A Scream in the Streets (1973)

Why does this movie suffer? Many reasons, and it's it own fault. You know a movies in trouble where the faceless killer's revealed at the start, with all the credits coming up the screen and if it's closing. If you caught your VHS tape at that moment, and rewound it, within a couple of seconds, with the tape stopping, you would give wonder, and that's how you'll feel all the way through this crap. The film has a good premise, and could really had potential, if approached right. "But no". What's happening here, is they've decided to make a porn movie but also a drama with a real story. You can't have it both ways. If this wasn't a sex film, you could of have a really good movie. There is some appalling "What the F" acting here, not from everyone, but I'd say the majority, and you'll definitely pick em. The plot sees a serial killer raping and killing women, one a fifteen year old girl, who we only hear about, thankfully. But we can't be thankful for much in A Scream In The Streets. One such scene I'm thankful for in a way, is the massage scene, featuring a sickie and a hottie, getting it on. Now riddle me this: the heartless owner gets a bottle smashed across his face, but no blood. I've seen unproduced films that are better than this crap. Honestly. You note too, the grainy picture with those lines running down the screen. This is just a shoddy and pathetic movie with so many pathetic moments, plus one of the worst drop dead falls, I've ever seen. Most of the cast deserve time in prison, but if acquitted, should do acting classes as probation. The people behind the movie should of made a choice, to just do a porno, or an actual movie, but they've done both, and look what's happened. There's some scenes that have nothing to do with the movie, where also there's some drawn out sex scenes, that deviate from the story.

Anytime John Tull is in a movie it is hard not to like it. Something Weird Video offers many Tull titles and each one has its own ridiculous charm. I love the line in the film where he is talking to his girlfriend on the bed and says something like, "Now, for those split beaver pants"! (His girlfriend was dressed for a 1950s costume party...) Lines like this make A Scream in the Streets and John Tull a "gem" of 70s sleaze cinema. It's not only Tull that captivates me, but how about that scene where the robber holds up the convenience store? I love the look of "horror" on the owner's face. (Actually, it looks like the guy has no idea what is going on...) I also love when the robber jumps out of the glass door in slow motion. Hey, they don't make movies like this anymore! A movie so horrible that I can't help but love it! The cross dressing killer somehow goes unnoticed (though it is so obvious that "she" is a man), the dialog is amusingly horrid, John Tull bares "Tull junior", and don't forget the flaccid member during one of the sex scenes in the massage parlor! God, I wish I lived in the 70s to experience this stuff first hand!

This jaw-droppingly odd and obscure softcore crime film was on a double-feature cassette with "Axe" and that's how I saw it. It starts off with the most jarring set of opening credits ever. Basically, a booming male voice shouts over a black screen "A Scream in the Streets!" then it abruptly cuts to the Fastest Scrolling Titles Ever superimposed over footage of an unconvincing drag queen killing someone (1970's police show music raging in the background). The film settles down a bit after this into something resembling a story, although I can't remember what it is. My only memory is that it involved a massage parlor and lots of sex scenes (one, at least, verging on hardcore). The men were the ugliest beasts I've ever seen with their clothes off. They couldn't have found more hideous men for this film. Towards the end, the ludicrous drag queen from the opening credits shows up again and implausibly stalks a park while going completely unnoticed. Then something happens and the film ends.... For fans of runny color and grainy cinematography only.

WARNING SPOILERS INCLUDED 'The World is Full of Freaks' remarks one cop to another in A Scream in the Streets and the film itself seems on a quest to prove his point. A detective thriller by way of a transvestite horror movie by way of the down and dirtiest kind of sexploitation feature. Scream takes no prisoners, even as the credits are rolling we're privy to a berserk man in drag roughing up a girl and tearing her clothes off. The film takes place over a hot week in LA as cop Ed Haskell, married and by the book has to act partner to Bob Streeker a hotheaded bachelor. In a threadbare Dragnet fashion they drive around LA acting as a link to the films gamut of criminal behaviour. At a downtown massage parlour the bearded owner rages at one of his girls who wants nothing to do with a customer nicknamed 'Fanny Freak'. Mr Fanny Freak is a rich, decrepit, skinny bald old man whose rough treatment has already sent one of the girls down to the hospital. Eventually the girl plays along, Fanny Freak gets to give her the massage and genially gets his dollars worth from her but this does little to cram the urge for his vice. Fanny Freak eventually goes into a tantrum smashing the owner over the face with a bottle and moving in on the girl- chasing her around the parlour with his belt. Deeper in suburbia a bloated voyeur who like a punch drunk boxer is mad at the world, peeps through a window at a swinger couple smoking dope. Dressed in a joke shop 50's nostalgia outfit the woman inexplicably resembles some gangster's moll who has fallen on hard times and has to appear in loops with the ugliest looking man imaginable. It all gets too much for Streeker who seems to be in one foul mood that gradually gets worse and worse as the week progresses. He works off his aggression by blowing holes in bank robbers or stomping suspects. All the while the threat of the transvestite sex killer looms in the background. Despite his fat legs, pink dresses and blonde wig, the transvestite is somehow undetected as he prowls around a park. Whenever he's near a woman he freaks-out, laughing hysterically while issuing twisted demands at knife-point before performing psycho surgery on the women when things get too hot. 'I hate you, I hate all women, you're rotten ohhhh' he says as he pummels an undercover policewoman. Too empathise what a fiend the transvestite is we're told he's picked off one of Haskell's teenage neighbours, a fact that jars Mrs Haskell who its revealed was the victim of a similar teenage assault. We last see the Peeping Tom trailing a woman home, in the process learning she's part of a bored housewives group who have made making out behind their husband's backs an afternoon pastime. A mock twister game provides the films lewdest sight gag as the girls manage to keep the peeper occupied while phoning the police at the same time. Scream was shot in 1972 the same year that would see Deep Throat and its ilk legitimatize triple X rated films. Seemingly anticipating the gradual change from softcore to hardcore, Scream takes 'soft X' as far as it would go... maybe further. Like in the late Carl Monson's most popular offering Please Don't Eat My Mother the appearance of well known sex actresses in the cast as well as an hitherto unheard of on screen frankness poses a good case for Scream being shot as hardcore and then cut down for a more general release. Scream is also a bigger Trojan horse in that like producer Harry Novak's 1970 film The Booby Trap its extreme nature was down-played in its publicity which favoured to sell it as a straight forward crime thriller. A Scream in the Streets is less a straightforward narrative than a group of sadistic outbursts that skips on few fetish. You sit transfixed, always anticipating the worst as its degenerate character actors get ready to explode like fireworks. Uncannily suited to their scummy parts you wonder if Monson didn't just spot these people on the streets of LA, roll down his window and holler 'hey creep wanna be in a movie? theres some really purrtey girls in it'. Rarely seen in its 86 minute entirety, cut versions bearing titles like Scream Street and Girls in the Street often lose quite a deal of footage with the fanny freak or the bored housewives club scenarios being the first to be snipped or lost. A Scream in the Streets waves its Hollywood Boulevard sleaze flag high, capturing a place at its most extreme and lawless which makes its on the street shootouts and grubby massage parlours all too believable. The weeklong madness ends in its final sucker punch. The transvestite works over another girl then kills Haskell in the confusion. Finally he gets his comeuppance when he learns that men in dresses should not call an armed cop a 'schmuck'. The ironic fade out brings full circle the films cycle of violent men who can't control themselves, but what really sticks in your mind is that Scream's violent events are probably all ready to be played out again the following week.