"Scream and Scream Again" (man was it bad!) + The Fire

(this blog was begun Friday night, October 11 2019)

Sorry I missed ya last night. Grim came over and wanted to hear the new Opeth, so we listened to it out in his car. I've heard it about four times now, this was the first time I've heard it played loud, and I've gotta say that I am just overwhelmed by how great it is. No one makes music like this, so inspired and full of ideas, and yet all-of-a-piece, not merely a cut and paste collection of riffs. Mikael is a musical genius, but he has really outdone himself this time. ////

The fire today put so much smoke into the air that it was hard to breathe. Maybe I am just sensitive to it, but for me it was debilitating. I didn't go for my usual nightly walk. The CSUN campus was closed anyway, and thus off limits. The air up in Northridge was really thick with smoke, so I spent most of the day in Reseda, here at Pearl's. The air quality was only marginally better here - three miles south of my apartment - but at least it was tolerable. We watched the local news coverage to keep up with developments, but as I write the fire is still less than 20% contained. On the news I heard references to Sesnon Boulevard and O'Melveny Park in Granada Hills, and also to Sierra Highway and The Old Road, which are part of my route to Rice Canyon and Whitney Canyon. While anyone's prayers should rightly be concentrated on the folks who live up in those areas, I am also praying that the open spaces and hiking trails be spared, and the animals for whom they are home.

For most of my life, until about ten years ago, we used to get these major Southern California wildfires every once in a while, maybe twice a decade. Now, it's every year. ////

Tonight I did watch a movie, though I kind of wish I hadn't. Do you recall me saying, two nights ago, that the horror movies Vincent Price made in the 1960s were hit and miss? Tonight's movie fell into the latter category, in a big way. It was called "Scream and Scream Again" (1970), and it was included on the flip side of "The Oblong Box" (which we watched two nights ago) as part of a "Midnite Movies" double feature, released on dvd by MGM. We enjoyed "Oblong Box", so naturally we assumed "Scream" would at least be a competent companion piece. Right off the bat, though, the pairing proved to be deceptive if not downright fraudulent.

As the movie began, a jumpy, modern jazz score played over the opening credits. Right away my antennae went up. "This doesn't sound like horror movie music", I thought. More appropriate to a 1960s espionage flick, or even a parody like "Austin Powers". Then the story began with what looked like the plot of a Cold War movie. The first sequence showed a meeting between high ranking officers of a fictional Communist country. They are engaged in a power struggle, and one of them displays incredible physical strength by getting his rival officer in a Mr. Spock shoulder pinch, which kills the man.

"What is going on here"?, I wondered. I thought I was going to be watching a horror movie starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. That's how the stars were billed on the dvd box. But as the movie continued to play out, it looked more like a crime thriller. The featured character in the first 50 minutes was an English police captain, played by an actor named Alfred Marks. He and his men are chasing after a London serial killer who hangs out in local rock clubs, picking out girls to victimise.

Now, during this extended sequence, which runs far too long, we are stuck in a nightclub, where we are forced to listen to the truly awful music of a real life 1960s band called The Amen Corner. Now, The Amen Corner had a lead singer named Andy Fairweather Lowe, who went on to a bit of chart success as a solo act in the 1970s, and other members of this band have had noteworthy achievements as well. But I ask of you - just try to listen to them as they are presented in this movie, playing live in a club, and then tell me you have never heard a worse act in your life. I mean, Good Lordy Moses are they bad! I beseech you to agree.

So, the viewer is subjected to a sequence or two of The Amen Corner, and then we are back to the police chase. And by the way, what movie are we watching, anyway? Is it the one with the Communist power struggle, or this new story about the London psychopath? What country are we supposed to be in? By the fifteen minute mark, I knew this was not a true horror film, and I was ready to turn it off, not only because it is Halloween Season and time for scary movies, but also because, so far, this movie had been really bad.

But I thought, "just give it a few more minutes", so I did, and lo and behold a captivating section ensued, where the police have the serial killer on the run. He too seems possessed of superhuman strength, just like the Communist General (and whatever happened to him?). The killer can run like an Olympic sprinter, he can fend off four men at a time, and when the police finally trap him in a quarry, he quickly climbs up the side of a sheer rock face. However, he isn't infallible, and does fall from the rock after reaching a great height. Then, he is knocked out and the police are able to handcuff him to the fender of a squad car while they call for reinforcements. As they await more help, the killer wakes up and escapes by breaking off his handcuffed hand at the wrist and running like hell from the stunned coppers. His hand is left dangling from it's cuff on the car fender.

That chase-and-capture sequence lasted about 15 minutes and was involving enough to make me reconsider the movie. "Hmmm,  maybe it's gonna be pretty good after all"?

But it was still phony-baloney, because where was Christopher Lee? Where was Vincent Price? Peter Cushing had appeared, as a Communist officer (in that other baffling section of the movie), but he was killed off within 60 seconds of appearing onscreen. Perhaps he had a better picture to make.

I, too, should have bailed out just like Cushing did. I should've trusted my first instincts, ten minutes after the movie started, that this was a crummy film, and I should've turned it off as I'd felt the impulse to. After the shot of the dangling hand, anything horrific was overwith, and so was anything interesting or even entertaining. The movie became one of the "what were they smoking"? variety.

I have already devoted way too many words to "Scream and Scream Again", so I will wrap up by saying that It's A Gyp. It isn't a real horror movie - maybe a sci-fi (at best) but it's even a stretch to call it that. It doesn't star Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, as promoted in the cover art. Lee is only in a handful of short scenes. Price doesn't have significant screen time until the last twenty minutes, and Cushing is only in the film for one minute, as noted.

So the whole thing was falsely advertised. The jazz score was ridiculous and removed any possibility of creating tension. Even worse was the music of The Amen Corner. And the end of the movie is a complete washout; just when you think you might see some real Mad Scientist action in Vincent Price's laboratory (pronounced "la-BORE-a-torry"), the scene turns instead into a typical and cliched motion picture punchout, the kind that you could see in any Western or crime movie.

Not only will you not scream while watching "Scream and Scream Again", but you definitely will not scream again. Or if you do scream, it will be at yourself for sitting all the way through this mess of a thoroughly rotten movie.

Two Thumbs So Far Down that it's gonna take me a week, at least, to locate 'em and pull 'em back up to the surface. Do not watch, unless you feel the need to torture yourself. /////

Hey, it's me, and I'm back! It's now Saturday afternoon. How y'all doing? I mean, really.....don't watch that movie, whatever you do.

Now you're probably gonna watch it, just to see how awful it is, right? Well, don't say I didn't warn ya!

Most of the smoke has cleared from the fire, and it looks like the hillside is all burned up, all the way to Mission Point. I hope O'Melveny Park is okay, and I will drive up there as soon as the fire is officially put out. It's still pretty smoky to breathe here, and CSUN is closed up for the weekend, so I probably won't go for my walk again tonight. Right now I am gonna head out to Trader Josephus's and then maybe to Chatworth Libe, which is near TJ's. See you tonight at the Usual Time, hopefully with a much better movie. :):)

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)