AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS (1973)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I wanted to like SCREAMING more than I did. The studio Amicus was better known for anthology flicks than for full-fledged horror-dramas, but they made a solid effort to impress audiences raised on Hammer provender, using Roy Ward Baker for director and gathering a cast that included Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Ian Ogilvy and Stephanie Beacham. I know nothing about the film's source novel, but though the scripter Roger Marshall was best known for TV episodes, the previous year he'd adapted another novel for the superior 1972 psycho-thriller WHAT HAPPENED TO JACK AND JILL?

However, now I have to consider that the source material for JACK AND JILL may simply have been better than it was for SCREAMING. The film takes place in the late 1700s, on the estate of the wealthy Fengriffin family. Charles (Ogilvy), the young heir to the fortune, brings his fiancee Catherine (Beacham) to his manor, planning to marry her there. Catherine is spooked for a forbidding portrait at the manor, depicting a one-handed man with an ugly birthmark. On the wedding night of Charles and Catherine, an evil spirit attacks Catherine in her bed while somehow keeping Charles from entering the room. Since no one witnesses the attack, Charles assumes that Catherine had a psychotic episode, though some of the servants display a knowing look. 

Catherine almost convinces herself that she imagined the rape, but then she learns that she's been made pregnant despite not sleeping with her husband. As she tries to find out the dark secret of the manor, some of the people Catherine interviews get knocked off by supernatural forces. Eventually Catherine learns that the ghost that attacked her was the specter of a long dead man who was ill treated by one of Charles's ancestors. Implicitly the ghost decided to exercise a droit de seigneur upon Catherine, taking advantage of her before the younger (and living) man could do so.

The basic problem with this setup is that once Catherine has been raped, there's nothing anyone can do about the ghost's villainy any more. Even when Charles and his confidantes (including the aforementioned Cushing) are convinced of the episode, there's nothing any of them can do about the crime, and the film ends with the birth of Catherine's cursed progeny.

On a minor note, some actresses might have been able to make the most of the unpromising story just by sheer brio. Beacham, however, is not one of those actresses.