Scream of Fear


1h 22m 1961
Scream of Fear

Brief Synopsis

A wheelchair-bound heiress doubts her sanity when she sees her dead father's body around the family estate.

Photos & Videos

Scream of Fear - Movie Poster

Film Details

Also Known As
Taste of Fear
Genre
Suspense/Mystery
Thriller
Release Date
Jan 1961
Premiere Information
New York opening: 22 Aug 1961
Production Company
Hammer Film Productions, Ltd.
Distribution Company
Columbia Pictures
Country
United Kingdom

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 22m
Sound
Mono
Color
Black and White

Synopsis

After an absence of 10 years, crippled heiress Penny Appleby returns to her father's lavish villa on the French Riviera. Her stepmother, Jane, whom Penny meets for the first time, tells her that her father has been called away on business. That night, awakened by a flapping shutter, Penny rolls her wheelchair into the summerhouse and sees her father's corpse propped up in a chair. Jane and her father's close friend, Dr. Gerrard, try to persuade the hysterical girl that she was hallucinating; but the next night Penny again sees her father's corpse and becomes convinced that Jane and Dr. Gerrard have murdered him and are trying to drive her mad to deprive her of her inheritance. Aided by the family chauffeur Bob, Penny starts a search for her father's body, which eventually is found in the swimming pool. As Bob drives Penny to the police, he encounters Jane on a twisting mountain road. He gets out of the car, releases the brakes, embraces Jane, and smiles as Penny, the corpse, and the car plunge into the sea below. The next day, however, the lovers are startled by the appearance of Penny, who is revealed to be Penny's close friend. (The real Penny, after expressing concern for her father's safety, had died in a swimming accident; her friend assumed her identity and worked with Dr. Gerrard in exposing Jane's murderous plan.) Jane collapses in the wheelchair at the edge of the cliff, and Bob, believing her to be Penny, pushes it over the embankment as the police arrive to arrest him.

Film Details

Also Known As
Taste of Fear
Genre
Suspense/Mystery
Thriller
Release Date
Jan 1961
Premiere Information
New York opening: 22 Aug 1961
Production Company
Hammer Film Productions, Ltd.
Distribution Company
Columbia Pictures
Country
United Kingdom

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 22m
Sound
Mono
Color
Black and White

Articles

SCREAM OF FEAR, THE GORGON & Two More Are Spotlighted in Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films


Sony once again opens its Columbia vaults for fans of the fantastic, this time highlighting four of its remaining horrors from the revered firm of Hammer Films, Ltd. The mix is a good one -- two monster romps, a crackling murder mystery and one genuine rarity uncut and uncensored. Icons Of Horror Collection: Hammer Films has titles with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and the screaming chores are ably handled by stars Dawn Addams, Barbara Shelley and Susan Strasberg. It's a fine Halloween horror sampler.

First the good news. Until now The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll has been difficult to see, and Sony's version on disc appears to be the full-length uncensored 88-minute cut. The show was also known as House of Fright in an 80-minute abridged version distributed by American-International.

The movie itself is an interesting experiment and is certainly better than Hammer's other 'transformation' movie released on DVD earlier this year, The Man Who Could Cheat Death. The twisted screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz (Expresso Bongo, The Day the Earth Caught Fire) plays fast and loose with Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story. Mankowitz's bearded, dour Henry Jekyll (Paul Massie) is a lone researcher attempting to define and control the duality of man. He wants to liberate the potential of man's personality, free of the restraints of conscience and morality. Meanwhile, Jekyll's wife Kitty (Dawn Addams of The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) is proving rather two-faced as well. She's having an affair with the wastrel gambler Paul Allen (Christopher Lee), on Henry's money.

Jekyll uses a potion to split his personality all right, but the Hyde that emerges is a handsome and amoral cad eager for sensation. Hyde easily beds Maria (Norma Marla), a snake dancer at a bawdy night club-bordello. Hyde then fails to seduce his own wife Kitty (who doesn't recognize him). When he finds out that Kitty actually loves Paul, Henry/Hyde manages a strange series of machinations that impose tragedy on a structure more suitable for a farce. Paul has a fateful date with Maria's snake, while Hyde maneuvers Kitty and Maria into each other's bedrooms. As the song goes in The Band Wagon, everyone ends in mincemeat.

The director is Terence Fisher, and with the impressive music of David Heneker and Monty Norman, The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll gets off to a rousing start. Fisher's pace sometimes slackens -- a fairly dull shot of Jekyll injecting his potion sits in stasis seemingly forever, with the music working hard to keep our interest. The almost uniformly bright lighting enforces a rather artificial, theatrical atmosphere. Eric Boyd-Perkins' editing (Gorgo) enlivens several decorative dance scenes in the London fleshpots -- and adds a couple of jarringly inappropriate wipe transitions. Let's assume they were somebody else's idea.

Dawn Addams may well be dubbed but gives an effective performance as a woman leading a double life. In her own way Kitty is trying to accomplish the same identity split as her husband. For once given a character role with some meat on it, Christopher Lee proves that he can play a very convincing cad. Paul Massie is a gloomy Jekyll, and his Hyde always seems a twitch away from breaking into a crazed grin. Jekyll insists that his dual-man theories have nothing to do with good and evil, but Mr. Hyde's deeds are almost uniformly reprehensible. When Hyde's chemical transformations begin to get out of control, we don't sympathize with him. There's nobody to root for in this clutch of selfish people.

The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll is short of actual horror content. It's easy to see why the movie would need cutting for American release -- Hammer seems to be reaching for salacious sex to replace censor-forbidden sadism and violence. Some of the snake dancing by Norma Marla (or her double; she wears a mask) is pretty vulgar, including a shot of her plunging the head of a large boa constrictor into her mouth. The club harlots talk a bawdy streak, with the word "bitch" used prominently at least twice. And the film teases us with some near-nudity in the Hyde-Maria seduction scene. When Columbia pawned the film off on A.I.P. it must have been fairly inappropriate kiddie matinee material, even when cut.

The picture gives us a nice bit from Oliver Reed as an irate pimp (!) and a too-brief couple of moments with the talented child actress Janina Faye (Horror of Dracula). When the plot requires a London detective, we're not surprised to see stalwart Francis De Wolff enter the scene. David Kossoff (The Mouse that Roared) is Henry's moralizing friend, who realizes that the situation cannot be explained by the Coroner's facile conclusion that Henry Jekyll ventured too far into God's domain.

Scream of Fear is one of the best psychological thrillers immediately post- Psycho, a consistently entertaining mystery with a likeable lead character in Susan Strasberg. Wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Strasberg) returns to her home after years at school. Her school companion has drowned herself, and Penny's father has just died. The cliff-side Appleby estate is now being run by stepmother Jane (Ann Todd), who assures Penny that she'll always have a home. But the schoolgirl's unstable nerves are getting the better of her -- she keeps seeing her father's body turning up in odd places, like the storeroom behind the pool. Family chauffeur Bob (Ronald Lewis) tries to console Penny, while Doctor Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) comes almost every night for dinner and to keep Jane company. Gerrard suggests repeatedly that Penny may have a stress-related nervous disorder, which makes Penny even more unstable.

On the success of this project screenwriter Jimmy Sangster would continue to write blood-soaked murder mysteries for Hammer, some with similar family settings and others relying on shaggy gimmicks. Scream of Fear (originally titled Taste of Fear in the U.K.) is a contemporary story given fine direction by Seth Holt, a former editor and producer who would make only four more movies before his death in 1971. In a completely convincing interior / exterior set of the Appleby manor house, Holt and his cameraman Douglas Slocombe create an excellent mystery atmosphere. Penny rolls her wheelchair cautiously to and fro, ever aware of her vulnerability. Bob the chauffeur risks his job to give Penny some comfort, and we suspect that the stepmother Ann is jealous. And what Dr. Gerrard has in mind is anybody's guess. Penny and Bob join forces to find some piece of evidence proving that Ann killed Penny's father, but it looks like someone has discovered their plan.

Ann Todd and Ronald Lewis play excellent support to Ms. Strasberg, who has one of those faces that commands both sympathy and attention. Penny shows inner strength as the pressure mounts. In a normal thriller we'd wait for the handsome boyfriend or lover to arrive and save the day, but the fact that it's a Hammer film leaves Penny's fate in serious doubt. What we remember most is Penny's relationship to water -- the Swiss lake, the murky, Diabolique-like swimming pond, the crashing waves that seem so mysterious behind Slocombe's misty lens diffusion.

It's best that viewers watch carefully from the beginning. Scream of Fear packs a number of satisfying surprises.

Prolific Hammer producer Michael Carreras directed The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, an acceptable entry in Hammer's Mummy series. For flashback scenes the Carlo Martelli music score is interrupted by Franz Reizenstein's superior cues for the 1959 Terence Fisher version, reminding us that it was all done much better before. Carreras' camera placement is weak, and he has a tendency to make ragged pans across décor and faces, something that doesn't work out too well in the Techniscope format.

The script only half-develops its ideas. When a curse befalls the raiders of the tomb of Prince Ra-Antef, we know that scurvy Egyptologist Hashmi is behind it; he's played by Hammer's all-purpose eastern fanatic George Pastell (The Mummy, The Stranglers of Bombay). Fred Clark is fine as Alexander King, a Barnum-like impresario hoping to make millions by exhibiting the Mummy back in England. His subplot is terminated before it can really get up to speed. King is meant to provide cultural contrast as a vulgar American stirring up trouble, but he's easily the most honest person in the show. Everyone else seems to be hiding their identities or their feelings.

The really interesting material has to do with a love triangle. Egyptologist John Bray (Ronald Howard) watches while his intended Annette Dubois (Jeanne Roland) falls in love with a more interesting new acquaintance. The smooth fiancée poacher Adam Beauchamp (top billed Terence Morgan) is a man with a secret. It seems that Adam knows altogether too much about Egyptian relics to be the amateur he claims he is.

The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb starts with a graphic hand-chopping but pulls back on the gore thereafter; what we get are about ten minutes of repetitious Mummy attacks modeled on Terence Fisher's original. Ra-Antef smashes through doors and lurches into fancy houses, but he lacks the style that Christopher Lee gave the role. He also seems physically unimpressive; Lee towered over his victims. The Mummy costume is rather baggy and shapeless, with a head that looks like the comic character Zippy covered in ashes. Ra-Antef's mask allows for no variation in expression.

But the show moves quickly and has great color and lighting by cinematographer Otto Heller. Ms. Roland is stunning in her gowns, including the number she picks for a midnight stroll through the sewer, carried by the Mummy. It's interesting that Hammer's male leads at this time all seemed to be in their 40s ... almost as if the young Turks in the front office wanted to avoid the romantic competition that younger actors would pose.

The Gorgon is one of Terence Fisher's more interesting horrors, a film about a female monster pursued not by a strong Van Helsing-type character but by men weakened by their interest in women. Paul Heitz (Richard Pasco) wants to discover what killed his brother and father, but the authority figures in the tiny town of Vandorf seem intent on hiding the source of seven unsolved murders in five years. Asylum doctor Namaroff (Peter Cushing) submits false death certificates for the victims, to hide the fact that all of them have been literally turned to stone, or "gorgonized." Paul sends for his professor friend Karl Meister (Christopher Lee) to help solve the mystery.

In the script provided by John Gilling, all the men live in fear. Dr. Namaroff is particularly ineffective in controlling women, even a madwoman in his asylum. Nursing assistant Carla Hoffman (favorite Hammer horror queen Barbara Shelley) is repulsed by Namaroff's jealousy when she becomes attracted to Paul. Paul and the Doctor end up fighting each other instead of watching out for the dreaded Gorgon Magaera, who claims her victims on the second night of each full moon.

Fisher directs this outing with considerable skill, maintaining tension in a story with very little action. James Bernard's eerie Gorgon theme puts new chills into the familiar Hammer castle sets. Barbara Shelley's Carla is a sympathetic heroine to Richard Pasco's sincere hero, but Christopher Lee's professor is the only real take-charge character in the story. Interestingly, this horror piece has no comedic coachmen or gravediggers, making it distinctly more sober than most other Hammer Gothics.

What probably stunted The Gorgon at the box office was its lack of a good monster. The tall Magaera is shown too much and is little more than a scowling woman with greasepaint makeup and rubber snakes in her hair. We're told that a complicated Roy Ashton makeup concept was thrown out in favor of a quick fix by the effects department. The movie was obviously done on a tiny budget -- how Hammer continually made costume pictures so cheaply is quite a mystery -- and the makeup and special effects available in 1964 just weren't up to the job. But as a drama The Gorgon works very well. Screenwriter John Gilling would move on to direct a pair of similarly low-budget, impressive Hammers, The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies.

The four features in the Icons Of Horror Collection: Hammer Films are fine transfers given expert attention. All of the films, including the half-frame Techniscope titles, are from new elements made directly from the original negatives. The Gorgon has rich colors that associate it with the earlier Hammer output originally printed in Technicolor. It and Scream of Fear are also matted and pillar-boxed, masking away acres of dead space above and below the desired 1:66 compositions.

Sony provides no added commentaries or featurette extras but each film is accompanied by an original trailer. The trailer for Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is so strident that it makes fun of the picture, while the tense, graphic-based coming attraction teaser for Scream of Fear generates maximum interest by showing almost nothing but Susan Strasberg's screaming face. For 1961, it's a very progressive ad.

Research: Hammer and Beyond, The British Horror Film Peter Hutchings, Manchester University Press, 1993


For more information about Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films, visit Sony Pictures.To order Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson
Scream Of Fear, The Gorgon & Two More Are Spotlighted In Icons Of Horror Collection: Hammer Films

SCREAM OF FEAR, THE GORGON & Two More Are Spotlighted in Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films

Sony once again opens its Columbia vaults for fans of the fantastic, this time highlighting four of its remaining horrors from the revered firm of Hammer Films, Ltd. The mix is a good one -- two monster romps, a crackling murder mystery and one genuine rarity uncut and uncensored. Icons Of Horror Collection: Hammer Films has titles with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and the screaming chores are ably handled by stars Dawn Addams, Barbara Shelley and Susan Strasberg. It's a fine Halloween horror sampler. First the good news. Until now The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll has been difficult to see, and Sony's version on disc appears to be the full-length uncensored 88-minute cut. The show was also known as House of Fright in an 80-minute abridged version distributed by American-International. The movie itself is an interesting experiment and is certainly better than Hammer's other 'transformation' movie released on DVD earlier this year, The Man Who Could Cheat Death. The twisted screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz (Expresso Bongo, The Day the Earth Caught Fire) plays fast and loose with Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story. Mankowitz's bearded, dour Henry Jekyll (Paul Massie) is a lone researcher attempting to define and control the duality of man. He wants to liberate the potential of man's personality, free of the restraints of conscience and morality. Meanwhile, Jekyll's wife Kitty (Dawn Addams of The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) is proving rather two-faced as well. She's having an affair with the wastrel gambler Paul Allen (Christopher Lee), on Henry's money. Jekyll uses a potion to split his personality all right, but the Hyde that emerges is a handsome and amoral cad eager for sensation. Hyde easily beds Maria (Norma Marla), a snake dancer at a bawdy night club-bordello. Hyde then fails to seduce his own wife Kitty (who doesn't recognize him). When he finds out that Kitty actually loves Paul, Henry/Hyde manages a strange series of machinations that impose tragedy on a structure more suitable for a farce. Paul has a fateful date with Maria's snake, while Hyde maneuvers Kitty and Maria into each other's bedrooms. As the song goes in The Band Wagon, everyone ends in mincemeat. The director is Terence Fisher, and with the impressive music of David Heneker and Monty Norman, The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll gets off to a rousing start. Fisher's pace sometimes slackens -- a fairly dull shot of Jekyll injecting his potion sits in stasis seemingly forever, with the music working hard to keep our interest. The almost uniformly bright lighting enforces a rather artificial, theatrical atmosphere. Eric Boyd-Perkins' editing (Gorgo) enlivens several decorative dance scenes in the London fleshpots -- and adds a couple of jarringly inappropriate wipe transitions. Let's assume they were somebody else's idea. Dawn Addams may well be dubbed but gives an effective performance as a woman leading a double life. In her own way Kitty is trying to accomplish the same identity split as her husband. For once given a character role with some meat on it, Christopher Lee proves that he can play a very convincing cad. Paul Massie is a gloomy Jekyll, and his Hyde always seems a twitch away from breaking into a crazed grin. Jekyll insists that his dual-man theories have nothing to do with good and evil, but Mr. Hyde's deeds are almost uniformly reprehensible. When Hyde's chemical transformations begin to get out of control, we don't sympathize with him. There's nobody to root for in this clutch of selfish people. The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll is short of actual horror content. It's easy to see why the movie would need cutting for American release -- Hammer seems to be reaching for salacious sex to replace censor-forbidden sadism and violence. Some of the snake dancing by Norma Marla (or her double; she wears a mask) is pretty vulgar, including a shot of her plunging the head of a large boa constrictor into her mouth. The club harlots talk a bawdy streak, with the word "bitch" used prominently at least twice. And the film teases us with some near-nudity in the Hyde-Maria seduction scene. When Columbia pawned the film off on A.I.P. it must have been fairly inappropriate kiddie matinee material, even when cut. The picture gives us a nice bit from Oliver Reed as an irate pimp (!) and a too-brief couple of moments with the talented child actress Janina Faye (Horror of Dracula). When the plot requires a London detective, we're not surprised to see stalwart Francis De Wolff enter the scene. David Kossoff (The Mouse that Roared) is Henry's moralizing friend, who realizes that the situation cannot be explained by the Coroner's facile conclusion that Henry Jekyll ventured too far into God's domain. Scream of Fear is one of the best psychological thrillers immediately post- Psycho, a consistently entertaining mystery with a likeable lead character in Susan Strasberg. Wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Strasberg) returns to her home after years at school. Her school companion has drowned herself, and Penny's father has just died. The cliff-side Appleby estate is now being run by stepmother Jane (Ann Todd), who assures Penny that she'll always have a home. But the schoolgirl's unstable nerves are getting the better of her -- she keeps seeing her father's body turning up in odd places, like the storeroom behind the pool. Family chauffeur Bob (Ronald Lewis) tries to console Penny, while Doctor Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) comes almost every night for dinner and to keep Jane company. Gerrard suggests repeatedly that Penny may have a stress-related nervous disorder, which makes Penny even more unstable. On the success of this project screenwriter Jimmy Sangster would continue to write blood-soaked murder mysteries for Hammer, some with similar family settings and others relying on shaggy gimmicks. Scream of Fear (originally titled Taste of Fear in the U.K.) is a contemporary story given fine direction by Seth Holt, a former editor and producer who would make only four more movies before his death in 1971. In a completely convincing interior / exterior set of the Appleby manor house, Holt and his cameraman Douglas Slocombe create an excellent mystery atmosphere. Penny rolls her wheelchair cautiously to and fro, ever aware of her vulnerability. Bob the chauffeur risks his job to give Penny some comfort, and we suspect that the stepmother Ann is jealous. And what Dr. Gerrard has in mind is anybody's guess. Penny and Bob join forces to find some piece of evidence proving that Ann killed Penny's father, but it looks like someone has discovered their plan. Ann Todd and Ronald Lewis play excellent support to Ms. Strasberg, who has one of those faces that commands both sympathy and attention. Penny shows inner strength as the pressure mounts. In a normal thriller we'd wait for the handsome boyfriend or lover to arrive and save the day, but the fact that it's a Hammer film leaves Penny's fate in serious doubt. What we remember most is Penny's relationship to water -- the Swiss lake, the murky, Diabolique-like swimming pond, the crashing waves that seem so mysterious behind Slocombe's misty lens diffusion. It's best that viewers watch carefully from the beginning. Scream of Fear packs a number of satisfying surprises. Prolific Hammer producer Michael Carreras directed The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, an acceptable entry in Hammer's Mummy series. For flashback scenes the Carlo Martelli music score is interrupted by Franz Reizenstein's superior cues for the 1959 Terence Fisher version, reminding us that it was all done much better before. Carreras' camera placement is weak, and he has a tendency to make ragged pans across décor and faces, something that doesn't work out too well in the Techniscope format. The script only half-develops its ideas. When a curse befalls the raiders of the tomb of Prince Ra-Antef, we know that scurvy Egyptologist Hashmi is behind it; he's played by Hammer's all-purpose eastern fanatic George Pastell (The Mummy, The Stranglers of Bombay). Fred Clark is fine as Alexander King, a Barnum-like impresario hoping to make millions by exhibiting the Mummy back in England. His subplot is terminated before it can really get up to speed. King is meant to provide cultural contrast as a vulgar American stirring up trouble, but he's easily the most honest person in the show. Everyone else seems to be hiding their identities or their feelings. The really interesting material has to do with a love triangle. Egyptologist John Bray (Ronald Howard) watches while his intended Annette Dubois (Jeanne Roland) falls in love with a more interesting new acquaintance. The smooth fiancée poacher Adam Beauchamp (top billed Terence Morgan) is a man with a secret. It seems that Adam knows altogether too much about Egyptian relics to be the amateur he claims he is. The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb starts with a graphic hand-chopping but pulls back on the gore thereafter; what we get are about ten minutes of repetitious Mummy attacks modeled on Terence Fisher's original. Ra-Antef smashes through doors and lurches into fancy houses, but he lacks the style that Christopher Lee gave the role. He also seems physically unimpressive; Lee towered over his victims. The Mummy costume is rather baggy and shapeless, with a head that looks like the comic character Zippy covered in ashes. Ra-Antef's mask allows for no variation in expression. But the show moves quickly and has great color and lighting by cinematographer Otto Heller. Ms. Roland is stunning in her gowns, including the number she picks for a midnight stroll through the sewer, carried by the Mummy. It's interesting that Hammer's male leads at this time all seemed to be in their 40s ... almost as if the young Turks in the front office wanted to avoid the romantic competition that younger actors would pose. The Gorgon is one of Terence Fisher's more interesting horrors, a film about a female monster pursued not by a strong Van Helsing-type character but by men weakened by their interest in women. Paul Heitz (Richard Pasco) wants to discover what killed his brother and father, but the authority figures in the tiny town of Vandorf seem intent on hiding the source of seven unsolved murders in five years. Asylum doctor Namaroff (Peter Cushing) submits false death certificates for the victims, to hide the fact that all of them have been literally turned to stone, or "gorgonized." Paul sends for his professor friend Karl Meister (Christopher Lee) to help solve the mystery. In the script provided by John Gilling, all the men live in fear. Dr. Namaroff is particularly ineffective in controlling women, even a madwoman in his asylum. Nursing assistant Carla Hoffman (favorite Hammer horror queen Barbara Shelley) is repulsed by Namaroff's jealousy when she becomes attracted to Paul. Paul and the Doctor end up fighting each other instead of watching out for the dreaded Gorgon Magaera, who claims her victims on the second night of each full moon. Fisher directs this outing with considerable skill, maintaining tension in a story with very little action. James Bernard's eerie Gorgon theme puts new chills into the familiar Hammer castle sets. Barbara Shelley's Carla is a sympathetic heroine to Richard Pasco's sincere hero, but Christopher Lee's professor is the only real take-charge character in the story. Interestingly, this horror piece has no comedic coachmen or gravediggers, making it distinctly more sober than most other Hammer Gothics. What probably stunted The Gorgon at the box office was its lack of a good monster. The tall Magaera is shown too much and is little more than a scowling woman with greasepaint makeup and rubber snakes in her hair. We're told that a complicated Roy Ashton makeup concept was thrown out in favor of a quick fix by the effects department. The movie was obviously done on a tiny budget -- how Hammer continually made costume pictures so cheaply is quite a mystery -- and the makeup and special effects available in 1964 just weren't up to the job. But as a drama The Gorgon works very well. Screenwriter John Gilling would move on to direct a pair of similarly low-budget, impressive Hammers, The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies. The four features in the Icons Of Horror Collection: Hammer Films are fine transfers given expert attention. All of the films, including the half-frame Techniscope titles, are from new elements made directly from the original negatives. The Gorgon has rich colors that associate it with the earlier Hammer output originally printed in Technicolor. It and Scream of Fear are also matted and pillar-boxed, masking away acres of dead space above and below the desired 1:66 compositions. Sony provides no added commentaries or featurette extras but each film is accompanied by an original trailer. The trailer for Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is so strident that it makes fun of the picture, while the tense, graphic-based coming attraction teaser for Scream of Fear generates maximum interest by showing almost nothing but Susan Strasberg's screaming face. For 1961, it's a very progressive ad. Research: Hammer and Beyond, The British Horror Film Peter Hutchings, Manchester University Press, 1993 For more information about Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films, visit Sony Pictures.To order Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films, go to TCM Shopping. by Glenn Erickson

Scream of Fear


Thanks to a clever ad campaign, England's Hammer Studios and their partners at Columbia Pictures had one of the most profitable hits of 1961. It was devastatingly simple: the face of Susan Strasberg, screaming her fool head off, and the caption "Management and staff of this theatre have been pledged to an oath of secrecy concerning the electrifying climax! For maximum excitement, we earnestly recommend that you see this motion picture from the start!"

Scream of Fear had genuine secrets to protect-multiple twists that defied logic but delivered emotional satisfaction and riveting drama.

For many commentators, this was Hammer's Pyscho, which had been marketed the previous year with a similar warning to audiences to come early and keep their traps shut when they left. Psycho's success prompted a host of imitators, and Hammer cranked out Psycho copycats with the best of them, but the real inspiration here was the film that hid behind Hitchcock as Psycho's inspiration, the French classic that started it all: Les Diaboliques (1955). Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 masterpiece so moved Hitch he poached its writers - Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac - for Vertigo (1958), and set out to make Psycho in the same Spartan black and white B-movie aesthetic.

The extent to which Hammer's Scream of Fear (released as Taste of Fear in Britain) mimics Psycho is debatable: Psycho hit theaters in the US in July of 1960, and didn't make it to England until the fall. Scream of Fear went before cameras in October of the same year, which doesn't leave much if any time for Jimmy Sangster to have seen Hitchcock's film, written his own screenplay, then shopped the project around, made his deal and gotten production underway...Indeed, some sources claim that Sangster had written the script years before Psycho came down the pike, but Sangster's autobiography is vague on that count.

What we do know is this: Sangster had been the primary go-to screenwriter for Hammer's gothic horrors. Eventually all those Draculas and Frankensteins start to take their toll, and being billed as "Jimmy 'Frankenstein' Sangster" in ads for The Trollenberg Terror didn't help either. He wanted to break out of the gothic horror mold, and noted that most professional screenwriters didn't work on commission as he was, but wrote original works on speculation of being able to sell them to producers--"spec scripts." Sangster wrote a spec script of his own, about a fragile young woman who fears her step-mother has killed her father and hidden the body.

It closely followed Les Diaboliques' pace car: a scheming couple decides to scare an invalid to death, even down to hiding a corpse in a swimming pool. Still, Sangster punched up his take on the idea with enough distinctive touches and razor-sharp suspense to confidently stand in the same ring as the French champion.

Looking to escape Hammer and the Carreras family that ran the studio, Sangster sold his script to producer Sidney Box, who generously offered to let the neophyte produce the film. Sadly, Box suffered a heart attack almost immediately and Sangster was obliged to buy his film back to keep it from vanishing into obscurity. To get it made, he sold it to the producer most willing to give it a home-yes, Hammer's Michael Carreras!

At the time, Hammer was forging an alliance with Columbia Pictures. The scrappy little British upstart got production financing, access to better stars, and superior American distribution. In turn, the Hollywood megastudio got impeccably crafted low-budget profit-makers. Columbia agreed to let Sangster cut his teeth as producer, but dictated the lead be played by Susan Strasberg.

Daughter of venerated acting teacher Lee Strasberg, Susan was "Hollywood royalty," even if her experience had been almost exclusively on the Broadway stage. She was talented, beautiful, and a rising star-and Sangster's twisty script gave her plenty to do to show off her skills.

Sangster demanded that cinematographer Douglas Slocombe shoot the picture in black and white-he did, and rendered images so crisp you could eat them with milk. The money that was saved by filming in monochrome was poured into other areas, such as luxurious location shooting in Nice and the French Riviera, and indoor shoots at the upscale Elstree Studios. In the director's chair sat Seth Holt, then a prodigious thriller director often compared favorably to Hitchcock-but in ten years' time his alcoholism would cost him first his career and then his life. As Sangster said, though, "But that was later." For now, Holt showed off why he was so well-regarded - and occasionally popped next door to Stanley Kubrick's Lolita set for a little inspiration.

Sangster had not managed to leave Hammer, but he'd broken out of the Hammer Horror mold. He was now a producer, on a fairly prestigious project of his own devising. Cannily trading on audience expectations, he cast Christopher Lee in a small supporting role, knowing the man's mere presence would serve as a red herring. Aside from Lee, though, there was little that would connect this taut psychological thriller with the lurid monster flicks about Dracula and werewolves that otherwise typified the studio's output.

Taste of Fear opened in the UK to good reviews and great box office. Four months later it came to the states, retitled Scream of Fear and missing about ten minutes of footage but not appreciably missing any of its kick. Columbia pocketed some of their best ticket sales for the year, and Hammer basked in one of the best hits of their entire studio's existence.

Over the next ten years, Sangster returned to the same well, and wrote numerous other psychological thrillers in the same vein (all of which copied the same narrative formula), but none were as popular or as memorable as the first.

Producer: Michael Carreras, Jimmy Sangster
Director: Seth Holt
Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Film Editing: Eric Boyd-Perkins
Art Direction: Thomas Goswell
Music: Clifton Parker
Cast: Susan Strasberg (Penny Appleby), Ronald Lewis (Bob), Ann Todd (Jane Appleby), Christopher Lee (Doctor Gerrard), John Serret (Inspector Legrand), Leonard Sachs (Spratt).
BW-81m.

by David Kalat

Sources:
Andy Boot, Fragments of Fear: An Illustrated History of British Horror Films
Allen Eyles et al, The House of Horror: The Complete Story of Hammer Films
Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio, Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography
Howard Maxford, Hammer, House of Horror: Behind the Screams
Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic
Jimmy Sangster, Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? A Life in the Movies

Scream of Fear

Thanks to a clever ad campaign, England's Hammer Studios and their partners at Columbia Pictures had one of the most profitable hits of 1961. It was devastatingly simple: the face of Susan Strasberg, screaming her fool head off, and the caption "Management and staff of this theatre have been pledged to an oath of secrecy concerning the electrifying climax! For maximum excitement, we earnestly recommend that you see this motion picture from the start!" Scream of Fear had genuine secrets to protect-multiple twists that defied logic but delivered emotional satisfaction and riveting drama. For many commentators, this was Hammer's Pyscho, which had been marketed the previous year with a similar warning to audiences to come early and keep their traps shut when they left. Psycho's success prompted a host of imitators, and Hammer cranked out Psycho copycats with the best of them, but the real inspiration here was the film that hid behind Hitchcock as Psycho's inspiration, the French classic that started it all: Les Diaboliques (1955). Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 masterpiece so moved Hitch he poached its writers - Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac - for Vertigo (1958), and set out to make Psycho in the same Spartan black and white B-movie aesthetic. The extent to which Hammer's Scream of Fear (released as Taste of Fear in Britain) mimics Psycho is debatable: Psycho hit theaters in the US in July of 1960, and didn't make it to England until the fall. Scream of Fear went before cameras in October of the same year, which doesn't leave much if any time for Jimmy Sangster to have seen Hitchcock's film, written his own screenplay, then shopped the project around, made his deal and gotten production underway...Indeed, some sources claim that Sangster had written the script years before Psycho came down the pike, but Sangster's autobiography is vague on that count. What we do know is this: Sangster had been the primary go-to screenwriter for Hammer's gothic horrors. Eventually all those Draculas and Frankensteins start to take their toll, and being billed as "Jimmy 'Frankenstein' Sangster" in ads for The Trollenberg Terror didn't help either. He wanted to break out of the gothic horror mold, and noted that most professional screenwriters didn't work on commission as he was, but wrote original works on speculation of being able to sell them to producers--"spec scripts." Sangster wrote a spec script of his own, about a fragile young woman who fears her step-mother has killed her father and hidden the body. It closely followed Les Diaboliques' pace car: a scheming couple decides to scare an invalid to death, even down to hiding a corpse in a swimming pool. Still, Sangster punched up his take on the idea with enough distinctive touches and razor-sharp suspense to confidently stand in the same ring as the French champion. Looking to escape Hammer and the Carreras family that ran the studio, Sangster sold his script to producer Sidney Box, who generously offered to let the neophyte produce the film. Sadly, Box suffered a heart attack almost immediately and Sangster was obliged to buy his film back to keep it from vanishing into obscurity. To get it made, he sold it to the producer most willing to give it a home-yes, Hammer's Michael Carreras! At the time, Hammer was forging an alliance with Columbia Pictures. The scrappy little British upstart got production financing, access to better stars, and superior American distribution. In turn, the Hollywood megastudio got impeccably crafted low-budget profit-makers. Columbia agreed to let Sangster cut his teeth as producer, but dictated the lead be played by Susan Strasberg. Daughter of venerated acting teacher Lee Strasberg, Susan was "Hollywood royalty," even if her experience had been almost exclusively on the Broadway stage. She was talented, beautiful, and a rising star-and Sangster's twisty script gave her plenty to do to show off her skills. Sangster demanded that cinematographer Douglas Slocombe shoot the picture in black and white-he did, and rendered images so crisp you could eat them with milk. The money that was saved by filming in monochrome was poured into other areas, such as luxurious location shooting in Nice and the French Riviera, and indoor shoots at the upscale Elstree Studios. In the director's chair sat Seth Holt, then a prodigious thriller director often compared favorably to Hitchcock-but in ten years' time his alcoholism would cost him first his career and then his life. As Sangster said, though, "But that was later." For now, Holt showed off why he was so well-regarded - and occasionally popped next door to Stanley Kubrick's Lolita set for a little inspiration. Sangster had not managed to leave Hammer, but he'd broken out of the Hammer Horror mold. He was now a producer, on a fairly prestigious project of his own devising. Cannily trading on audience expectations, he cast Christopher Lee in a small supporting role, knowing the man's mere presence would serve as a red herring. Aside from Lee, though, there was little that would connect this taut psychological thriller with the lurid monster flicks about Dracula and werewolves that otherwise typified the studio's output. Taste of Fear opened in the UK to good reviews and great box office. Four months later it came to the states, retitled Scream of Fear and missing about ten minutes of footage but not appreciably missing any of its kick. Columbia pocketed some of their best ticket sales for the year, and Hammer basked in one of the best hits of their entire studio's existence. Over the next ten years, Sangster returned to the same well, and wrote numerous other psychological thrillers in the same vein (all of which copied the same narrative formula), but none were as popular or as memorable as the first. Producer: Michael Carreras, Jimmy Sangster Director: Seth Holt Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe Film Editing: Eric Boyd-Perkins Art Direction: Thomas Goswell Music: Clifton Parker Cast: Susan Strasberg (Penny Appleby), Ronald Lewis (Bob), Ann Todd (Jane Appleby), Christopher Lee (Doctor Gerrard), John Serret (Inspector Legrand), Leonard Sachs (Spratt). BW-81m. by David Kalat Sources: Andy Boot, Fragments of Fear: An Illustrated History of British Horror Films Allen Eyles et al, The House of Horror: The Complete Story of Hammer Films Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio, Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography Howard Maxford, Hammer, House of Horror: Behind the Screams Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic Jimmy Sangster, Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? A Life in the Movies

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Opened in London in April 1961 as Taste of Fear. Copyright claimant: Falcon Films.