I am familiar with the output of UK’s Amicus studio, which cranked out a number of portmanteau films in the late 60s and early 70s—y’know, those movies which are a compendium of shorter stories. Apparently, they also made some more traditional feature films, one of which is 1973’s And Now the Screaming Starts. It is directed by Roy Ward Baker, who directed the portmanteau Aylum for them, and who is not to be confused with Roy Thomas Baker, who produced many a Queen album.
This gothic horror starts out promising. The credits are in that font I always think of as “The Moody Blues” font, though it was only used for one album cover (pointless aside: the real font is usually either Bocklin or Expo). The cast includes Peter Cushing, who was always an asset to even the worst movies in which he appeared. There’s also Stephanie Beecham, who has been in a number of films like this that I have enjoyed, yet I always forget that I don’t find her to be a very good actress. Still, there is a certain aspect of fare which she fits to a T, and that is somebody got to check off a box on some form for “Bosom (heaving”).
She has just married Ian Ogilvy, the local lord of the obligatory castle which has some sort of terrible history. As he tells her, eyes rolling over the kind of legacy such places have: “Headless horsemen, horseless headsmen—the whole thing.” He seems like a nice enough guy for being the local gentry and all that. But he has an ugly temper as well, and is not about being haughty, especially around Geoffrey Whitehead, the woodman who has a thatched roof cottage on the grounds.
You see, Whitehead’s grandfather and Ogilvy’s grandfather had an incident back in their time which resulted in resentment that continues to the time frame of this film. For one thing, they are the same grandfather, as a flashback shows us Herbert Lom as that man, exercising his “right of the first night” by raping the bride of the newly married Whitehead (same actor in both timelines). When Whitehead protests, Lom has his right hand cut off.
I guess this explains the disembodied hand that is always stalking various characters, especially Beecham. The first time we see it, the hand inexplicably leaps at her through a painted portrait of Lom. It later strangles a man, though I doubted it could have enough strength on its own to do that. But it mostly walks around the mansion like a tarantula or Thing from The Addams Family, though far less convincingly. It also literally appears and disappears at random and, if it can do that, I wondered why it feels compelled to walk to anywhere.
Mirroring the “first night” scene with Lom, Beecham is apparently violated by the ghost of Whitehead past, or could it possibly be Whitehead present? This happens on her honeymoon night. I’d say things didn’t start out promising, given she and Ogilvy occupied separate bedrooms.
This sounds straight-forward, but the result is more of a mess than I thought would have been possible. Cushing and another reliable actor, Patrick Magee, seem almost at a loss for what they can do with these parts. To Lom’s credit, he completely throws himself into the role of a rapey lord, as if this warranted his talents.
That painting seems to be particularly shoehorned into the plot, with it cause an actress to be so terrified by what she sees when looking at it that she falls down the stairs to her death. Whatever it was is so shocking that it even turns her into a different actress for that descent. Beecham will eventually attack the artwork with a knife, which I have sometimes wanted to do to a Rothko.
At least the house looks pretty awesome, as it is Oakley Court, which was not just the interior and/or exterior for many Hammer productions, but even housed their business operations for a while. There is one element here I assume is a set, though it is very odd, whatever it is. This is the upstairs landing, on which much action takes place, and which appears to form a roughly “S” shape, with the middle section appearing to be a narrow bridge. I could never quite wrap my brain around the layout, and I believe I spent more time thinking about it than the filmmakers likely did on the script.
And Now the Screaming Starts ticks the necessary boxes for gothic horror, but does little more than that. What is most frustrating is how I can’t even be bothered to maintain consistency in its own storytelling. For unknown reasons, the ghost of Whitehead is not just sans hand, but he is also missing his eyes. I have no idea why that would be, given Lom didn’t remove them. So, is this a stupid movie? The eyes (or, rather, the lack thereof) have it.
Dir: Roy Ward Baker
Starring Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Stephanie Beecham
Watched on Severin blu-ray