Blutbad des Schreckens

First off the bat this is a ZERO budget production from all points down but, in truth, thats never hurt a movie in my opinion anyway.

This was made in 1973 and you can pretty much feel the influence of certain other movies which had made such an impact from 1968 onwards, it strives for that Last House feel and almost succeeds in some cases. The opening is pretty cool (love that squashed Dad effect!) but the actual storyline seems like its pretty jumpy and zooms along from start to finish, which is where it gets interesting.......

Anyone expecting gore galore better hit the road Jack because what we have by the end is some great scenes of 'Woman In Peril'and, yeah, she is treated pretty poorly but why the hell are you watching a movie called Scream Bloody Murder in the first place if you can't take some FAKE abuse? This film is like watching something on fast forward just to get to the money shot, taking in an ending which recalls both Maniac (1980) and a sublime Carnival of Souls (1962), its a shame people haven't got the gall to make stuff like this anymore because its got more originality than most of the celluloid waste thats forced down our throats these days. Check it out if only for Angus Scrimm in an early role.

F**ked-up farmer's son Matthew only has eyes for his mother, so he hops onto his father's tractor and ploughs down dear old dad, mangling his own hand in the process. After years in an institution, Matthew, now equipped with a hook (who's stupid idea was that?), is finally allowed to go home only to find that his mother has just remarried.

When he sees his new step-dad making moves on his mum, Matthew wigs out and gets chop happy with an axe; unfortunately, mum catches him red-handed (and red-everything else) and also winds up dead. Matthew decides to hit the road, but everyone he meets seems to remind him of the dead couple back home, so he kills them too.

Eventually Matthew arrives in Venice, Los Angeles, where he befriends Vera, a hooker with a heart and a passion for painting. Amazingly, Vera doesn't pick up on the obvious signs that her new pal is a raving nut-job (even when he interprets her art as 'a man being tortured for chopping up the man who took away his mother'), but she sure gets the message when he abducts her, takes her to his mansion (the previous owner's body being stuffed in an upstairs closet, along with the maid), and treats her like his possession.

Scream Bloody Murder is an unjustly ignored, low-rent B-movie that has been been allowed to fall into the public domain—which is great news for fans of grind-house/drive-in sleaze because it allows them to check it out for next to nothing, via the internet.

I chose to watch this title at random from The Internet Archive, and boy am I glad I did, 'cos it has everything I could ever want from a '70s psycho film: a seriously insane killer with a mommy complex; umpteen mean-spirited murders (hell, even a dog gets it!); messed up hallucination sequences; a sexy female tied up and terrorised; and a few seriously tense and harrowing sequences including a doozy of a finale.

Recommended for those who like their entertainment rough 'n' ready and good 'n' bloody.

Originally released under the less hook-like Scream Bloody Murder, Claw Of Terror opens with a young farmers lad Matthew starting up the family bulldozer and running over his father, as well as his own hand. Cut to ten years later, and Matthew is now a weird loner with a claw for a hand, who sees red whenever his mother Daisy is kissing someone else, and it doesn't take long - he comes home from the hospital to find Mr Parsons is sleeping in the big bed with Mommy. The honeymoon doesn't last long: Matthew gives Mr Parsons a few whacks with the ax, mama falls on a rock, and before you can say "rigor mortis" he's hitched a ride with newlyweds. But, as he's plagued with visions of his dead mother in increasing stages of decay, THEIR honeymoon doesn't last either. And this is in the first twenty minutes of the movie!

Claw Of Terror doesn't waste celluloid plunging you, the unwitting viewer, into a Freudian whirlpool of psycho-sexual deviancy. He's befriended by red-haired Vera, a hooker with a heart of gold, who becomes his Mommy substitute - not surprisingly, as she's played by the same actress. She lets Matthew call her Daisy and starts to believe his outrageous lies about his rich family, which he feels he must prove. Ingratiating his way into a mansion, he slices his way through the household; strangely enough, the one killing in the movie he is squeamish about is the family dog! He proceeds to romance his prostitute Mommy substitute with a closet full of dead bodies, and then - and only then - do things start to get weird.

On one hand there's an utterly unsympathetic portrayal of a deviant serial killer, and an almost unbearable streak of cruel humor underpinning the carnage. Matthew of course gets the best lines like "I get groceries and art stuff and kill people - but do you appreciate it? No!" On the other hand... there's some incredible imaginative photography you don't usually see in B-grade horror, with fantastic distorted angles, almost as distorted as the minds who dreamt up this celluloid nightmare.

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.

The action begins with a young boy climbing onto a field tractor and running his dad over, then losing a hand himself when he jumps off and runs over his own arm. He's sent to a sanitarium and emerges as a young adult with a hook hand (Fred Holbert) years later, but with major mental problems. He goes on a grisly killing spree and ultimately keeps a prostitute (Leigh Mitchell) prisoner in a house. As far as sick and depraved psycho slasher movies go, this one delivered the goods and was uncompromising in most of its gore scenes. For what it's worth, PHANTASM's Angus Scrimm has a very small role as a doctor late in the film, and he's just terrible. I got a kick out of seeing a movie marquee that was playing "Charlton Heston in The Omega Man" in the background of one outdoor scene. **1/2 out of ****