Frozen Scream

Frozen Scream is a dull, thudding turd of a movie, and that's being charitable.

Frozen Scream is, above all else, aptly titled: the movie has all the warmth, depth, and excitement of a long, slow fecal rope, carefully preserved in cellophane, and put into a Frigidaire turned up to the max. The long, rope-like, icicle poop could be retrieved the next day and, I don't know, used to spear small, pesky, repellent vermin. (Is this getting a bit much?) Either way, the fecal offings would still hold more appeal to the average viewer than this rancid, slop-like, ill-conceived celluloid torture device.

To be blunt: it's so bad, it boggles the effin' MIND. Like it's easier to comprehend the Theory of General Relativity than to understand the "plot" (God help us) of this cinematic sewer burst. There's NOTHING, I mean NOTHING--except maybe a chick getting a phony axe to the face, maybe--of anything even remotely entertaining here.

Here's a synopsis of what I can remember about this flick and its 'plot" (such as it is):

Someone named Tom is helping two mad scientists create zombies kept in freezers. He's killed by two guys in short black hoods who inject his eyeball. Tom's old lady Ann witnesses this, and ends up in a hospital with Lil Stanhope (whose dialog, such as it is, is dubbed, wooden, nonsensical, and unintelligible) who tries to convince her it's "all in her head." Dr. Lil and Dr. Sven Johnssen are behind it all. Everyone parties on a beach, join hands, and chants. It's all college kids, I think. Where did they come in?

Some woman gets an axe to the face. We've already discussed this.

I don't know what else happened because I wasn't paying enough attention. Oh well, I suppose we all die in the end (unless they stick us in a cryogenic freezer and we become black hood-wearing zombies with Seventies porno mustaches and kinky white boy afros). Yowza.

Ann ends up on a lab table. Yawn. Dialog is drowned out by absurd voice-over narration by the "Detective" investigating. Yawn. Pretty much all the dialog is dubbed anyway. Yawn. It's all delivered as if it is being read by a lousy reader from a soggy cue card by an ESL student with dyslexia. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.

Curiously, though this movie isn't what I would honestly call a "splatter flick" per se, it ended up on Britain's infamous "Video Nasty" list of officially proscribed (read: banned) videos, back in the day. Of course, everything, up to and possibly including "The Muppet Show," is probably banned in Britain. According to Wikipedia, that unimpeachable online source of COMPLETELY unbiased and accurate info, the Scream is "uncertified and unavailable in the U.K.", to this very day. Which, of course, means nothing in a day and age when you can simply watch it on the internet.

Someone on Wikipedia is quoted as saying, "Psychotronic fans [...] should endure it." One wonders: Why? What would such "psychotronic fans" stand to gain by such a masochistic endeavor? I discovered it by making a list of all the really, really, really bad but otherwise gory, sickening, sexy, and amusing exploitation fodder from which clips were extracted to make up the bulk of Terror on Tape, the 1985 straight-to-video horror and exploitation compilation flick starring Cameron Mitchell and Michelle Bauer, a video nasty I liked very much and just reviewed.

This was directed by a guy named "Frank Roach" (aptly named) and produced and co-written by Renee Harmon (who also acted herein as somebody, maybe Ann), with Doug Ferrin; also starring people whose names are given as Lynne Kocol and Thomas Gowan. I don't know who anyone played specifically and don't care. They're probably all dead after shooting smack and starring in Times Square porno loops or sleeping next to a dumpster fire. Yawn.

One last interesting factoid: the film was completed in 1975, a year almost cursed by the very fact that this movie was made in it, but was not released until 1981. it should have stayed frozen, as it were, its final scream echoing into silence. For, if a film stays in the can, and no one ever gets to see it, does its scream echo through the ages, unheard?

In the case of this barnyard atrocity, it damn sure would have done the world a favor if it would have. The only scream you'll emit during this clucking theatrical turkey is the scream of relief when the credits finally roll.

Frozen Scream (1975)