After the success of 1968’s The Conqueror Worm (AKA The Witchfinder General, with a deliciously evil Vincent Price), director Michael Reeves was assigned dual films: The Oblong Box and Scream and Scream Again. Unfortunately, shortly after pre-production work on The Oblong Box , Reeves died at the age of 25 from an accidental, lethal mix of alcohol and barbiturates, putting an end to a promising career. The film must have seemed cursed, because scripter Lawrence Huntington also died. Gordon Hessler replaced Reeves and Christopher Wicking replaced Huntington. Given Reeves’ high critical standing, Hessler was immediately criticized as being unable to fill the late director’s shoes. While there’s little doubt that Reeves’ idiosyncratic style would be impossible to imitate, he was unenthusiastic about the assignment to begin with. Thus, whether he could have made a better film is pure speculation. Despite starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, The Oblong Box can hardly compete with Roger Corman‘s AIP Poe series, but it does have an ambitious, somber, gothic style of its own and is well photographed by John Coquillon.
Of more interest is a genuine oddity in the AIP canon: Scream and Scream Again, which also starred both Price and Lee along with Peter Cushing (in what amounts to a cameo) and the same writing/directing team of Wicking and Hessler. Released in the U.K in 1969 and stateside 1970, Scream and Scream Again is one of the queerest horror science fiction extravaganzas committed to celluloid, which may explain why Fritz Lang proclaimed it among his favorite films. Wicking’s screenplay is an ambitiously brazen adaptation of Peter Saxon’s “The Disoriented Man.” Given that Hessler is a minor cult filmmaker, Scream and Scream Again is, likewise, a film with a minor cult reputation, one that deserves a broader audience. Although imperfect, it is creepy and perverse enough to be of interest to weird movie lovers who crave a challenge.
The fragmented plot (one of several) opens with a jogger in the park, keeling over from what appears to be a heart attack. He wakes up in a hospital bed to a nurse who won’t speak to him. After she leaves, the jogger finds that his leg has been amputated. He screams.
The corpse of a rape victim is discovered with two puncture wounds on her wrist.
In an unnamed European totalitarian state, a humanoid Gestapo soldier (a lurid Marshall Jones) murders his superior by squeezing his shoulder.
The jogger wakes up to find his second leg amputated. He screams again.
Inspector Bellever (Alfred Marks) of Scotland Yard sets up a sting to Continue reading 1969 EXPLOITATION TRIPLE FEATURE: SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, IT’S ALIVE, AND SATAN’S SADISTS
The leftover sets from Prince of Darkness must have affected Lee, because he delivers one of his best performance as Rasputin. He is perfectly cast. The film opens moodily in a pub with a local doctor departing after having dismissed any chances of survival for the innkeeper’s wife. Moments later, Rasputin enters, put his hands on the ill woman and, through the intensity of his look alone, immediately heals her. Now a hero of sorts, Rasputin engages in drunken song and dance with the locals and takes off to have his way with the innkeeper’s daughter in the barn. Interrupted by the girl’s fiancée, Rasputin cuts off the poor man’s hand. When the locals turn into an angry mob, Rasputin escapes via horseback and returns to his monastery. Shocked to discover that Rasputin is a monk, the locals take their grievances to the bishop. As defiant as ever, 
While Landis wasn’t quite the hack that 
Working out of their chicken coop truck, the Choppers also siphon gas out of unsuspecting vehicles, with Cruiser taking the role of the lookout guy who taps the steering wheel to the radio music he loves (which, the credits reveal, is Hall’s own song). For most of the film, the Choppers remain one step ahead of bland coppers and insurance suits. Later, we actually get to see Hall strum his guitar and sing “Monkeys in my hat band, I can do a handstand.” The jaw-dropping scene alone makes the entire film worthwhile. With rhyming genius like that, we can totally understand how Cruiser is a chick magnet who attracts a 1959 Playboy centerfold!
With painted sets and sky, diaphanous tints, swirling ink vapors, and transcendent camerawork, Bava’s cardboard Hades is the quintessence of orgasmic psychedelia masquerading as 
We learn that our favorite Hammer Horror Count, being the perpetual predator that he is, had previously sampled Nicole, turned her into a stripper, and now plans to repeat his pattern of debauchery on poor Beat Girl. Chris’ Dracula comparatively seems like a misunderstood, chaste monk.
Unlike most of cinema’s juvenile delinquents, Matt comes from a well-to-do family, albeit a dysfunctional one that paves the path for some spoiled rich kid thuggery. (No, it’s not about Trump). High School Caesar rules the student body through fear, intimidation, and demonization of every person and demographic that he imagines his enemy. (No, it’s not about Trump).
If there wasn’t enough premarital sex and drugs in Caesar, Ireland more than makes up for it in his Date Bait, which could just as easily been titled Date Rape. This one’s the epitome of JD flicks, opening with the rock-n-roll lyrics “she’s my date bait baby, and I don’t mean maybe.” When the local dopehead Danny (Gary Clarke) gets outta rehab and hooks up with date bait Sue (Marlo Ryan), you know that switchblade-wielding beatniks, drag racing, testosterone-overdosed males clashing over breasts (squeezed into tight white sweaters), and run-ins with the law are not far behind. Of these three features, only Date Bait keeps intact all the trash genre stereotypes, which unsurprisingly means it was also the most successful of the trio on the drive-in circuit.