Vengeance

Four thugs hold a local jeweller to ransom. The wife and daughter are raped and murdered and then he is shot when the alarm is activated. Two have-a-go hero's get caught up in the cross fire and are subsequently kidnapped. The thugs cannot believe their luck when the girl turns out to be the senators grand daughter 'another ransom beckons'. However all does not go swimmingly and the plot turns into a game of cat & mouse.

Despite the poor acting and the extreme lack of budget, I really enjoyed this film and have watched it about four times.

Well worthy of a re-release although it may be trimmed for UK release.

This rare film tells the story of two students that meet in a laundry, of four ruthless criminals and the hapless family of a jewelry store owner. The gangsters take the family, two parents and a 16 year old daughter, hostage at their home and force the dad, who owns the store, to lead them to his jewelry. Things don't work out as planned, and in the end of the coup, the whole family is dead. As the thugs flee, the young students accidentally run into them and are taken hostage. Because the female young student is the grand daughter of a senator, they want to force the senator to pay a large ransom for the two students. But again, things don't go as easy as planned, and soon, the two students are fugitive and hunted by the bad guys.

Even though this production must have been very low budget, it belongs to the most interesting revenge movies that spread in the 1970s after the success of films like "Deliverance" or "Last House on the Left": The plot is quite unique and well executed. The villains are real bad guys, talking foul mouthed, love to act violent against their hostages and sexually harass their attractive young female prey. The movie's scene at the jewelry store's family's house is very unpleasant to watch, as the one thug who stays alone with the bound and gagged mother and daughter, violates the daughter and stabs the mother to death as she tries to protect her offspring. "Scream for Vengeance", the film's international title, also includes some gory shoot outs. Unfortunately, some of them are not perfectly executed, but still effectively done. One particular highlight boosts even a pitchfork murder that could come right out of a horror movie! But the best thing of the film is that whenever it could become too lengthy or talky, something happens. So it never becomes boring (like some other revenge movies do after the first outbreak of violence) and always keeps on going.

All in all, "Scream for Vengeance" is a much too rare, vicious little revenge film that shouldn't be missed by moviegoers that like this sub genre. Rating: 7 out of 10.

The first time I saw SCREAM FOR VENGEANCE was in the following year my dad bought our first VCR. The video club who owned the copy at the time gave us 1000$ of free rentals for an unlimited time. But in fact, they closed before we spent the half of credits. This film remains, after all these years, one of the goofiest picture I've ever seen. But it is probably the strongest example of what a perfect Z films blend should be. As a gory fruit cake, this picture is a divine mixture of past ordinary people fashions, fast cars chasing, kidnapping and rape scenes, self-defense and "involuntary" men and women slaughtering, bad dialogues... The most interesting element of the film is the soundtrack.An excellent(really) fusion/ rock performance of course played by musicians who were friends of the director or some actor(s). I'm not kidding at all, I strongly recommend to the persons owning the rights for this film not less than a double CD edition for the fourth coming DVD issue. To be honest, I really don't think it's gonna happen, even not for a poor single low-fir edition. The picture is still rare and,due to a very low-budget film making and distribution, This hallucinogenic "chef- d'oeuvre" of late seventies might stay unknown forever. Find a VHS copy is already a tough crusade. I keep dreaming...

First of all, though this film is often given the 1980 date, this has to be the belated release date for a low budget film with a fairly long gestation for this is mid 70s pure and simple, from the slang expressions to the gay looking moustaches. This also means that the soundtrack is really listenable and apparently 'composed' by friends sitting around. All good and the film begins low key and basic enough in a laundrette and when the action kicks in it is bloody and very nasty, Mother and daughter tied up in adjoining chairs is a long and unsettling scene but about halfway through this simply gets lost in the woods. It must have seemed a good idea to use the wild landscape for the hunting and chasing of the 'good' and 'bad' pair but we loose interest pretty fast and its hard to see the logic any more so this just drifts away. Sad because I assume a lot of effort went into getting this made and then distributed. Nobody seems to have made anything else except for Walter Addison who didn't particularly impress here but went on to carve out quite a substantial career.

I'm very thrilled that, after years of being an avid horror fanatic and having watched literally thousands of movies, I still stumble upon undiscovered but disturbing, shocking and perplexing exploitation gems! Never heard about ("Scream for) Vengeance" before in my life, to be honest, but it's definitely better that you would ever expect, with a genuinely unpleasant atmosphere, despicable villain-characters, repulsive sleaze and violence and a cheap but moody soundtrack. "Scream for Vengeance" falls into the "Rape & Revenge" category, but it certainly isn't just another blatant imitation of "Last House on the Last" like there are so many others. The film starts with the extremely brutal home jacking of a jeweler and his family by four hoodlums, and it doesn't really end well. The foursome is forced to take a young couple hostage, and the girl turns out to be the granddaughter of the State's senator. They assume they hit the jackpot, but the couple fights back a lot more powerful than expected. What makes "Scream for Vengeance" extra raw and heinous is how the cruelty is depicted long and stoically. The camera zooms in on dead bodies of victims, the rape-and-kill footage is stone cold and heartless and the cat-and-mouse games in the Missouri woods are very tense. Unlike many obscure films in this subgenre ("Midnight Blue", "Last House on the Beach", "Night Train Murders", "Terror Express", ...), "Scream for Vengeance" doesn't suffer from many dull or uneventful moments, and the climax is pleasingly nasty (too bad the film poster spoils it already)