Scream Bloody Murder

1973 "Who Will Survive the Psychosexual Claw?"
4.7| 1h30m| R| en| More Info
Released: 20 February 1973 Released
Producted By: First American Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A disturbed boy kills his father with his farm tractor and his arm is mangled in the process. He's taken to a mental hospital where he's outfitted with a hook to replace his lost hand and, years later, he's eventually released from the asylum. He returns home to find his mother has remarried, which sets him off on a murderous rampage.

Genre

Horror, Crime

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Director

Marc B. Ray

Production Companies

First American Films

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Scream Bloody Murder Audience Reviews

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film
Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
lemon_magic OK, granted: if you are watching a film titled "Scream Bloody Murder", you're not expecting Werner Herzog or Jodorowsky. So you can at least credit the film and its makers for being honest about what they're doing. SBM is best considered as drive-in triple bill fodder, the kind of movie that they showed at 2:00 am when you're either completely drunk or 3/4 asleep or both. In that context, it succeeds with flying colors.But taken "straight", it's kind of hard to watch. The plot starts out as a derivative of "Maniac" for the first half, and then turns into a low-rent version of "The Collector" for the second half.And it really drags in spots, and it looks pretty crummy in spots. However, there ARE some dryly funny lines, and a couple of genuine shocks scattered in the mix. And the actor playing our hooked hero has a few good moments here and there, although he's mostly flat and stiff. (It's entirely possible that this was on purpose).Not a complete waste of your time, but not worth seeking out. I saw it working my way through one of those Mill Creek public domain collections, and it was by no means the worst movie in it.
Michael O'Keefe This horror movie looks like it had a budget of maybe fifty bucks. The acting on the equivalent a high school drama class rehearsal. No screams are guaranteed, possibly a flinch or two. Matthew(Fred Holbert)is a bad, bad boy. As a youngster he kills his father by way of his own farm tractor. During the event of watching his father's disturbing death, Matthew also is victimized as his arm is mangled. Matthew is placed in a hospital for the criminally insane and is released as a teen with his hand replaced by a hook. He arrives home on the very day of his mother's new marriage. This upsets the still disturbed Matthew and he goes on a wild slashing, stabbing and chopping spree. Amateurish at best. Good enough to waste a night with. Also in the cast: Leigh Mitchell, Ron Bastone, Suzette Hamilton, Angus Scrimm and A. Maana Tanelah.
evanston_dad "Scream Bloody Murder" gets right down to business. A young boy runs over his father with a tractor before accidentally running over his own arm, and that's before the opening titles have rolled.From there, the film becomes reminiscent of the John Fowles novel and subsequent movie "The Collector." After being released from an institution, the boy quickly does away with his mother's new husband and then the mother herself, meets a perky prostitute with whom he falls into a chaste kind of love, and keeps her captive in a mansion he's broken into so that no one else can have her. As I've written it here, the plot seems to make plenty of sense, but it doesn't necessarily cohere in the actual movie. The movie only does a half-assed job of addressing the psychological mother issues that motivate our main character, but that's probably for the best, since an attempt to be more ambitious would likely have strained the intellect of the people who made this movie and would certainly have strained the acting talents of the people in it.In any objective sense, "Scream Bloody Murder" isn't a very good movie. But it managed to disturb me quite a bit despite that. It is creepy, and bad acting aside, there are some moments that chilled me to the bone, especially in the movie's last half when we're subjected to the prostitute's mental and then physical torture. During a dinner scene when the boy is forcing her to eat the steak he prepared for her and she refuses to eat more, he tells her he will cut out her tongue if she doesn't comply, and I know I for one certainly believed him.Grade: C
BA_Harrison F**ked-up farmer's son Matthew only has eyes for his mother, so he hops onto his father's tractor and ploughs down dear old dad, mangling his own hand in the process. After years in an institution, Matthew, now equipped with a hook (who's stupid idea was that?), is finally allowed to go home only to find that his mother has just remarried.When he sees his new step-dad making moves on his mum, Matthew wigs out and gets chop happy with an axe; unfortunately, mum catches him red-handed (and red-everything else) and also winds up dead. Matthew decides to hit the road, but everyone he meets seems to remind him of the dead couple back home, so he kills them too.Eventually Matthew arrives in Venice, Los Angeles, where he befriends Vera, a hooker with a heart and a passion for painting. Amazingly, Vera doesn't pick up on the obvious signs that her new pal is a raving nut-job (even when he interprets her art as 'a man being tortured for chopping up the man who took away his mother'), but she sure gets the message when he abducts her, takes her to his mansion (the previous owner's body being stuffed in an upstairs closet, along with the maid), and treats her like his possession.Scream Bloody Murder is an unjustly ignored, low-rent B-movie that has been been allowed to fall into the public domain—which is great news for fans of grind-house/drive-in sleaze because it allows them to check it out for next to nothing, via the internet.I chose to watch this title at random from The Internet Archive, and boy am I glad I did, 'cos it has everything I could ever want from a '70s psycho film: a seriously insane killer with a mommy complex; umpteen mean-spirited murders (hell, even a dog gets it!); messed up hallucination sequences; a sexy female tied up and terrorised; and a few seriously tense and harrowing sequences including a doozy of a finale.Recommended for those who like their entertainment rough 'n' ready and good 'n' bloody.