Scream and Scream Again

Any science fiction horror film whose cast includes actors of the magnitude of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing, but doesn’t give any of them a starring role, is a science fiction horror film that’s starting off on the wrong foot. In fact, Gordon Hessler’s film meanders through confusion and pointlessness for nearly an hour (take the deadly dull disco scenes and especially the interminable police-murder suspect chase sequence for example).

When Price finally enters the scene in his surgical scrubs, the story gradually begins to take off, propelled almost single-handedly by the mad doctor’s fervent ranting and raving, with his final delirious burst offering “droll” statements along the lines of “In the future, there won’t be any room for imperfection“; ‘But all this is impossible’. ‘No, only your acceptance of it’; “Man is God now… as a matter of fact, he always was“.

On top of that there’s even a conversation that manages to be somewhat interesting about the complex relationship between science and politics in an era of global ecological destruction marked by sudden, profound socio-economic changes.

Overall the movie ends up being uneven, with an erratic plot that saves the best until just before the closing credits. David Whitaker’s soundtrack is terrible.