Le manchot

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

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.

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

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.

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 ****