AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS
Also Known As
Bride Of Fengriffen
Fengriffen
I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
UK/1973 – 91 Minutes/Widescreen
DVD Provided by Dark Sky Films
Article written by Mark Engle

Along with the horror from Hammer Studios, I pretty much grew up watching many of the anthology and horror films from Amicus. It was a challenge for a ten year old to stay up until 2AM during a Friday night to watch the credits role after a horror flick. Then there was the birth of VHS and I quickly snapped up anything with Karloff, Price, Cushing or Lee (and the occasional gore movie if I could afford it, and face it, who could resist that ZOMBIE big box with the rotted living dead head on the cover!). But times have changed. Late night television hasn’t been the same for well over 20 years, and currently a massive onslaught of infomercials reign over the airwaves. So, for those of you that can relate to all of this reminiscing, you can probably understand my biased raving when a DVD comes along boasting that it is part of The AMICUS Collection on the cover. For you 20-something gorehounds who think of HALLOWEEN as an old outdated film, you may want to read a different review that complains about the bad CGI gore. This is Old School Horror looking its finest. Just enough gore and brief nudity (not to mention tons of cleavage, a personal fave of my puberty years) to get past the censors. And with a cast including Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Ian Ogilvy, and the luscious Stephanie Beacham, you won’t get many complaints from me.

Based on the Gothic horror novel FENGRIFFEN by David Case, the story follows the Fengriffen family and its curious estate. Charles (Ogilvy) is the last living heir to the estate and Catherine is his new bride. However, moving into the mansion immediately becomes a nightmare for Catherine. She’s instantly drawn towards an ancestral painting of Charles’ late grandfather and the hallucinations begin. An eyeless grinning corpse with an amputated hand comes lunging at her, and then she finds herself attacked by the missing hand, which seems to appear everywhere, whenever she is alone. Of course, none of this is seen by her husband, but he’s aware of an old family curse and neither he nor his servants are talking. If they do, they end up becoming the next victim of something that could be from her imagination. Of course, we all know better, in Gothic horror, most curses are real. Catherine thinks she is losing her mind, but since nobody is talking, she starts to suspect there is more going on than the fact that she is pregnant.

Her suspicions come to fruition when she runs into the woodsman Silas (Geoffrey Whitehead), who lives on the estate. He’s got a nasty large birthmark on his face and a smarmy disposition to boot. While that seems to frighten her to some extent, the true fear comes from the fact that he looks just like the gory, eyeless and amputated man that haunts her. She starts digging for information only to discover that he not only lives on the property of the estate and even owns the land, but lives in a hut just outside the Fengriffen family cemetery. Nobody will tell her why Charles’ grandfather gave him the land, causing her paranoia and haunting visions to get worse. Local family Dr. Whittle (Magee) knows but won’t let on for fear of his own death. Instead, he hopes bringing in specialist Dr. Pope (Cushing sporting a very effeminate hairdo) will help calm her down long enough to give birth to a happy and healthy baby, without going completely mad in the process.

While there is obviously a curse throughout AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS, I’m going to refrain from delving into details. The adaptation by screenwriter Roger Marshall (THEATER OF DEATH) keeps the mystery alive for well over an hour before indulging the viewer into an exciting and intriguing backstory of debauchery and mayhem. Director Roy Ward Baker (too many great movies in his credits to list here) keeps the thin premise hopping along at a quick pace, providing quite a few gimmicky death scenes and bizarre creepy moments, until the mystery is unfolded and becomes even more intriguing. In less capable hands, this plot device could have been a misguided and tedious attempt, but fortunately the talent in front and behind the camera is more than capable of pulling it off.

Cushing is incredible, as expected, but for fans desiring a star vehicle, you may be disappointed. The actor doesn’t show up until well after the halfway point (47 minutes to be exact), but when he’s on screen his command of the arts is a driving force. Surprisingly enough, the rest of the top notch cast is right up there with Cushing all the way, with Stephanie Beacham’s performance carrying most of the horror at a realistic pitch from beginning to end. Not to mention, she is simply a stunningly beautiful redhead years before her stint on DYNASTY. Also worthy of mention is Douglas (TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT) Gamley’s wonderful musical score and the make up effects wizardry of Paul Rabiger (whose long credit list includes several James Bond titles). Most amputated appendages crawling along the ground long before Oliver Stone’s THE HAND simply looked awful, but here, while it sometimes looks a little stiff (not too mention the very paint-like bright blood that was standard for the time), it also looks pretty realistic.

In most cases, even with Anchor Bay who released several Hammer Horrors, we were lucky enough to get the original theatrical trailer and a very nice and uncut widescreen transfer. And for fans like myself, that’s already more than I ever came to expect after years of collecting VHS tapes. Dark Sky goes a step further and includes two commentaries, one with Baker and Beacham and a separate one with Ogilvy. There are plenty of stills in a very nice gallery and some decent biographies of several cast and crew members. Rounding out the extras are three original trailers, one for this release and two showcasing Dark Sky’s other Amicus titles, THE BEAST MUST DIE and ASYLUM. While not perfect, the anamorphic transfer was definitely better than I expected, with full Dolby 2.0 Mono sound and an appropriately framed picture at 1.85:1, boasting vivid colors and clear blacks. On a final nostalgic note to tie this up, I can finally say I’ve now seen AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS in its entirety. Seeing a dark scratchy full screen print on television over 30 years ago made me love the film, but now it’s uncut and has never looked better. I think the folks of Amicus studios would be proud, and I, for one, would love to recommend this disc to both fans of the studio and Gothic horror enthusiasts everywhere.