Scream and Scream Again (1970)

Another film that I haven't seen in an age, Scream and Scream Again (1970) is notable as being only one of two (I think) films to feature Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Indeed, this alignment of horror superstars was used as a selling point for the film.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really deploy them particularly well: Cushing's role is, in truth, simply an extended cameo and has no interaction with the other two, while Lee gets a few more scenes and, right at the end, interacts with Price, he spends most of his time on the periphery of the film.  Price has by far the most substantial role as a sinister scientist, but gives a curiously muted performance, leaving something of a vacuum at the centre of the plot.  That said, Scream and Scream Again remains an effective and entertaining film, thanks to a typically discursive script from Christopher Wicking and some excellent, very dynamic, direction from Gordon Hessler, (easily his best film), featuring lots of tracking shots, following various characters as they walk through scenes.  Wicking's script intertwines three plotlines, which initially seem unconnected - the rise to power of a brutal and ruthless military officer in an Eastern European country, a jogger hospitalised after a collapse who keeps coming out of sedation to find another limb amputated and a police investigation into a series of 'vampire murders' in which young women are brutally killed and their blood drained.  Slowly, but surely, the three plots begin to come together, with all roads leading to the clinic of the mysterious DR Browning (Price).  The conclusion explains just enough to satisfactorily wrap up the various plot strands, but leaves enough unexplained to maintain the air of disorientating mystery that pervades the film.

The film is, in fact, derived from the sixties pulp novel The Disorientated Man by Peter Saxon, ('Peter Saxon' was a 'house name' used by a number of authors contributing to things like The Sexton Blake Library and 'The Guardians' paperback series).  All of the plot elements and most of the incidents in Wicking's script are present in the novel, the difference lying in their presentation, with Wicking opting for a fragmented structure, not making obvious links between the sub-plots.  The film presents everything as a series of incidents, playing down the plot mechanics and inviting the viewer to try and piece everything together.  Hessler's direction takes its cue from Wicking's script structure, with the plots all presented in differing styles: the disappearing limbs strand is presented as pure horror, the stuff in the Eastern European dictatorship as a cold war thriller and the 'vampire killer' strand as a police procedural, with the finale turning into barmy science fiction.  The viewer is constantly bounced between the different plots and styles, constantly kept disorientated and intrigued.  The strongest element is undoubtedly the police investigation, with its long tracking shots through the squad room, overlapping dialogue and an extremely well staged car chase.  It also includes the film's two best performances, from Alfred Marks as Superintendent Bellaver, (delivering a real tour de force in the role - his presence is sorely missed when the character is killed off before the end) and Michael Gothard as Keith, the vampire killer, (a creepy and seemingly unstoppable superman who even pulls his own hand off to escape handcuffs).  Also of note is Marshall Jones as Konratz, the East European officer, who effectively ties the three plots together as the only character who interacts with Cushing, Lee and Price.

Wicking's script is also notable for what it omits from the source novel.  While the film eventually reveals that Browning's clinic is part of a global conspiracy to create a race of supermen (and women) from spare parts and place them in senior positions around the world - Jones, Lee and Price are all such constructs, while Keith was an early, unstable, creation - it never reveals exactly who originated the plot.  The book, by contrast, reveals that the bodies are being created to provide receptacles for alien intelligences, (normal human bodies being too frail to contain them), as part of a plot to take over the planet by stealth.  (I actually own a second hand copy of the novel).  According to some sources, this explanation was originally also in Wicking's script, but was cut at some point.  Whatever the truth, the more enigmatic conclusion of the finished film, with the superhuman plot still in place, despite the elimination of Browning and Jones, judged by Lee to be aberrations - being too human and angst ridden and too brutal and amoral, respectively, actually feels both more appropriate and more satisfactory.