#MONSTERMONDAY: 'A serial killer who drains his victims' blood is on the loose in London;
the police follow him to a house owned by an eccentric scientist'.
REALLY? I HAVE LIVED SO LONG without really understanding what on earth, the film #SCREAMANDSCREAMAGAIN is really about, I don't care much, if I ever understand it. It has never effected my enjoyment of the film, which probably down to two things: the performance of Alfred Marks as Detective Supt. Bellaver and Vincent Price as the weird Dr. Browning.
BUT TODAY it's Vincent's Dr Browning that we are shinning our spot light onto. Who OR what is this guy? Ok, he has a title, he's a Doctor who whose clinic specializes in limb and organ transplantation... can I hear alarm bells? As we witness in the film, patient limbs have a habit of parting and walking off, and not by themselves. I have read theories that Browning is also, an alien? Whatever he is, Price plays him with a 'now you see me, now you don't' wink which keeps us guessing. Price also went down on record in later years that, the character may have been hard to pin down, because he had no idea either, what Browning OR the film was really about. It's not hard to believe, when it seems the film appears to have THREE individual plots running at the same time.
ONE IS REMINDED of Cushing's 'Doctors Wear Scarlet' / 'Incense For The Damned' / 'Blood Suckers' movie from 1970. Here the budget pot ran dry during the production,causing filming to halt in the spring of 1969, resuming some months on.New plot strands had to written, as actors had moved on and the results were a mess!
I HAVE EVEN READ a theory where, in order to proceed with the film, and get a theatrical release, footage from a completely unrelated film, was glued onto the existing scenes . . how-else could you account for such a jumbled non coherent story? BUT this isn't the case here, SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN was adapted from the novel by Peter Saxon, The Disoriented Man. Peter Saxon being a 'house pseudonym' used by various authors in the 1960s and 1970s. . So, I guess there isn't one man to blame then?
EVEN SO, the great Fritz Lang is reported to have had an appreciation of the film, it's a pity he isn't still around to enlighten us about the plot! But hey, Plot? Smot! Who needs it when you have Vincent Price firing on all cylinders? Dr Browning is a fascinating creation, and the reason why we have installed him in our #MonsterMonday archive. Price created, by accident maybe, another villain armed with a scalpel, out to do harm and to be feared. He is a bounder and a sly one at that. He's quick, but not quick enough to escape Christopher Lee's 'Fremont ' entering from the shadows and seeing him off in such an acidic fashion. Does DR BROWNING make YOUR MONSTER list?
If our #MONSTERMONDAY feature has whetted your appetite, and you didn't enter our PCAS COMPETITION LAST YEAR (ABOVE) and don't own a copy of 'SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN. HAVE NO FEAR! Twilight Time who generously sponsored our PCAS competiton have a terrific BLU RAY release, complete with EXTRAS! Just click and ORDER RIGHT HERE!
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