A severed hand stalks Castle Fengriffin in ...AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!
down-to-earth commercialism against artiness; he also writes off SCREAMING as a boring book turned into a boring film, whereas director Paul Annett muses that it was Subotsky who never liked THE BEAST MUST DIE and stuck it with the em- barrassingly hokey “Werewolf Break” gimmick. ASYLUM and SCREAMING have pertinent Baker commentary tracks mod- erated by Marcus Hearn, with camera operator Neil Binney and actress Beacham roped in (the track with Ian Ogilvy is also on the SCREAMING disc, ported from the Image release). BEAST gets a featurette inter- view with Annett (titled DIRECT- ING THE BEAST) and a director track, with Sothcott finding a more talkative subject, that cov- ers a great deal of business, including Marlene Clark’s dub- bing by Annie Ross.
All the directors make ironic reference to Subotsky’s claims to have “saved” films by fiddling with them in the edit and mostly suggest that they managed to
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unpick the producer’s more damaging interference. The other theme harped-on end- lessly is Cushing’s widower- hood, which we could do with never having hashed over again: though Beacham reveals an interesting tid-bit in that the actor’s sudden aging in the early 1970s was so notable that her role in DRACULA A.D. 1972 had to be changed from Van Helsing’s daughter to his grand- daughter. The 1.85:1 transfer of SCREAMING looks about the same as Image’s non-anamor- phic rendering but those of ASYLUM and THE BEAST MUST DIE differ from the R1 releases: ASYLUM is presented in 1.85:1 while the US disc is unmatted standard frame, and BEAST is standard frame while the US disc is matted to 1.85:1 (as are the clips used in the featurettes). More notable than the reframing, which provides a six-of-one/half-a-dozen-of- the-other choice, is that the new transfers are more muted and naturalistic, presenting
believable skintones rather than the brick-orange suntans sported by characters on the “Euroshock” discs and putting some monsters back in their proper dark. The source prints are all in fine shape, with very minor grain and speckling char- acteristic of low-budget British films of this vintage. These transfers certainly serve to high- light Amicus’ reliance on imagi- native camerawork: there are some Louma crane takes around the minstrel gallery in SCREAMING that remain inge- nious and effective while BEAST benefits from excel- lent, AVENGERS-style chase/ action sequences.
An eight-page insert book- let suffers from hasty proofread- ing: David Warner is listed among the BEAST cast (per- haps author Bryce was think- ing of his werewolf turn in Alain Resnais’ PROVIDENCE?) and the pages are stapled together in the wrong order. Also: background notes, photo gal- leries and biographies of key
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