And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)

This little-seen film blends together a myriad of classic horror themes, such as ghosts, crawling hands, wrong doings and curses. It's a classic example of British horror, set in a standard haunted house (there's even a graveyard nearby). Early '70s fashions are sadly non-existent here, as it's a period piece and all the costumes are of the historical variety, although there's nothing wrong with that. While the plot for the film is a typical (and dare I say clichéd) one, it has plenty of incident to keep it moving and loads of different ingredients to make it enjoyable. However, the winning formula for this film is the cast.Ian Ogilvy (WITCHFINDER GENERAL), Stephanie Beacham (INSEMINOID), Patrick Magee (DEMENTIA 13), and Herbert Lom (ASYLUM) all act convincingly and enjoyably in their roles. Ogilvy doesn't get to do much but look haunted as the husband, but Beacham is on top form here, giving it her all as the screaming victim. Magee is fine as usual, while the fantastic Lom adds yet another cruel character to his resumé. As soon as Peter Cushing arrives, playing a doctor with a dodgy toupee, the fun really begins and things get even better. Cushing's performance is as usual, excellent, but all performances from a cast well familiar to the horror fan are varied and good.The sheer diversity of different ingredients in this film make it work, and I advise you to sit it through in order to witness a most amusing moment at the end, when Ian Ogilvy dashes Herbert Lom's skeleton apart against his tomb - serve him right, the nasty old man. You also get the classic "crawling hand" prop, which was reused by various studios throughout the 60's and 70's - spotting it is half the fun! AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS may not break any new boundaries in the horror genre but it's a good, solid, old-fashioned ghost story and it's very entertaining, with exactly the same quaint and brooding atmosphere as a quality Hammer horror piece.

This takes places in 1795 England. Young Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) marries Charles Fengiffen (Ian Ogilvy) and moves to live with him at his remote ancestral estate. She's attacked by a spirit on her wedding night, starts seeing an eyeless grinning man and a disembodied hand crawling around. Is she going mad or is there some family curse? Sounds good but this turns out to be a dreary, slow-moving horror movie. The drama drags along and seems longer than it's 90 minutes. It's also horribly edited with scenes ending just when they're starting to get interesting. Ogilvy and Beacham are pretty bad but the script does them no favors. Even old pros like Herbert Lom, Peter Cushing and Patrick Magee seem bored in supporting roles. However this does have a few things going for it. There's some incredibly beautiful art direction and nice cinematography. Also the ending does work. Worth a look for horror fans. I give it a 5.

This movie screamed me to death when I was sixteen hiding under the covers, eating butter popcorn. I saw this not too long ago on AMC.It is about a recent married couple moving into a huge mansion-castle, in late 1700s in England. The Bride is haunted by a painting of her husband's grandfather's portrait. She is frighteningly drawn to it. She sees a floating severe hand coming out of the portrait. Her husband at first thinks it is nerves and brings a doctor to come to her side. The doctor wants him to tell her the truth of a dark family secret, her husband refuses insist that it is fairly tale. The doctor tells him, "If you don't I will." Then suddenly he is afraid and does not.What Dark Family Secret is her husband hiding? Why won't he tell her the truth? Why is portrait of his grandfather haunts her so?

I remember being underwhelmed when I first watched this (a pan & scan airing on TV some years ago), but re-acquainting myself with it via Anchor Bay UK's exemplary DVD edition has proved surprisingly enjoyable - despite its utter lack of originality! Being Amicus' sole foray into full-blown Gothic horror, this film perhaps draws the most comparisons with the 'rival' Hammer films, and as such manages to keep its own in their company by virtue of its polished (if not expensive) production values - Denys Coop's intricate camera-work, Douglas Gamley's atmospheric score and Tony Curtis' handsome sets - and its top cast, comprised of any number of renowned genre stars.Stephanie Beacham (who screams and faints like the best of them!) actually manages to keep the audience involved in her plight, which is no easy feat seeing that precious little of the plot is revealed during its first half; Ian Ogilvy is an adequately brooding master-of-the house; Geoffrey Whitehead is a mysterious and vaguely sinister woodsmen who lives on the property (actually doubling as his own grandfather in the flashback sequence towards the end); Guy Rolfe and Rosalie Crutchley have small but fairly important roles in support. However, the film belongs to three thespians and it seems that the producers knew this as well, given they were top-billed: Peter Cushing, whose belated arrival does not disguise the fact that he's the true star of the show (nothing new for him here, really, but he's always worth watching); Herbert Lom as a particularly nasty descendant of Ogilvy's and whose misdemeanors have put a terrible curse over the entire house; Patrick Magee as the compassionate but eventually weak-willed town medic (who's regrettably thrown to the sidelines and eventually dispatched once Cushing, who's of a more analytical approach, arrives on the scene).The film features a number of effective moments: the hand bursting out of the painting; the many scenes involving the crawling hand (though a rather tired motif by now, especially since it was not a part of the original novel!); likewise, the many appearances of Whitehead's disfigured and spooky ancestor; the all-important flashback involving Lom's character (basically lifted outright from Conan Doyle's "The Hound Of The Baskervilles") which, apart from brutal (if not too graphic) rape and symbolic mutilation, also features some brief nudity - unless I'm mistaken, a first for Amicus (in contrast, Beacham's violation by the 'ghost' is presented in a lot subtler way which, by the end, only led to confusion for some viewers as to what had really happened to her!); the finale is quite interesting for this type of film (though, again, hardly ground-breaking in the broader scheme of things): Ogilvy going mad a' la WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968) and literally digging up his grandfather's corpse while Beacham, equally unhinged by this time, is perplexed by the presence of her new-born child who may or may not be 'possessed' (echoes of ROSEMARY'S BABY [1968]) - the sight of Cushing presiding over this scene and realizing that all his 'enlightened' advise has brought only misery upon the couple lends the whole a rare (and probably unwitting) poignancy.With respect to the video/audio department, Anchor Bay UK handles this area of the disc satisfactorily. The Audio Commentaries are the icing on the cake for this release - two excellent tracks that take in everything one would possibly want to know about the production, including the fact that all seemingly agree on the singularly unbecoming retitling of the film by producer Max J. Rosenberg, and then some (Ogilvy comes off as a very pleasant chap who looks back at his days in horror cinema with great fondness, though he continually underestimates his own memory of them!; Stephanie Beacham and Roy Ward Baker seem very glad to be once again in each other's company while also evidently very proud of their respective work here; moderators Darren Gross and Marcus Hearn, respectively, come up with relevant questions and general factoids so that both tracks remain, ahem, on track for the most part. Finally, there are film notes, bios, a trailer, some TV spots and a poster/stills gallery which, as with the other discs in this Collection, add up to a very nice extra touch.