And Now the Screaming Starts!

Bad first half, good second half

Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) moves to the Fengriffen manor in rural England, 1795, to marry her fiancé Charles (Ian Ogilvy) where she’s immediately fascinated by a portrait of his dead father, Henry (Herbert Lom), as well as harassed by spectral images, including that of a severed hand. Does the loner woodsman (Geoffrey Whitehead) hold the key to why the estate is cursed? Peter Cushing dominates the second half as a doctor of the mind.

Amicus’ “And Now the Screaming Starts!” (1973) has a typical plot for British horror of that era, but it lacks finesse in execution, like the curious overuse of the quick zoom on Henry's portrait to suggest a sense of foreboding and the cheesy severed hand that rears its fingers too early. Catherine’s hysterics don’t help.

Thankfully, the second half gets compelling with the arrival of Dr. Pope (Cushing) and an interesting flashback to 1745 that explains the weird goings-on. Of course Stephanie was one of the most beautiful women to walk the earth.

So this is a tale of two halves: The first half veers toward “What were they thinking?” bad while the second half is quite good.

The film runs 1 hour and 31 minutes and was shot at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex, England, with the exteriors of Fengriffen Castle done in Windsor, Berkshire.

GRADE: C

Roy Ward Baker has assembled quite a decent cast for this rather daft horror film. Stephanie Beacham is "Catherine" who is to marry the squire of "Fengriffen" (Ian Ogilvy) and so moves into his manor house. Her wedding night certainly doesn't go to plan, though - she discovers that there are ghosts and they are out to enforce a curse put upon the family many years ago. Can they sort out this scourge before it drives her mad or worse, takes her life? This really picks up after about 50 minutes when Peter Cushing ("Dr. Pope") comes onto the scene to help them get to the bottom of it, but otherwise it's all just a rather predictable, cheap and cheerful, horror with lots of squeaking violins to compensate for some mediocre dialogue and acting. The few scenes with Herbert Lom liven it up a bit, and there is fun to be had with the wandering hand, but for the most part it is just really well titled - lots of screaming,