Frozen Scream

This is the sort of enterprise that is distinctively terrible enough to provide some laughs and be sporadically memorable, yet also just inept enough to be kinda dullish most of the time nonetheless. I enjoyed the highly variable performances, the women's big hair, the disembodied quality of dialogue entirely dubbed in post, the female villainess' cartoon Teutonic accent (strongly reminiscent of Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles"), the blonde who acts like a Stepford wife, the dancers showing off and looking very foolish in the party sequence, the frequent editorial/narrative non sequiturs. But goofy as all this is, the film also just kinda lays there much of the time. It also frequently looks like hell, such that you wonder if it was shot not in 16 but 8mm--I mean, parts are THAT grainy. There are some delightfully terrible moments, yet I can't imagine sitting through this again.

The text on the Belgium VHS-cover describes this film as being "remotely scary". What kind of stupid way to promote your film is that? You won't convince too many people into watching it if you're overly modest. Besides, if the writers of that piece of text really wanted to be sincere and honest, they should have put "irredeemably awful" on the cover instead of "remotely scary". Frozen Scream is one of the most retarded movies I've ever seen and it's definitely the most useless film listed in the notorious "Video Nasty" ranking. I made my millionth rookie-mistake wanting to see a film because of its reputation (one would think I had learned by now, but no…) but it deserves to be on that list as much as "Basic Instinct 2" deserves the Academy Award for best motion picture. It's easy to see how it ended up in the list, however, because there are a couple of nasty images of ax-murders (and the ax remaining stuck in the victims skull), but for each second of grossness, there are at least twenty minutes of sheer boredom, imbecilic plotting and – especially – horribly amateurish acting performances. The acting is so excruciatingly painful that, after a short while, you can't even pay attention to the few moderately interesting elements anymore and all you want to do is kill everyone around you and subsequently commit suicide. Sounds slightly exaggerated, you say? Just watch "Frozen Scream" and see for yourself. Particularly the female scientist is mind-bogglingly terrible and she deserves to have her tongue ripped out, just so that she can never produce another word again. The plot is boring and thoroughly uninteresting, but if you insist: a couple of diluted doctors want to become immortal and therefore begin to experiment on their patients and students. They kill people and bring them back to life as obedient slaves. "Frozen Scream" is unwatchable and if it wasn't for its listing in the DPP "Nasties", all copies righteously would have been vanished off the face by now. Ironic how this list, which initially wanted to prevent people from watching, is now responsible for certain idiots (like myself) wanting to see it.

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.

I've still got nine or ten 'video nasties' to go before I have reviewed them all, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that, out of all 74 films on the list (including non-nasties Xtro and Shogun Assassin) Frozen Scream has got to be the worst. More boring than Unhinged, technically shoddier than Blood Rites, and less coherent than Revenge of the Bogeyman, this one stinks in ways that even Jess Franco hasn't managed.

Directed with zero finesse by Frank Roach and sloppily edited by the equally inept Matthew Muller, this fetid, chaotic mess plumbs new depths of awfulness to tell its dreadful tale of mad scientists searching for the secret to eternal youth. With wild-eyed mustachioed zombies in monks' robes, a crazed doctor and his unintelligible foreign assistant, a Halloween party with some incredibly bad dancing, a blonde with nice jubblies, and a monotonous voice-over that continually drowns out the characters' dialogue, one might at least expect a few unintentional laughs along the way, but the whole affair is so painfully clumsy in every department that I never cracked a smile.

Precisely what qualified this as a 'nasty' in the eyes of the BBFC is hard to say: if it was the patently fake axe in the head scene that had the censors bringing up their lunch, I'm surprised that ANY horror film actually saw the light of day in the UK.

If you should sit down to watch this diabolical dung-heap of a film, even though common sense tells you otherwise, why not play the BA_Harrison Frozen Scream Drinking Game© to make matters much less painful: just have a shot every time someone says 'immortal' and you'll be bladdered in no time.