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Apr 24, 2019 Web Exclusive By Dustin Krcatovich

Despite the disappointing fact that its three marquee players — Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing — share virtually no screen time together, Gordon Hessler’s 1970 sci-fi thriller Scream and Scream Again is still a fair amount of fun to watch. Yes, it’s unevenly paced and unnecessarily convoluted, but there are also a lot of fun jokes, cool nightclub scenes featuring UK rock also-rans Amen Corner, and people getting their limbs mysteriously amputated, so it more or less evens out.

There are three contiguous plot threads in Scream and Scream Again. One involves the aforementioned amputees; another, a mysterious man from an unnamed totalitarian country killing superior officers and others in his way; yet another, an ongoing investigation regarding a series of women being picked up at a nightclub, murdered, and sometimes drained of their blood. It isn’t really clear just how these three threads are related until the very end, but as with so many movies of this stripe, none of it matters too much anyway. If you’ve simply come in for kicks, there’s plenty on hand here (though maybe not quite as many as one might infer from the film’s salacious poster, used also for this edition’s cover, of a woman dissolving in acid while wearing a decidedly revealing white slip).

The transfer on this particular edition leaves something to be desired: the print is visibly damaged, and the sound deserves better attention than it’s received here. This is unusual for Kino Lorber, so one presumes that circumstances made it inevitable, but it’s still a bit distracting. That said, it also adds to the experience, in a way: despite its legendary cast, this isn’t exactly A-list material, and it wouldn’t really fit to treat it with the sort of fastidious ceremony afforded more prestigious films. In that sense, the occasional scratches and breaks feel nostalgic, almost comforting.

Scream and Scream Again is probably only essential to those who already know they need it, but that’s kind of the realistic state of the physical media market these days, so that’s alright. If you’re hunting for a “lost classic”, though, Scream and Scream Again might not be the first place to look.

(http://www.kinolorber.com/product/scream-and-scream-again-special-edition-blu-ray)