For those hording toilet paper

--And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)

I concluded my "Amicus Thursday" with --And Now the Screaming Starts, deciding to watch rare full-length films from the studio instead of their anthologies (which I hope to watch sometime later in the month). I had started with The Beast Must Die, but I wasn't all that impressed. This one was a little bit better thanks to solid acting and a plot that, despite a lot of silly aspects and images, has some potency behind it. This is certainly disturbing.

 

While I think the cast is as good as can be assembled for a film containing a crawling disembodied hand (think The Addams Family with the intention on the horrific instead of comedic) and a “ghost rape”, I have always had apathy towards a family cursed thanks to the wrongdoing of a repulsive ancestor from the past. Herbert Lom’s portrait gets a lot of mileage as poor (and gorgeous) Stephanie Beacham (with that bosom that just won’t quit) keeps gazing at it nervously (sometimes entranced by it), having married his ancestor played by Ian Ogilvy. Sure Lom’s ancestor will ironically yield its prestige to a woodsman (his ancestor a horrible victim of Lom’s, with a wife herself victimized by the hedonistic aristocrat) in a strange twist of fate. But Lom isn’t the one who will suffer by the curse…he’s long since dead and will never know that the woodsman’s family line will inherit his property and all that comes with the Fengriffen name. There’s no satisfaction in seeing Beacham (who has no ties to Fingriffen or the woodsmen associated with the curse) suffer for the punishment deserved for Lom.

I like Beacham a lot, and this is quite a vehicle for her to run the gamut of emotions. She can go to opposite ends of the spectrum. From the heights of hysteria to the depths of despair, and a little of everything in between (confusion in the image of a spectre with gouged eyes and missing hand (the iconic hand that was cut from arm and crawls (vanishing and re-appearing “at will” it seems), frustration that no one will tell her what’s going on with the woodsman who lives on the estate, fear that she’s being targeted, anxiety because of a sudden pregnancy, anger that her visions/dreams are thought to be imagined, etc), Beacham has a part that allows her to pull out all the stops.

Cushing once again has a supporting part that would have seemed as small, insignificant, and not particularly extravagant if performed by any other actor of such little consequence. It is over an hour before he makes his first appearance, even. He’s a “scientist of the mind”, a type of investigator called in by the local English country doctor (Patrick Magee; Marat/Sade) attending to Beacham (a family doctor Ogilvy employs) to see about Beacham’s mental state. He pursues the “big secret” regarding Sir Henry Fengriffen, a heathen who allowed his home to be overrun “by debauchery”. He raped a local woodsman’s wife, and took the innocent man’s hand with a chopping ax as members of his drunken, sick entourage bask in the whole sordid affair. A vow bestowing a curse upon the House of Fengriffen by the woodsman said that the first virgin to be pregnant with child would bear a reminder of the horrors suffered upon him and his wife (a violation for a violation). The only legacy left behind by Henry is a legacy of horror. Beacham would have to bear this heavy burden while Ogilvy exacts his fury upon the skeletal remains of Henry, destroying them, desecrating the tomb and body with an ax after using muskets on the current “son of Silas”. The missing eyes, birthmark, stump, and severed hand that crawls are all key ingredients that add a level of macabre and high melodrama to the film, although to me the plot is sheer silliness. The hand, especially, is a bit cheesy, especially when it goes at throats and strangles anyone that dares threaten the birth of the accursed boy child. But the closing scene has two solid pieces of acting I think. Beacham shows anticipation to see her baby, with it soon fading into revulsion when “birth defects” announce aloud what Henry has left her to deal with. Cushing is at her bedside, acknowledging that the curse is legitimate with great subtlety (notice how he tries to conceal the aching and sadness with a tear starting to pool in his eye, totally aware that the child is unfairly given a raw deal), but through action insisting she hold her baby (Beacham just wants to rid herself of the very presence of the child after seeing him in full; when Cushing forces the infant upon her, she finally cradles him, but that agony is overwhelming, with her eyes unable to cage the tears that emerge).

No one escapes unscathed. Even Cushing is affected by what he sees. He’s a practical realist who must confront a curse’s unveiling. Henry’s past inequities are indeed visited upon the innocent. The woodsman is avenged.