Scream Bloody Murder

Scream Bloody Murder (1973)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Matthew (Fred Holbert) is a deranged young man who has a serious mother issue. He kills his father with a tractor but when he goes to get off of it he ends up getting his hand caught in it. Now with a hook on his hand, he gets out of the hospital and is enraged when he learns that mommy has married a new guy. He soon hits the road slashing up various men and women who he feels are bad.

SCREAM BLOODY MURDER isn't a perfect horror film or even a good one but there are certainly enough interesting moments to make it worth watching if you're a fan of the genre. It should go without saying but Matthew here has bigger mommy issues than even Norman Bates and watching his madness was part of the entertaining and especially early on in the picture where this thing is basically a slasher way before that term would become popular.

The first forty-minutes or so basically has Matthew meeting a variety of people and eventually getting upset at them for a variety of reason. This causes him to lash out and kill whoever he is upset with. None of the violence is overly graphic or bloody but the scenes are certainly effective with some clever editing. The second portion of the film has him falling for a prostitute (Leigh Mitchell) who he wants to try and make "good" but when she doesn't want to play that he decides to kidnap her and hold her hostage.

Holbert's performance isn't one that I'd call good but there's a certain rawness to it that makes it work in this low-budget tale. The performance almost seems like a real person and thought the weakness of the performance actually helped a little. Mitchell was good in her role as the prostitute and the two of them worked quite well together. The biggest issue with the film is the entire second half as there's just not enough drama or suspense to make up for the lack of killings. Still, SCREAM BLOODY MURDER is an interesting little gem that is worth watching.

DVD PLAYER AT K-MART: $29.95.

PUBLIC DOMAIN DVD RELEASE OF THIS MOVIE + 3 OTHERS JUST LIKE IT: $5.95.

A CASE OF BEER & TWO BAGS OF SNACK MIX: $20

BEING ABLE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE DRUNK WITH YOUR FRIENDS: Priceless.

For everything else, there's the crap at Blockbuster. Who knows what the real story behind this movie is. It's graced those cheapo bargain bin horror DVD releases now for about seven years and has yet to be improved upon, as far as low rent, low esteem, low taste entertainment goes. Matthew is a boy with mommy issues who runs over his dad with a tractor, manages to get his arm mangled underneath the runaway machine, and is promptly shipped off to a juvenile mental ward or hospital for the young & psychotic for the bulk of his adolescence. Cue forward to about the age of 18 and Matthew -- who cannot even masturbate because he as been fitted with a razor sharp metal hook to replace his arm -- returns home to find his beloved, creepy mom about to marry one of the hayseed crackers who helped her run the farm after Matthew killed her husband. Imagine his disappointment. So Matthew promptly axe murders the pair of them and sets off on a killing spree across the byways of rural Kansas in search of someone else to be his mommy.

Instead, he finds promiscuous young couples who want him to go skinny dipping with them, a hooker with a heart of gold who paints truly awful paintings, drunk belligerent sailors, various low-wage domestic workers who can't even make chicken right, and a dog that is so unfocused on it's role in life that it doesn't even bark as he hacks up it's 80 year old mistress with a meat cleaver. All he wanted was a nuclear mother figure to tell him what to do and maybe beat him off, but no. Just people & things -- including the church -- which fail to live up to his need for protective authority figures with breasts. We all want things in life we can't have and all Matthew wants is the attention of women who have their own lives to live, don't have to measure up to his moral standards to get through the day, enjoy sex, and look good in the nude. It isn't easy being a psycho killer sometimes.

I mean look, what can you really say about a movie called SCREAM BLOODY MURDER? And, what do you say to people who watch a movie called SCREAM BLOODY MURDER and end up not liking it? Since there are about 14 movies titled or re-titled SCREAM BLOODY MURDER I can see how one might end up with this by mistake, but if you are looking for a movie called SCREAM BLOODY MURDER in the first place, dude, like, what were you expecting? Camus??

But when all is said and done and if you can find it within yourself to get into the spirit of things, this is a fast-paced, luridly subtexturalized and genuinely amusing little pre-Freddy Kreuger hacker about a maniac who isn't bright enough to realize he doesn't need axes, knives, meat cleavers or other weapons when he has a razor sharp metal claw molded onto that dead arm of his. This is all American exploitation horror made at a time when movies like this were the staple of drive-in movie double bills, and half of the time you weren't even bothering with what was happening on screen. Watching it in your dingy little apartment by yourself cold sober isn't exactly going to help improve one's perception of it since you'll be focused on things like plot holes, inept performances, tacky locations & fashions, laughable special effects, and a strange moralistic dichotomy that is at odds with the manner in which the film was meant to be seen: Drunk, in the company of friends. Or, half ignored while scoring with your date.

When used to fill either of those roles this retains it's power as a superior little example of low budget regionally made exploitation horror that is probably a lot better than it had to be, and more satisfying than most similar examples. I like that garden room at the mansion especially, and the idea of an artist making their living as a prostitute is actually somewhat Kafkaesque. One word to the wise: I've been trying to find an "uncut" home video version of this film for years & none seem to exist. I've sampled 2 different VHS and four DVD presentations, including the new one by Retromedia titled as CLAW OF TERROR -- which does look good compared to the others -- but they all show the same fullscreen 86 minute edit purporting to be the R Rated original version. Any one of them is as good as the other, or so it would seem, and it would be amusing to find out why SCREAM BLOODY MURDER was censored in the first place, and what became of the original elements. That's what makes me a FILM DORK, and this movie will always have a place close to my heart for setting it's sights low, aiming straight for the gutter, and scoring a bull's eye.

6/10

Even before the opening credits roll "Scream Bloody Murder" lives up to its title.

Little Matthew(Fred Holbert, in his only film performance) decides he digs his father better dead, and apropos of absolutely nothing, runs him over with a tractor. Even more inexplicably, he manages to mangle his own arm in the process.

Sent away to a mental institution for many years he comes home a teenager with a hook for a hand and an axe to grind(literally) with his mother and new stepfather who soon die painfully for having the unmitigated gall to get married and seem happy about it on the very day he came home from the loony bin.

He then goes on an all out run.... away from the mother of all Oedipus complexes, cutting a bloody swath through everyone he meets, from a young couple giving him a ride out of his small town, to whoever happens to stand in his way.

Meeting painter/hooker with a heart of gold Vera(Leigh Matthews, a two film wonder), things look up a touch for our protagonist. He compliments her art, renames her Daisy,brings her flowers, and kills a john for treating her poorly. If that isn't love, he doesn't know what is.

Desperate to impress and to make good on his claims of wealth and success to fulfill his weird white knight fantasy of "saving" Vera/Daisy, he murders the entire residency of the closest fancy house he can find, kidnaps his lady love and steals from locals to provide her with all the creature comforts you could possibly need while tied to the stolen bed of a psychopath. The resulting action/reaction struggle of Vera/Daisy's survival instincts and Matthew's manias eventually lead to a quirky but extremely satisfying bloody climax, proving the old adage of "where ever you go, there you are".

This film is amateurish on near every level (hammy acting, garish color, jerky cinematography, thin as gossamer plot) and the print that has passed into public domain and an epic ton of multi movie DVD sets is blown out and grainy.

However, "Scream Bloody Murder" succeeds almost in spite of itself. It doesn't bother with overambitious story touches it wouldn't have had the budget for, keeps the plot moving quickly, the body count mounting tidily and the dialog simple. Holbert rips through his campy lines with delightful abandon, and Ms. Matthews manages to be appealing enough to root for despite being little more than a cliché archetype. It isn't trying to teach us moral lessons or have pretensions to high art. It's the mania, madness and mayhem fans of the genre want to see....and while it is often goofy, it is never boring.

By going further than is necessary at every possible turn, the creators of "Scream Bloody Murder" managed to polish their turd into an excellent bloody Valentine, and a forgotten little gem of B film.

6.5 stars

This is one demented piece of film making. The oft mentioned pre-credit sequence sets things off just nicely but little did I imagine that this would carry on in much the same manic fashion. Fred Holbert was rather stiff in the title role, and I see he did nothing else. Leigh Mitchell, on the other hand , was excellent as the lady in distress, and I'm surprised she did little else. Well written and decently directed, my public domain copy was a bit faded and jumpy but the passion (or possibly madness!) of the maker shines through. A little repetitive at times, there are nevertheless some super moments. I liked the sailor's arrival at Vera's dwelling. I loved the doctor's arrival and Vera's plucky post bath action. There is also a delicious moment when after a big surprise he casually picks up a limb momentarily so he can close the front door.

What surprised me the most about this movie was how gory it was. For 1973 this is a very bloody movie. The plot is simple. The main character is crazy and for reasons in his own deranged mind goes around killing people. It's a B movie, lots of mistakes and plenty of unanswered questions but you have to expect that from a B slasher movie. It's very simple and easy to follow, no in depth characters. There are some pretty disturbing scenes and I do not recommend the squeamish, children, or those prone to nightmares to view this film. If you're a fan of blood and guts B movies here's an early one that you should see. For the mainstream movie viewer, I would advise passing on this one.