Scream for Help (1984)

Christie Cromwell (Rachael Kelly) sits wistfully at a lake and peers off into the distance.  In voiceover, she states her name, age (seventeen), and that her dad is trying to murder her mom.  With that feminine-hygiene-product-esque intro out of the way, the rest of Michael Winner’s Scream for Help concerns itself with Christie’s efforts to prove this statement without dying.

For the first two thirds, the film is about Christie’s temerarious attempts to catch out stepdad Paul (David Allen Brooks).  She follows him for several days on her bicycle until she finds where he goes everyday from work.  And how did she come to suspect him in the first place?  She came downstairs in the middle of the night and saw him coming out of the basement.  The camera gazes down the cellar steps, and we hear water.  The next day, a utility worker is killed when he touches the wet electrical box in the basement.  Suspicious?  Maybe.  But Christie wants Paul to be a murderer, because her mother left her biological father (whom we never see nor learn anything about, not insignificantly, I believe) for him.  It is possible that everything Christie discovers or witnesses could be put down as confirmation bias, but the script (by Tom Holland) doesn’t even try to beguile us like that.  It’s blatantly obvious from the giddy-up that Paul has malfeasance on his mind.  I’ve never read a Nancy Drew story (or Hardy Boys, for that matter, but I have seen a lot of Scooby Doo and Clue Club), but the instant that Christie begins her investigation, that’s what I thought of.  I imagine that a Drew tale probably involves more mystery than Scream for Help does, though (and probably less violence, sex, and blood).  

Of course, no one believes Christie.  Even her best friend Janey (Sandra Clark) thinks Christie’s gone off the deep end.  The police commissioner (Tony Sibbald) at first takes her accusations seriously, but after some mindbogglingly shitty police work comes to not only disbelieve the young lady but also to develop a sort of grudge against her.  Christie’s mother (Marie Masters) doesn’t take her daughter seriously, even though, from what I recall, her relationship with Paul is not that old.  Apparently, mom took up with Paul, ditched her husband, and married the other man in a matter of months.  Christie’s allegations are seen largely in this light by the other characters but not by the audience.  Christie watches (and we do, too) as Paul gets it on with Brenda (Lolita Lorre, whom I’d like to believe is related to Peter, but I couldn’t find anything confirming or denying this) multiple times, and his flimsy excuses would raise eyebrows in even the most devoted of marital partners.  It may have been interesting to see the story develop with a more enigmatic approach to what’s going on, but the filmmakers aren’t really interested in that.  Instead, they draw out this cat and mouse aspect just to get to the meat of what the film is actually about.  This is either a master stroke of deception or a happy accident.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And here’s where it becomes difficult to discuss Scream for Help any further without getting into SPOILERS.  More than anything, the film is about the initiation of Christie into adulthood and how both sex and violence are the means of that inauguration.  Beyond this, it’s about the choice between sex and violence that Christie has to make.  Christie lives in a world where absolutely everyone around her is having sex except her.  When she races over to her friend Janey’s house to tell Janey about her theory of Paul’s murderous intent, she waltzes in on Janey having sex with Josh (Corey Parker, whom most will recognize as the effete Arnold Epstein in Biloxi Blues).  Janey, probably pissed for being interrupted pre-orgasm, is openly hostile to Christie, who, in turn, is pissed at Janey for not telling her that she was having sex at all.  Christie comes home to the sounds of her mother and Paul having sex, and she runs to her room in anguish.  But Christie is, of course, curious about sex, and Paul’s affair with Brenda is the window (literally and figuratively) into this fascination.  At several points, she spies the two doing the job, and it’s always at a remove through a pane of glass (like watching a live Swedish sex show in a porn booth).  Paul asks if Christie is writing “the life and times of a sex maniac” in her journal.  Nope, it’s all about murder.  Intriguingly, Corey is the ostensible love interest, but he’s about as big a jerkoff as every other man in the film.  Christie catches Corey flirting with another girl at school (the day after she caught him with Janey?).  She tries to rope him into helping her out by threatening to tell his father about Janey, and Corey proudly states that his dad would congratulate him.  Rather, it’s the threat of cutting him off from Janey’s pussy that motivates the kid (and puts her own in his crosshairs).  After Janey is out of the picture, Corey and Christie hook up pretty fast.  Corey continues to pressure Christie, telling her he cares about her, but we know that he’s simply horny, and while we can’t necessarily blame him for this, it makes him no less of a douche.

When Christie and Corey finally have sex, it’s unpleasant for Christie, but then again, it’s her first time.  It’s painful, and the blood from popping her cherry scares her.  The ties between sex and violence in the film have been leading up to this moment, and here is where Christie chooses which of the two she prefers.  When Corey brings up the possibility of more sex, please, Christie tells him that she “doesn’t want to go to bed with anybody ever again.”  In the last third of the picture, when Paul and his accomplices hold Christie and her mom captive, things come to a head.  Faced with their imminent deaths, Christie, with ho-hum determination, states, “There’s only one way.  I’m gonna have to kill them.”  With MacGyver-ian resourcefulness and icy resolve, she sets about doing just that.  The film becomes Death Wish if Paul Kersey’s wife and daughter fought back (or maybe just Home Alone with corpses).  After the siege of her house, Corey and Christie get down to some foreplay, but violence rears up yet again, and Christie, without hesitation, goes into kill mode.  Sex is something she may still want to do despite her inexperienced protestations, but violence is something she likes.  This is what maturity means in the world of Scream for Help.  That the film is so frank about these facets is rather startling, considering its almost juvenile plot and dialogue, flat direction, and a score that is insanely incongruous (it sounds like it was taken from a Seventies industrial film about the future of plastics mixed with a buddy cop show of the same era).  Nevertheless, this forthrightness is what also makes the film so special.

MVT:  The remarkable depths to which the film dives and the unsparing attitude it takes in going there.

Make or Break:  The vehicular homicide that comes out of nowhere.  It’s fast, brutal, and contains a spectacular mannequin death.

Score:  7/10      

Day of the Triffids (1962)

A meteor shower blankets the Earth, and with it comes a new plant, the Triffid.  While the plants are certainly ugly as sin, they also have the added benefit of being lumbering maneaters.  Bill Mason (Howard Keel) wakes after eye surgery to a world in chaos, as everyone who witnessed the celestial event is now blind.  Desperate to find a sanctuary, he crosses Europe, picking up travel mates like young Susan (Janina Faye) and French well-to-do Christine (Nicole Maurey).  Meanwhile, in a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, marine Biologist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his long-suffering wife Karen (Janette Scott) race to find a way to stop the vicious plants from destroying all life on the planet (seeing as they’re carnivorous, this wouldn’t really benefit them).

Steve Sekely’s (with an assist from an uncredited Freddie Francis, who directed the lighthouse scenes, making the film feel like two films but still working despite this) The Day of the Triffids is an adaptation of the John Wyndham novel of the same name.  Of the novels he wrote, I would suggest that this one is only edged out in popularity by The Midwich Cuckoos (which was adapted for films under the title Village of the Damned).  Wyndham dealt in a style he called “logical fantasy,” one in which the descriptions and functioning of the normal world are integral to how the fantastic elements play.  This certainly is the case in this film.  Bill is a sailor and all-around handy man.  He is the Common Man hero that was the norm for many decades in genre cinema.  These are people who work for a living.  They are resourceful and pragmatic, and they care about their fellow man as much as is humanly possible to do without getting themselves killed.  For example, Bill knows how to get a car moving when it’s bogged in the mud.  He knows how to get the generator working at Christine’s chateau.  He knows how to repair a radio.  He knows how to electrify a fence.  He knows how to turn a gas truck into a makeshift flamethrower.  But he knows these things because he has a working knowledge of the world.  Necessity insists that he be able to do these sorts of things, so they are second nature to him, even if he doesn’t necessarily know a transistor from a transformer (in other words, general knowledge, not specific).  Tom is a specialist, and he and his wife are cut off from society (but not from the threat).  Tom is also an alcoholic, a condition that gives tension to the situation they are in and humanizes him.  He is further normalized by his inability to find a weakness in the Triffids.  As a scientist, he cannot succeed in this turmoil, but as a Common Man, working with his hands and wits, he discovers the ultimate weapon against the plants totally by accident.  In the modern film world, where every protagonist is either super-powered or super-sophisticated to the point of ennui, I always return to characters like the ones here as a respite.

Society in the film breaks down literally overnight.  It goes from business as usual to complete disarray in a matter of hours.  This is heralded by a fantastic sequence in the Royal Botanic Gardens.  A night watchman (Ian Wilson) sits alone at his desk as a Triffid sneaks up on him.  The man knows that there’s something wrong but doesn’t act, and the tension builds until the creature is upon him.  He is a representative of the world, its inability to prepare, and its fate for its inaction.  This is reinforced by several sequences of mass transit systems (a ship, a plane, a train) as they traipse over the proverbial cliff, the people in charge of them lying to the passengers in their last moments, trying to salvage some normalcy in the face of death.  But it doesn’t avert the inevitable, salvation being a wish that shall never be granted.  As Bill explores the hospital the next morning, the place looks like it was ransacked by Cossacks, trays strewn, glass scattered all over, and the building is like a ghost town, bereft of souls.  Only Dr. Soames (Ewan Roberts) remains, now blind, and his prognosis for the world is grim.  Discovering that Bill’s surgery was successful, he states, “I don’t envy you.”  Soames knows what comes next, knows that it won’t be pretty, and knows that Bill’s options for survival are limited (but not as limited as his own).  Throughout the major cities like London and Paris, the streets are littered with cars and blind people stumbling and pawing around like zombies in search of some fresh brains.  Bill learns that sight has become not only an asset but also a weakness.  At a train station, people hear that Bill can see, and they swarm over him with pleas for assistance.  After a train derails coming into the station, young Susan is almost kidnapped for her eyesight (there is a slight pedophilic air to this moment, as well).  People have become pathetic, desperate, and callous, yet maybe they were always that way.  

The bleak tone of the film is perhaps best displayed in the sequence at Christine’s chateau.  She is taking care of her friends who have gone blind, including the young Bettina (Carole Ann Ford, likely best known as Susan on the first few seasons of Dr. Who).  Bettina takes to Susan, and in a scene that’s positively heartbreaking, she guesses multiple things about the younger girl (hair and eye color, etcetera), all of which are wrong, and all of which Susan lies about to keep up Bettina’s spirits.  Bill suggests that Christine and those who can see should abandon the manse, as it makes them sitting ducks, but Christine can’t bear to leave her friends to die (which is most certainly what it would be).  This decision is taken away from her when a gang of convicts overrun the chateau and force the blind women to “dance” with them.  Bettina, stumbling outside after escaping being raped, is surrounded by Triffids and killed.  There is no mercy here, if there ever was before, and even that was illusory.  It if isn’t plant monsters, it’s human monsters.

Nevertheless, The Day of the Triffids contains elements of birth and rebirth.  Bill is reborn with his eyesight.  Susan is a sighted youth that must be protected and allowed to carry on the human race.  Tom and Karen are surrounded by water, the giver of life, and Bill and his companions spend a lot of time racing to sea ports in search of rescue (it doesn’t hurt that he’s a seaman).  Tom is forced to give up booze, and he finds a new purpose in dissecting a Triffid, looking for flaws.  His marriage is renewed in a way by this.  Bill comes upon a blind pregnant woman, and Christine assists in the birth.  Life will go on, just drastically changed.  Though the world is in apocalypse mode, the human will to survive remains, bloodied but unbowed.  The film tacks on a quasi-happy ending that speaks a little too bluntly of hope, but it also acknowledges that the world has a long way to go before it recovers from this situation.  As End of the World fictions go, that’s pretty much the best we can hope for, right?

MVT:  The foreboding wasteland that the world has become is effectively presented both visually and attitudinally.

Make or Break:  The greenhouse sequence is a standout in the horror genre, in my opinion.

Score:  7/10 

Nothing but the Night (1972)

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

Adults use a lot of rather creepy threats to keep children in line.  “The boogeyman will get you.”  “You’ll shoot your eye out.”  “You’ll go blind if you keep that up.”  My grandmother used to say she’d put me outside for the gypsies if I didn’t behave.  True to her word, one night she did, in fact, lock me out of her house at night, and I was left to wait (for what felt like hours but was likely only a few minutes) in sheer terror for the gypsies to snatch me up.  I swore I could hear the clip-clop of their horses’ hooves (no doubt engulfed in the very flames of Hell) on the then-brick road leading to her place.  Needless to say, I was scared shitless but pretty well-behaved after that.  But what we also had in my area was the Kis-Lyn reform school for boys, and this was the place where the bad kids were left to fend for themselves from the other bad kids, according to popular gossip.  The mother of a friend of mine even packed his things in a suitcase and dropped him off at the doorstep of a different local boys’ home which he believed was Kis-Lyn to put the fear of God in him.  Even though the school had been closed for eight years by the time I was born, you would still hear the name bandied about as a form of punishment for some time.  It’s funny, most parents today wouldn’t dream of intimidating their children with some of the things with which we were coerced into good behavior.  But the impact was immediate and undeniable (at least in the short term).  The kids at the Inver House orphanage in Peter Sasdy’s Nothing but the Night (aka The Devil’s Undead aka Castle of the Living Dead aka Devil Night aka The Resurrection Syndicate) get the double whammy of being menaced not only with death but also with the far worse fate of becoming adults. 

On the Scottish island of Bala, various elderly people are murdered, all of whom are trustees of the Van Traylen Trust which funds the Inver House orphanage.  Colonel Bingham (Sir Christopher Lee) calls on acquaintance and pathologist Sir Mark Ashley (Peter Cushing) to help him investigate after a busload of children crashes with more trustees aboard.  One survivor, the young Mary Valley (Gwyneth Strong), holds the key to all the answers.

Nothing but the Night is a deceptively simple thriller with a rather dark underbelly.  The greatest and clearest piece of that seedy dark side is in how the children in the film are treated.  Kids in this film are little more than pawns.  For the trustees of the orphanage, they are vessels to be filled with their selfish venality.  For Mark and Bingham, they are clues to a deeper mystery.  Bingham even admits that the whole reason he wants the case is because a friend of his was involved; the deaths of the children on the bus are “incidental.”  Mark resents being pulled into the whole affair, only getting involved because he doesn’t like being put in his place by the hoi polloi.  For Dr. Haynes (Keith Barron), children are painful memories screaming to be dragged out into the light of day.  For reporter Joan Foster (Georgia Brown), they are a hot, tabloid-y story to be exploited and splashed across the front page.  For Anna Harb (Diana Dors, in full-on late stage Shelley Winters mode), her daughter Mary is a piece of property, her ownership of which is more important than the girl’s well-being, and this isn’t the only reason that Anna is a poor candidate for motherhood.  Never are the children really treated as individuals, Mary being the exception as she’s the sole clue to what’s going on.  Despite the protestations of the adults who claim to have the children’s best interests at heart, they are more intent on probing them to satisfy their own ends.  It’s a tragic statement on the callous abuse of children as things, and it’s all the more terrible in this instance, because the children are already considered castaways, unwanted by society, and therefore, prey.

In this vein, but to a lesser degree, are issues of identity and maturation.  The orphans are a collective.  We see them playing, and that’s about it.  Mary, as the focus of the narrative, is the exemplar for the film’s depiction of the aforementioned themes.  On the fateful bus ride, she is the cheerleader, conducting her fellow children in a variation of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”  She usually has the innocent exuberance we expect from a girl her age.  This is the genesis of the person she should grow to become; it should be a process.  Her “repressed memories,” then, are the loss of her childhood identity/individuality and the domination of a new identity, an adult one.  That these two actions are instantaneous and simultaneous is indicative of their nefariousness.  There is no development.  There is only the loss of childhood, and this absence is what produces monsters.  The juxtaposition of virtuous children with iniquitous adults and the unification of the two is where the film derives its horror.

The film’s tonal shift from giallo-esque thriller, a la What Have You Done to Solange? (sort of), to science fiction/horror film is rather jarring, even though the groundwork is laid out from the beginning.  Said groundwork, however, is cleverly disguised with a few guileful twists you probably won’t see coming because the filmmakers wisely don’t emphasize them.  Lee and Cushing get to play on the same side of the moral coin, much like in the superlative Horror Express, though Cushing infuses his character with just enough of his classic Baron Frankenstein portrayal to give yet another in a long, long list of fantastic, fully-realized performances.  The locales are all gloomy, casting a predetermined pall over the proceedings.  Sasdy (primarily a television director [most notably responsible for the 1972 production of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape], though he directed a few films, such as Hammer Studio’s Taste the Blood of Dracula, one of the less traditional offerings in the series but no less worthy) brings a workmanlike sense of direction that grounds the film in a reality which is both straightforward and twisted.  Overall, the film is satisfying, and the aftermath is chilling, but I can’t help but think what could have been had Sasdy and company played the story straight.  I know I would like to have seen more entries in a franchise featuring Bingham and associates (this was the first and the last film produced by Lee’s Charlemagne Productions; it was adapted from a series of novels by John Blackburn, and the original plan was to produce more of them).  Especially if the dynamic lead duo from this one starred in them.  Alas…

MVT:  It’s Lee and Cushing all day long.  It usually is when they appear onscreen together, and this is no exception.

Make or Break:  The finale slaps all the pieces together, but I could see it not working for some people.  That, and that the reveal of a certain character’s fate made little sense to me, considering the timeline of the film.

Score:  6.5/10