Halloween Countdown: October 4 – It’s not enough

Our weekly lesson plan will resume on November 1, as the spooky season demands a diabolically different kind of lazy Sunday video post.

Vincent Price! Christopher Lee! Peter Cushing! Three titans of terror togther at last!

It’s a shame, then, that the folks behind Scream and Scream Again put this trio of talents in an incomprehensible attempt to marry the Cold War intrigue of John le Carre with Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster. Price got the best end of the devil’s bargain as the mad scientist creator of a host of mix-and-match psychotic cyborg clones, but Lee was regrettably underused as a sinister government agent and poor Cushing relegated to the margins in a Politiburo intrigue subplot that went absolutely nowhere.

Truth to tell, the film’s strongest moment takes place in the star-free prologue, which follows the murderous exploits of one of Price’s moddishly garbed man-monsters from a London nightclub to an impromtu acid bath.

Besides featuring a memorably grisly take on escapology, the sequence also features a filmed performance of this forgotten gem…

Recommended listening: Amen Corner – Scream and Scream Again (from The Very Best of The Amen Corner, 2000)

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…by a Welsh experimental-jam-outfit-turned-pop-group on the verge of dissolution.

3 Responses to “ Halloween Countdown: October 4 – It’s not enough ”

Comments:

Dinosaur1972 says:
October 5th, 2009 at 12:02 am

I totally didn’t get this movie. I thought it was kind of tired when I watched it, but all sources say it never made sense anyway. Do we blame Amicus for this film, or AIP?

Mondo says:
October 5th, 2009 at 7:07 am

That’s gone right on my ‘must see list’ – I finally got round to watching From The Beyond The Grave with my eldest last week – have you seen it ? An Amicus classic..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvlHU37bG0

Mister Bile says:
October 6th, 2009 at 4:40 am

Ooof… I’d hold off, Mondo. This isn’t “so bad it’s good,” or even “So bad it’s interesting.” Out of 4 friends, I was the only one who stayed awake during the entire movie. Although we did get a good in-joke out of the phrase “Starring” Peter Cushing.

(Spoiler: He’s not so much in the margins, as a footnote.)

But the theme song did get stuck in my head… dammit.

Armagideon Time