about the acid.” He believes the killer felt subconsciously guilty about his crimes so he sought out the most gruesome death he could imaging. “When you feel nothing, not even pain, then the body and the spirit are capable of limitless things.”
Back at the morgue, Dr. Sorel and his mentor examine the killer’s hand, concluding that it might not be organic at all but a synthetic hand. At night, however, the nurse from the now-nearly-forgotten story about the amputated man breaks into the morgue to steal the hand so no evidence is left behind. She kills a morgue attendant.
The film switches back to the fascist nation, where, in a scene that might be considered superfluous, a minister of the state is killed at Konratz’s orders.
Bellaver, meanwhile, has discovered the hand is missing. “Either this is coincidence, some kinky freak burglary turned tragic, or we’ve got more than one super-maniac on our hands.”
When Bellaver is ordered not to investigate further because the murderer is dead, Dr. Sorel and Helen drive to Dr. Price’s country house to investigate surreptitiously. He explores the shed to get a sample of acid, but now the vat is dry. To make matters worse, Helen is gone when he returns to his car.
Later, an undercover Konratz strolls around London. He telephones Christopher Lee and arranges to meet him near a fountain. Konratz tells Lee the fascists have the spy plane pilot. Konratz offers to get rid of the pilot (either sending him back to the UK or killing him directly) if Lee gives him all information related to “the so-called Vampire Murders.” Lee agrees immediately.
The agreement leads to a meeting between Konratz and Bellaver, who believes the fascist is Professor Weiss. “He’s a sociologist,” Bellaver explains to a colleague. “He’s doing a book on the psychological aspects of crimes of violence.” (It is never explained why the spy would pose as a sociologist studying psychology rather than simply a psychologist.) When Konratz tries to take the evidence out of the police station, however, Bellaver objects and Konratz uses the fatal Vulcan neck pinch on him—killing what can only be described as the film’s main character at the 1:13 mark, 20 minutes before the end of the film.
The final act occurs at Vincent Price’s country house. Accompanied by jaunty music, Dr. Sorel sneaks into the main house and finds a high-tech operating room complete with video monitors. He opens a cabinet and is shocked to find a human head!
Dr. Price suddenly appears. “I imagine I can guess why you’re here, Doctor. You found a whole assortment of strange mysteries through your involvement with the police, and, well, you thought you might find some answers here. Is that it?”
“That’s about it.”
Dr. Price takes advantage of Dr. Sorel’s presence to explain what he is doing. “You see this? Television! It can be very useful during an operation.” Dr. Price reveals a nude woman’s body in another cabinet. “You see, she’s been assembled piece by piece, organ by organ. She’s a composite, like Keith.”
“Keith?”
“Yes, you remember. The so-called Vampire Killer.”
“The boy who jumped in the acid?”
“Yes.” Dr. Price admits Keith was the first autonomous composite human. Fortunately for all concerned, Dr. Price is about to begin a new operation to give life to the female body, so he invites Dr. Sorel to watch, and of course the young doctor accepts, though he is still skeptical.
“So you’ve created life. It’s the old mad scientist’s dream. Let’s play God.”
“My dear young man, you know as well as I do that God is dying all over the world. Man invented him but doesn’t need him anymore. Man is God now. As a matter of fact, he always was.” Because the world is headed for extinction, Dr. Price believes, what is needed is for scientists to seize power to continue the species.
“A super-race?” Dr. Sorel asks.
“Well, yes, but not an evil super-race,” Dr. Price says. “Still, in the future, there won’t be any room for…imperfection.”
Suddenly, Dr. Price’s assistants wheel in an unconscious Helen. He plans to remove Helen’s brain and transplant it into the composite woman’s head.
Of course, Dr. Sorel will have none of this. He grabs a scalpel and holds it to Dr. Price’s throat. However, Dr. Price reveals that he is super-strong, as a member himself of the new super-race. He pushes Dr. Sorel away, then starts the operation. Surprisingly, they are interrupted by Konratz arriving at the house.
Konratz finds the operating room and introduces himself simply as Konratz. “Your composite that ran amuck, its killings were found in the papers even in my own country. You should have destroyed him yourself. Even so, your operation has become much too dangerous.” Konratz says he has already destroyed all the police evidence of the Vampire Killer, and now he must destroy Dr. Price’s operation. “All positions of power must be consolidated first,” he says, presumably to explain his motivations.
Konratz destroys the composite nurse’s body in the acid bath, now relocated in the operating room. Then Dr. Price attacks Konratz and the two composite super-beings fight, favoring the use of karate chops. After much destruction, Dr. Price manages to toss Konratz into the acid vat.
Eventually, the film remembers Dr. Sorel is in the operating room. He rolls Helen’s gurney out of the operating room and escorts her outside, where Christopher Lee pulls up in a car and says the situation is under control. Mr. Lee enters the house while Dr. Sorel and Helen get in his car.
In the operating room, Mr. Lee confronts Dr. Price, and the film presents its first and only scene of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price together — a scene that lasts less than one minute, and in which both stars never appear together in the same shot. Dr. Price says Konratz was evil so he had to be destroyed, but Mr. Lee uses some kind of hitherto unrevealed hypnosis power with his eyes to force Dr. Price into the acid vat.
When Mr. Lee returns to his car, Dr. Sorel asks him, “Is it all over, sir?”
Profoundly, Mr. Lee intones, “It’s only just beginning.”
The camera zooms in on Mr. Lee’s stoic face and freezes.
When critics speak of Scream and Scream Again, they often bemoan the fact that horror legends Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing never share the screen and that Mr. Cushing's appearance is limited to a single scene of three minutes. Of course, these are the same critics who complain about "stunt casting" because it fails to "serve the story." Would Scream and Scream Again make sense if Vincent Price (a country surgeon in England), Christopher Lee (a British intelligence officer), and Peter Cushing (a military officer in an unnamed fascist country) appeared in a scene together? Of course not. As always, the story is the most important thing, and the film's nuanced story about a Frankenstein-like mad scientists creating a vampire-like killer to take over the world must be developed on its own merits--and they are strong merits indeed.
These busybody critics almost never mention the film's exciting action set-piece, a chase by car and on foot that lasts over 16 minutes, over 17% of the film's run-time. Perhaps the critics do not mention this classic sequence because it features neither Vincent Price nor Christopher Lee nor Peter Cushing. If that is the case, they fail to do the film justice, as the chase sequence is quite something to behold.
These critics also fail to mention the pop song "Scream and Scream Again" from the film "Scream and Scream Again," so their taste is obviously questionable. Why would anyone accept the critics' opinion about this classic film instead of experiencing its joys for themselves? It is the age-old question, and unfortunately it is one question that can never be answered.