Frozen Scream

This wretched excuse for a horror movie stinks from opening to final frame. I can be generous on low budget films if they have some kind of atmosphere or at least make me laugh, but no such luck with this one. Right from the opening you know you're in for a rough ride...murky photography, awful acting, indecipherable dialogue...only a serious masochist could pay attention to this for the full 80 minutes.

For the record, the plot seems to involve experiments on living people by two doctors searching for immortality. The wife of one of their victims/volunteers starts asking too many questions and there are various chases by the doctors band of zombie-like subjects, plus some lame murders and lots of dull talking. The acting is truly dire. The main doctor, a female actress with an accent like Zsa Zsa Gabor, absolutely crucifies every line of dialogue she speaks with the most stilted and lifeless delivery you could ever dream up. But things get even worse...In what I presume is normal procedure for film-making, the camera start rolling just before the actors take their cues to start acting, which I understand, but in this movie none of that was trimmed out, meaning many scenes start with people standing lifeless before suddenly launching into action. At least once there was a close up of the heroine's bored face before she suddenly broke into an animated scream of terror. Several times things approach Doris Wishman levels of badness, especially in a scene when the heroine tries to hold a door closed with her weight to keep a baddie from barging it in, yet the outside shot shows him trying the door which obviously opens outwards! But the biggest dose of madness hit me about 10 minutes into the film, when suddenly a (very boring, it must be said) conversation between two people was suddenly over-dubbed by a male voice narrating some blurb explaining the plot!! At first I thought the sound had gone wrong! Seemingly this was added to make the film make more sense and fill in motivation or extra detail about the main male character, namely a detective who is trying to work out what is happening. This hopelessly mis-judged narration crops up over and over again, usually starting right in the middle of an on-screen conversation between other characters. Both dialogue tracks can be heard at the same time, so you don't know what to listen to! God knows who thought this was a good idea.

I don't know if it's possible to defend this film in any way. Usually such audacious cruddiness would have me laughing and cheering them on, but Frozen Scream just bored me into doing the ironing while waiting for the thing to reach it's end. And to think this was once considered a "video nasty" in the UK!! Unbelievably bad – even worse than "Unhinged", which at least had decent lighting, and an editor who actually understood what "editing" means. So bad it should never have been released. View at your peril.

A pretty lame horror flick about a scientist's attempts to make people immortal. Unfortunately, his immortality process destroys the victim's soul and personality. This is a bad movie, featuring several funny parts. I particularly liked the scene of two women in the hospital talking, when out of nowhere the policeman narrator's voice is dubbed over the conversation. It's just sloppily put together.

Beyond that, the only point of interest is that H. Kingsley Thurber did the music. He also provided the exact same music for Don't Go In the Woods. I'd say over half of Frozen Scream's music appeared in Woods, also. For fans of DGITW this is certainly of historical importance, but ultimately Frozen Scream is not worth your time.

*dec. 2004. I watched it again. I now value Frozen Scream. Some stretches of boredom, but more amusement than I had originally thought. Don't go too far out of your way to see it, but bad movie fans should find something of interest here.

After opening narration with keen insight into the mysteries of life like I've listed up above, mad Dr. Sven Johnson (Lee James) and his evil assistant Lil Stanhope (Renee Harmon) are shown trying to reverse the aging process by experimenting on tied-up captives. They send out ridiculous-looking, hooded, laughing, bug-eyed henchmen with scythes to gather victims. Jumbled nightmare/flashbacks featuring wrist slashing, blood-drinking, a topless blonde and zombified teens chanting "love and immortality!" around a campfire will make you think you're losing your mind. Meanwhile, a band at a pool party sings "Jack Around the Shack" (?!) to the tune of Rock Around the Clock!

Nothing in this very bad (but rare) movie makes a lick of sense, the droning narration goes on and on (if fact it often goes right over some of the dialogue!) and the entire monotone cast acts brain dead. Harmon, who co-wrote the original story and produced, proves she is just as awful behind the scenes as she is on screen. Continental Video released FROZEN SCREAM on a double tape with the equally awful EXECUTIONER, PART II (which was also written by and starring Miss Harmon).

I dare you to suffer through TWO of her films in the one night!

It's hard to believe this was made in 1975 or on the planet earth. It seems much older than that and alien on most levels. Whenever a scene seems pointless, rather than cut it down they instead have a detective character speak over the already speaking actors. It's something of a struggle to know who to listen to and the detective sounds like the famous voice over from THE CREEPING TERROR--a famously bad film that this film gives a run for it's money. There is other redubbing going on from time to time in a way that it seems several different actors redudded lines even within one scene playing for the same character.

Brief brief nudity and powerful low budget bad idea badness give this film more bad movie energy than either THE CREEPING TERROR or PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. It does come a good ten years too late to be considered as much of a must see as those films since by the mid 70's bad films existed in such numbers it became more fashionable to love them than hate them.

But this deserves attention, directing, music, acting, etc etc all areas defy common logic and supersede lack of talent in a way that is, well, talented.

Rarely has a bad film been so much fun to me of late. There's an odd sort of dream scene--always another plus--and one vaguely thought inducing monologue about how science always tamper with nature even in curing disease.

To add to the greatness is of course the generally terrible nature of the copies to watch, giving it that late night broken telecine projector feel that will make bad movie fans swell with nostalgia or excitement. Oh yeah there's also a drunken priest character in one scene, the fun rarely stops in this one.

The movie sets off with a very complex scenario that requires extended narration to explain. This narration along with the dialogue is fairly well written, however, it's sure to make you roll your eyes as you've heard all the lines before in pre-seventies horror and sci-fi. The acting is some of the poorest I've seen and I watch a lot of b-horror. It's like the actors are not even trying.

I can compare this movie to well loved bad films like "Asylum of Satan" and "The Devil's Rain" which are full of cool elements and atmosphere, but are extremely run-of-the-mill when it comes to plot. "Frozen Scream" has got some cool flashbacks to weird cult-like activity involving nudity. There is some pretty good gore including self-mutilation. I love the genre of 70's trash and if you do too I highly recommend this movie. I don't think it's so easy to track down. It could have become a cult hit, but it must have slipped through the cracks. My copy of the video pairs "Frozen Scream" with "Executioner II" as a double feature. "Executioner II", from the same man who brought us this film, is one of those movies about a Nam vet who returns to America and then cleans up the streets by killing pimps and criminals.