Scream... and Die!

Valerie and her boyfriend Terry witness a murder in an old abandoned house. They had heard the sound of a car arriving and they hid themselves. A couple had come in. They could only see the girl because He remained always in the shadow. She undressed herself and sat on his lap. Suddenly a switchblade flashes out. She's stabbed to death.

Valerie in her panic rushes blindly out of the house. Outside she waits for Terry. He doesn't come. Then she hears footsteps. Again she runs and runs.... Somehow she manages to get home in the morning.

In London Valerie goes back to her routine. She tries to contact Terry, be he's disappeared from sight. And worst of all, when Valerie looks out of her window she sees Terry's car parked in front of her house. The killer knows who she is and where she lives! When Valerie speaks with her friends about it, they advise her to not contact the police. After all Terry is a shady dealer, and she could get involved in a very nasty business. But what happened to Terry? Is he still alive?

The killer is stalking her, and he will strike again...

By the description, you could think that "Scream and Die" is a very suspenseful thriller. But you would be wrong.

"Scream and Die" (the title is misleading) should be seen by those that like a weird atmosphere: the thick fog that envelops the house when Terry and Valerie arrive there, Valerie's friends and neighbors, the early 70s mood, the subtle and effective soundtrack, and the bizarre! Most viewers will guess from the beginning who the killer is. But that's not really important. I enjoy "Scream and Die" because it's atmospheric and feels natural (characters and environment), but it is at the same time dreamy, and sometimes surreal. The beautiful and delicate Andrea Allan is Valerie. She is a joy to behold!

If you like the films of Larraz this is another one to add to your collection

Despite all the bad things I'd heard about this film, I decided to go right ahead and watch it anyway as both the titles (Scream and Die, and even better, The House That Vanished) sounded interesting and director José Ramón Larraz did make one of the best lesbian vampire movies of all time with the excellent Vampyres. I have to admit that the film isn't quite as bad as I was expecting; there's a good atmosphere and a few decent moments of tension; but overall I have to go with the majority opinion here and say that the film is very dull on the whole and is mostly riddled with genre clichés. The film gets off to a promising start as a young couple stumble upon an old house in the woods. Being a thief, the boyfriend decides that they should loot it. However, instead of valuable items; the couple find a murder. The girl flees the house and the boyfriend vanishes. Naturally she tells people what she's seen upon returning to society, but her attempts to find the house again fail - the house has...errr...vanished. Anyway, she finds another bloke but the murderer is still out there...

The film features the cheap looking and very cheap sounding British style that many seventies British horror films feature. José Ramón Larraz photographs the film well and gives it a thick and foreboding atmosphere that does benefit it; although it must be quite difficult to make a film about an old house and not have some sort of atmosphere. The plot is the biggest problem with this film as it is really boring and not much of interest happens. There's a murder sequence that sees a naked woman get sliced that's well done and it's one of the few highlights. José Ramón Larraz does make an attempt to make up for the lack of plot with plenty of naked women, most of which are quite beautiful so that was nice of him. There's not a great deal of gore in the film, though it does seem to want to incorporate as much of the Giallo style into the film as possible. The characters in this film are pretty stupid and make daft decisions, and this stretches all the way to the ending which is completely obvious and can be seen coming a mile off. Overall, I can't say that I enjoyed this film much and I can't recommend it either.

The throat-grabbingly monikered 'Scream and Die!' aka 'The House That Vanished' (1973) is another relatively obscure, José Ramón Larraz 70s horror excursion that is entirely undeserving of its current ignominious position of lost title. All the requisite, Larraz terror-traits are in abundance here, luridly libidinous, scantily clad buxom lovelies, creaky, dimly-lit, doom-laden domiciles with some elusive, sexually 'unusual' maniac enthusiastically slaying a series of shrieking, tantalizingly top-heavy females!

The Giallo-esque plot of some sordidly sinister, shadow-stalking, black-gloved killer rarely strays from convention, but where the estimable, Larraz succeeds, and many other genre filmmakers so often fail is that he manages to excitingly generate a palpably erotic and decadent tone amongst all the heavy-breathing, gleefully gory 'gash and slash'. Complementing the sublime plenitude of fecund, candle-lit décolletage, he also darkly infuses the admittedly generic premise with ominous oodles of genuinely unsettling Gothic motifs. After reading a few glibly dismissive reviews of 'Scream...and Die' I really wasn't expecting much, but contrary to low expectations, Larraz's warped, twist-headed thriller proved to be an uproariously entertaining terror flick with a scintillating series of deliciously sinister set pieces that managed to evoke a sweaty-palmed, Poe-like sepulchral chill. My positive opinion hasn't changed in 15 years, when in Samhain is this fine psycho-slasher going to be restored?

THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED is pretty good atmospheric psychological thriller. I had very little hope for it when I started watching this Larraz film. To make matters worse, the video transfer is very dark, grainy and the sound had some weird looping technical glitch. I quickly thought then that the movie flatlined from the get go, certainly during the scene with the woman undressing in front of the killer, which was a tad ridiculous. But when the movie ended, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it. The film is not the greatest ever made and there are a lot of faults to it (pacing is one of them) but the atmosphere is very good and the story is more about the intertwining aspects of location and identity than horror or violence. THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED reminded me a lot of Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON. It's like a twisted soap opera. This film deserves a better transfer, on video or DVD, than the one that's for sale on eBay (from Media), which I bought for 50 cents!!!

SCREAM...AND DIE! (or "The house that vanished" (1973))is the unknown piece of horror and sex that the master José Ramón Larraz did in England in the seventees. It's an erotic thriller with psychopatic murderer (Karl Lanchbury) perfomed by a beautiful model called Valerie (terrific Andrea Allan)involved in a haunting mistery and sadistic murders occurred in a isolated manor in the forest at midnights. Scream and die has an excellent and very particular quality in images and atmosferes. The movie is slow, yes, but this thing is normal in Larraz's movies: the story is very slow and predictable, but it's too sexy (the love scenes are really good and erotic) and brutal sometimes, and has the mark from the director of masterpieces as "Vampyres" and "Symptoms", both from 1974. The fog, tne night, the sounds of the killer walking with his black gloves following Valerie, the anguish in her face in her firsts shots, the slowly music give to the film a personal sight. The first murder seen by the hidden Valerie and husband as intimate witnesses and the escape from the manor are a classic composition of horror shots, wonderfully executed by the "voyeurisitic filmmaker" with a rare and genuine talent. It's a really brutal moment of sophisticated murder and "naïve" sex. Scream and die has the very personal "touch" of the catalanian director, all the constants that are in the most part of his baroque, sensual and horrific world (Emma puertas oscuras,La muerte incierta,Vampyres, Symptoms,Estigma,Whirpool, Deviation or Deadly manor) are present in here. The spiral of terror and tension grows very slowly -step by step- describing the world of this sexy model for fashion photographers in a continuated state of danger. Larraz creates a really personal style in a very traditional thriller that must be remembered by the tension,the british locations in Kent in winter,the quiet and dead moments of inusually fascination, the use of the photography, the artistic colors and the incredible dark shots of nights, the typical "english" fog, the horror moments and the clever sex that impressed me a lot in my adolescence. Scream and die has a kind of elegance in the horror genre that others horror thrillers hasn't. All the personal obsessions of José Larraz are here in a fine lesson of cinematography in his best period of his career, the british period. The fans of José Larraz need to know his firsts features, as "Whirpool" (1970) and "Deviation" (1971)-nobody has said anything more specific about these movies? (Please: more information and reviews in IMDB or other places,webs, etc.) and his last contribution tot the terror lately in "Deadly manor"(Savage lust, 1990)produced by his old british friend Brian Smedley-Aston. When the fans of José Ramón Larraz, Brian Smedley-Aston (editor of "Performance" ,etc.), his actresses and his horrific world will have a web or a personal page about the director? Where are the fans of this spanish/british filmmaker?. Goodbye!