The Oblong Box/Scream and Scream Again (Midnite Movies Double Feature) [Import]

this DVD combines two of Vincent's under-rated horror films from this era. "Scream and Scream Again" is a great movie...but the people at AIP ruined the film's legacy by giving Vincent top billing. the reason? Vincent is only in maybe 20 minutes of the movie...and this isn't an uninterrupted 20 minutes either. his big scene is in the lab at the end of the film as he kills one of his own robots that have gone corrupt, only to be confronted by Christopher Lee's character in an eerie scene. Peter Cushing's role is two scenes, and he's killed by the main robot or "composite" as Vincent calls them. However, these three horror legends have no scenes together and each one has nearly a minute or two of on-screen time sandwiched between other scenes with the London police and the scientist/coroner on the case. this is a good movie...but beware that the three horror legends that get top billing ARE NOT the stars of the film! the other film, "The Oblong Box", IS a Vincent Price starring film. He plays the brother of a man who was mutated in Africa by a bunch of witch-doctors for a crime he didn't do. Price's character {Julian Markham} had killed a child {the victim of a horse trampling} but the natives grabbed the brother by mistake! forced to wear a crimson mask because of his scars, the brother {named Edward Markham} plots revenge on everybody. Christopher Lee plays a doctor named Neuhart who can't help the brother but nevertheless the brother demands satisfaction. later, when the insecure Edward {played by Alister Williamson} feels that the doctor is double-crossing him, a swift slice of the neck with a blade does the trick and Lee meets his demise midway through the film. Lee is wearing a grey wig for some reason!? it's rather funny seeing him in it and deliver his lines in that voice we all know and love! "The Oblong Box" is a mixture of voo-doo, cult, and African cultures very different from typical Price horror movies of the previous years by Roger Corman and William Castle. "Scream and Scream Again" is a good movie for what it deals with {1970, release} and "The Oblong Box" is also good {1969, release}.

There are serveral good reviews of this DVD and I'll not go over ground that's been extensively covered. However, there are a couple of things not mentioned that should be. First, Scream and Scream Again, when it appeared in theaters, was spooky as hell. At least I thought so as a 13 year old. Second, the thread mentioned by several reviews of the runner who wakes up missing parts actually is not a separate thread at all, but background to the main story. You see, Price is making people out of spare parts and well . . . you have to get them from somewhere, don't you? Third, the movie is an adaptation of a book by the same title, written by Peter Saxon--a well respected English writer of gothic horror and mysteries.

The book's better, by the way.

The Oblong Box is sloooooooow. Not terribly interesting and the end of the film is telegraphed well in advance. Price isn't at his best and I had the feeling this was one film he wasn't terribly interested in, himself. If you like Price, though, it's worth watching.

Closed Captioning on the DVD is available, though the CC'ing on The Oblong Box is slightly late some of the time. You find yourself looking at someone talking, get about 2 seconds of CC'ing and then the scene will shift to another view, often of someone else and you're still reading the CC'ing. Annoying.

The Oblong Box - Not a bad movie...deals with voodoo, schemes, and revenge. Vincent Price plays Sir Julian Markham, an aristocrat who is charged with the care of his brother, Edward, who was horribly disfigured in a voodoo ritual as punishment for some apparent crime he committed against the native tribe. Edward's face is messed up, along with his mind, and creates a devious plan to escape from his brother, who keeps him locked away in the attic. Well, the best-laid plans and such...something goes wrong, and Edward gets buried alive, but manages to escape and plots revenge. Christopher Lee has a bit part as an unscrupulous surgeon who performs experiments on freshly dead and buried bodies. The movie seems a little long-winded, and I felt about ten or fifteen minutes could have been shaved off, but no matter. The movie was passable, even though I saw the surprise ending coming a mile away.
The second feature was much more difficult to watch. Scream and Scream Again was a big mess of a movie. The first hour of the movie jumps between three different plot threads, and finally gets around to trying to tying them together late into the movie. The first thread involves a man who wakes up in a hospital room and only to find a limb missing. He wakes up at some later point, another limb is missing, and so on...the second thread involves Vincent Price as a doctor and a serial killer...the third involves a plot within a military state (the solders look Nazi in the way they dress, but the insignia is different). I ultimately think this movie was about the creation of a super race of human beings, but the scope of the story was too wide to convey this accurately. As I said, it's difficult to follow this movie until about an hour in, when they start to try and tie the loose plot threads together, but not very successfully. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing make appearances, for like five minutes each, and Vincent price shows up early for a short bit and then at the end for like 15 minutes.
The quality on both pictures is pretty good and the audio is not too bad, although on Scream and Scream Again, I felt the dialogue got drowned out by the music at some points, causing it to become muddled. A couple of trailers, and that's it for extras. I like how MGM seems to now be releasing their 'Midnight Movies' in a two for one deal, as if I had paid full price for one of these movies, I would have felt ripped off.