Frozen Scream (1975)

"Frozen Scream" is one of those fairly obscure drive-in horror curiosities that people will simply have to see for themselves. The plot involves mad scientists who send out their hooded henchmen to collect victims for experiments. The result is a bunch of emotionless zombie killing machines. An eyewitness to a killing (Lynne Kocol) must work with her ex- fiancée, a detective (Thomas McGowan), to solve the crimes. Dr. Lil Stanhope (Renee Harmon), in whose care our heroine ends up, may know more than she lets on.Genuinely bad acting & dubbing, a generous serving of lovably tacky gore, a snails' pace, a hilariously absurd "plot", and silly attempts at humor (the director plays the drunk in the alley) comprise a cruddy B movie that delivers in terms of an unintentional comedy factor. Most of the actors here are so bad that it boggles the mind, although Harmon, in her film debut, became a somewhat familiar face in exploitation features of the 1970s and 1980s. Her German accent (she was a WWII war bride) renders a lot of her dialogue unintelligible, although this may actually be a good thing. The worst offender is Ms. Kocol, one of the most insipid leading ladies you'll ever see. Sunny Bartholomew is pretty lousy herself, although she does at least provide "Frozen Scream" with a healthy amount of sex appeal.The movie is just weird enough and sometimes just surreal enough to make it endurable, despite some portions that are just plain boring. If you're anything like me and enjoy discovering off the beaten track B pictures, this should be worth a glance. It does wrap up in a reasonable amount of time (79 minutes), but those end credits are some of the slowest that I've ever seen.Five out of 10.

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.

Frozen Scream begins with a shot of waves rolling up against a beach. We then get a super-imposed Doctor Lil Stanhope (producer Renee Harmon) appear 'over' the waves. In a totally ridiculous European accent she says "ever since the the creation of life man has dreamed of immortality. But the pursuit of eternal life has always been devoured by death itself." It's the dead of night, a young couple (Gary Pearl and Cheryl Crandal) are taking a late night swim in their pool. Suddenly a weird looking guy (Paul Yamanian) in a hooded cloak kills them both. I don't know why as I don't remember ever seeing them again or being mentioned. Ann Gerrard (Lynne Kocol) phones her husband Tom (Wolf Muser) at home from a public phone box, I'm not really sure why. Tom seems anxious and uneasy. After speaking with Ann, Tom tries to call Father O'Brian (Wayne Liebman) but he is unavailable. Tom then receives a threatening phone call, he is overpowered by two men in hooded cloaks, Kirk Richard (Bob Rochelle) and Bob Russel (Bill Oliver). One of them has a needle hidden inside his sock! Whats wrong with your pocket, mate? They inject him with the needle, but they are disturbed by Ann and run off. The next day Ann wakes up in a hospital bed, her friend Dr. Lil Stanhope is looking after her. Ann is told that Tom died of a heart attack, but she keeps claiming to have seen him murdered. A friend of Ann's, Detective Kevin McGuire (Thomas Gowen) is at the hospital to question Lil over the disappearance of two of her and Doctor Sven Johnson's (Lee James) students, Kirk and Bob, from a class they both teach. Lil claims she doesn't know anything about it. Lil meets up with Dr. Johnson and says she is worried by Ann and her persistence in claiming Tom was murdered. Lil asks if she should stay with her but Johnson replies "no my dear, I'm too fond of your company in my bedroom!" Wow, he sure knows how to charm the ladies! Ann is discharged and driven home by Lil. During this scene the film goes into a flashback. It's a confusing sequence that itself is inter cut (a flashback within a flashback maybe?) with a scene of the killer from the opening burying a hatchet into a girls (Chris Russell) head, again this has no purpose whatsoever and she is never seen or mentioned again. Back to the main flashback and it involves Lil, Sven Father O'Brian, Tom, Ann, plus some of their students Kirk, Bob and a busty nurse named Catherine (Sunny Bartholomew) sitting on the beach from the opening sequence chanting stupid dialogue. Back in the present, Ann together with Kevin start to suspect that Sven and Lil are up to no good. Sven and Lil are holding a Halloween party at their house and Ann decides to go and have a look around and see what she can find. Once there she discovers a lab in the basement and overhears Sven talking about having to get rid of her. She tries to escape and finds a refrigerated room which Tom, Kirk and Bob are standing in, seemingly frozen. Kevin turns up and like the total idiot he is gets himself run over and taken to hospital. Ann is on her own as she discovers what Sven and Lil are really up to. Dr. Johnson confesses all, first he talks about Tom "death was simulated by slowing down his body processes then we revived him at a lower body temperature and injected a chemical acceleration of healing functions to sustain life. The lower temperature is the prime key." He also talks about cranial circuitry and other such rubbish that doesn't make any sense. What it boils down to is that they have created mindless zombies while trying to find the answer to immortality. This obscure film from the mid 70's directed by Frank Roach is as bad as horror cinema gets, it's simply awful in every way imaginable. The music by H. Kingsley Thurber is exactly the same that was later reused in Don't go in the Woods (1982). There is no blood, gore, violence or nudity except for a shard of glass in someones eye and an axe in someones forehead, and that's it. The entire film sounds dubbed, it barely has any sound effects and when it does they sound poor, in one scene when Ann is running away from a zombie the sound of her high heels on the soundtrack don't match her feet movement on the screen. The acting is awful, no one puts any effort in at all, in fact the entire cast would have been perfect playing mindless zombies because that's how they act. The editing is awful, we get random shots inserted in scenes that appear out of place, it makes it a real eyesore to sit through. The way the plot is revealed is poorly done as it becomes confusing and very easy to lose interest. The script and dialogue are awful, check out what Lil says to the zombie Kirk in her 'comedy German' accent, "stop right there Kwirk, listen to me Kwirk, can you feel whats happening? It's all over. Feel your forehead Kwirk, that's right it's hot in here. Your usefulness is over, immortals live in the cool of the clouds, but you are burning because you are in hell!" After she's said that to kirk he falls over dead, for no reason other than she said that stupid few lines of dialogue! This is awful. The sort of film that the fast forward button was invented for, I have watched loads of low budget horror films and this has to be one of the worst I've endured. It commits the mortal sin of being boring, uninteresting, unexciting and throughly dull. A total waste of time. I hated just about every lame second of it, quite simply Frozen Scream sucks.

I've seen a lot of gore/horror movies in my day, and it doesn't take much of something to make a film of this genre any good. In Frozen Scream, the audience gets nothing in return but maybe a good nap. I really don't know where to start as far as the quality of the movie goes, taking into account that it is old and low-budget. From what I can gather (due to horrible character development), the film is about scientists who create some mind-altering chip that brings the dead back to life, presumably as zombies, but I've never seen zombies stalk people outside their homes, call people up on the phone and haunt them, or wearing hoods while running around chasing people. Overall, the ending is far from good, the acting is atrocious, the gore scenes are unbelievably phony, the sound effects can easily be imitated in your own home kitchen, and the music becomes very annoying (due to non-stop repetition). I'm sorry, but the only thing that could have saved this movie from being horrible was a lawnmower scene or something (if you true gore fans know what I'm talking about!). UnratedX