Quick Movie Review: Scream Of Fear

5/10

1961 black and white hammer for you today folks.

You know, these days it's very common for movies to be overcomplicated, either with too many characters or a desire for some sort of post sixth sense ironic twisty plot or comeuppances galore.

So it's nice occasionally to have an enjoyable experience on a small scale, and while this particular offering is hardly an all time classic I found it a fun way to spend an hour and a half and the twists, while contrived, are not crowbarred in but a necessary and important part of the structure.

The plot is as follows - we are in the south of France as long-estranged Penny returns to her family home after 9 years to find her father has remarried and is strangely away from the house despite being the one who contacted her.

She's picked up at the airport by your typical square jawed hero type, the family's chaffeur who helps her out and is the only one she trusts since her step mother is clearly up to something and the family doctor is Christopher Lee with a french accent, and who would trust Christopher Lee? No matter what his accent is.

Thing get a lot more interesting as despite all the evidence that he is still alive, Penny begins to see the corpse of her father around the house, but it mysteriously vanishes whenever she tries to get anyone to look for it.

So far so obvious... mother is bad and in league with Dracula (sorry, Christopher Lee's Dr Gerard) to drive the girl mad and steal her inheritance, but the twist that does eventually come is cleverer than you'd think as it the fate of the nefarious persons in question. Damn them!

It's far from perfect, it has plot holes down to a fine art (the chief one being - why not just kill her as soon as she arrives?) but its a fair crack at something a little different.

As I say, it's not one to invest £20 in a special edition DVD of, but it's nice to be surprised by something in a good way for a change. It's a small scale thriller rather than the scary horror its title implies, and gets a workaday 5 out of 10.

A