Meurs en hurlant, Marianne

Not particularly gripping tale of a 'free spirited' Susan George becoming embroiled in a seedy crime racket, led by a 'defrocked' Judge.

Not just *a* Judge, but 'The Judge' - Leo Genn's character who is continually accorded the definite article by sundry friends and enemies - who are largely interchangeable. This melodrama, with a heavy accent on the corrupt authority figures, bears some resemblance to Pete Walker's later baroque horrors. But the formula isn't developed as of yet - and he had yet to work with the waggish scriptwriter David McGillivray. Walker followed this film with the relatively interesting curio, "The Flesh and Blood Show" - collaborating with the talented veteran Alfred Shaughnessy of "Upstairs, Downstairs" fame - and then his fecund period began with "The House of Whipcord" in 1974.

Susan George and Judy Huxtable are done a great disservice by Walker and scriptwriter Murray Smith here with their reductive portrayal of female characters. Such as shame for George in particular, subject of much brutality in Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" the following year, but also Huxtable, who was the evocative beauty at the heart of the whimsical "Les Bicylettes de Belsize" two years earlier.

There is always some degree of objectification of women in Walker's films, but what is lacking here is the suspenseful, charged context of his later films. "Frightmare" and "House of Mortal Sin" have something of the Hitchcockian about them: Hitchcock-meets-the Grimm Brothers-meets-British exploitation cinema of the 70s. This is a rather more humdrum affair, with even the exotic locations eliciting no more than a Gallic shrug in this viewer.

Director Pete Walker's DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE is about carefree go-go dancer, Marianne Evans (Susan George), who must stay one step ahead of her insane family, including her crackpot dad (Leo Genn) and homicidal sister, Hildegard (Judy Huxtable). Marianne has something they want, sitting in a Swiss bank account. Her diabolical family will do anything to get it!

Though far from exciting, this movie does have some semi-interesting plot twists, a handful of colorful characters, and a smattering of tension. An alleged "thriller", it suffers from a lack of any real thrills. The long-winded story and sporadic "action" sequences do little to hold our attention. A chore to watch, it's almost saved by its "big pay off" ending. Almost...

Pic is routine in all respects and a real timewaster! Marketed as a horror film, it's nothing more than a boring tale of a dysfunctional family trying to lay their mitts on a numbered Swiss Bank account containing incriminating documents, along with a sizeable amount of cash. Poor Marianne is about to inherit this stash on her 21st birthday, but her father and sister want to grab it from her. Nothing horrific (nor even interesting) here.

The cast is decidedly drab and unattractive (even toplined Susan George is unflatteringly photographed)and performances are strictly of the stock variety. Potentially interesting Portuguese scenery is also wasted by the pedestrian set-ups employed by helmer Pete Walker.

Director Walker made a few mildly interesting films ("House of Whipcord", "Frightmare") along with a goodly amount of dreck. Thankfully he retired in '82, saving viewers from further boredom.

DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE is a standard-issue potboiler which is high on 'exotic' locations but low on excitement. Susan George is good to look at, as always, but she can't save boredom from setting in or do much to salvage the dreadful screenplay. Veteran exploitations Pete Walker didn't hit his stride as a truly effective film-maker until he began directing horror movies, bringing sleaze and gore to suburbia, so quite what this tedious mess is doing in Anchor Bay's otherwise excellent Pete Walker boxed set is a mystery to me. THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW or SCHIZO would have been more welcome inclusions, but Walker made films for a wide variety of companies and distributors, so maybe some rights complications prevented their inclusion. Having said that, the title sequence is justly celebrated, and Walker offers an amusing and illuminating audio commentary on the film's troubled history (at one point he cancelled the production, and the location filming in Portugal was hampered by personality clashes) and his admiration for the lovely George is touchingly clear throughout. In fact, it's a lot more entertaining than the film itself! Kenneth Kendel, Barry Evans and Anthony Sharpe offer effective support in smallish roles.

It's hard not to have a soft spot for Pete Walker. He was an impresario of British sleaze, genuinely making sexploitation and low budget horror films, and gleefully mixing the two.

"Die Screaming Marianne" is an outlier in his filmography. Despite the title, it's not a horror film, and there's no sex or nudity. It's more like a crime thriller, and Walker was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a thriller director.

The titular Marianne is played by the ravishing Susan George, an actress so effortlessly sexy you don't even mind that she doesn't get naked, even in a subpar film like this. She is also probably the best actress Walker ever worked with.

Marianne's mother died when she was a tried and inexplicably bequeathed to her a large sum of money and proof that her father, a crooked judge, is a crooked judge.

Her older sister in after her for her money, and her father wants the proof - though what it could be I can only guess.

Marianne escapes from her creepy family and goes on the run. She has a truly chance meeting with an utterly uncharismatic, birdlike '70s hairdo sporting creep, who almost runs over her in his convertible. After a few harsh words, she decides to come with him, and a few scenes later, they are married. The creep has an undue interest in the certificate that says they are really married, hinting that he is obviously involved with Marianne's sinister family, and yet when he looks at the certificate, he finds she has instead been married off to the much more preposessing Eli, played by Barry Evans, an actor best known for failing to snatch the sexploitation actor crown from Robin Askwith.

If you aren't yet getting the feeling that the movie's plot was made up on the spot, consider this: if the creep was in on the conspiracy from the beginning, why was his original meeting with Marianne so obviously by chance? They could have at least made it look somewhat staged. He couldn't have possibly met her that way on purpose, and yet the movie later seems to think he did.

Eli is a much better fit than the creepy '70s throwback fossil, and he and Marianne seem to get along, but pretty soon two large men pose as police officers and pluck him off the street and take him to a dingy back room that looks like part of an adult book store. They sit him down, offer him a cigarette, and one leaves while the other leisurely appears to consider different murder weapons. He takes a gun and screws and unscrews a silencer, and then wraps a length of cord around his hands the way murderers do. Seeing this, and given a fantastic opportunity to escape, Eli does so. He does, admittedly, have to fight off one of the guys on the way out, with a little pocket knife.

Remember what I said about the movie feeling made up along the way? If those two men were going to kill Eli, why did they take him into the room before they had even decided what weapon they were going to use? If they had a gun and a silencer, why would they even consider a length of cord?

Eventually, Marianne and Eli decide to go back to her family in Portugal. Why isn't really explained, but Susan George is such a great actress you can actually believe this decision, which, truth be told, is probably another example of idiotic plotting on behalf of the screenwriter.

Scenes in the movie often seem to end out of nowhere. There is a scene where the judge talks to a man, and the man suddenly makes choking noises and slides out of the frame. Scene over. I guess he died. Was he killed? By who? The judge? They didn't even seem to touch each other.

The ending also comes out of nowhere, but it actually manages to be sad, mostly due to the amazing presence that is Susan George, and the fact that she and Barry Evans (RIP) had real chemistry.

Come to think of it, all the actors in "Die Screaming Marianne" are better than the flimsy material deserved. Their presence, together with the ridiculousness of the movie's plot, staging and editing, kept me watching, and kept me entertained.