Thanks for the memories!

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

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.

Matthew has Mommy issues. He kills his dad, loses his hand, is institutionalized, comes home, kills some more people, and that takes care of Act I.At the beginning of Act II he meets Vera/Daisy and becomes obsessed with her. He kills a family so that he can use their house, kidnaps her, and holds her captive. And thereby hangs a tale that could have been so much better.I've done enough acting, and a little directing, that I sat through this movie wishing I'd been on the set so I could have taken over. There's nothing wrong with the basic premise, and these young actors are far from untalented. But they get no direction and scenes that should have had tremendous impact just fizzle to nothing.The photography is good: Stephen F. Burum went on to bigger things with Coppola and DePalma. I appreciated that there were dialog scenes where the camera simply sat still and observed.But the two leads are very obviously acting. A strong director could have gone over what the characters were experiencing, helped them have the emotion of the moment and let the viewer discover it.The idea in play here isn't all that original. I was often reminded of William Wyler's THE COLLECTOR, which got three Oscar nominations, with touches of Robert Aldrich's WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, which received five nominations and one win.Not that this movie would have won any Oscars, by any stretch of the imagination. But it could have been an awful lot better.By the way, if I directed it the business with the dog would have been eliminated and the ending would have been very different. Then again, maybe that's why I've never directed a movie.

This early 70's exploitation film is about a disturbed young man called Matthew who is released from an asylum many years after being sectioned for killing his father, in an act that results in the boy himself losing his hand, which in turn is replaced by a hook-like device. He returns to the family home and proceeds to murder his mother's new husband and, in the process accidentally kills her too. From here on in he is haunted by bloody ghostly visions of her. All the while he continues on a murderous rampage that ultimately results in his abduction of an artist-prostitute who looks very similar to his late mother. He keeps her tied up in the confines of a large house – whose inhabitants he earlier slaughtered – and exerts control over her. But his motives aren't sexual as he appears to be deeply repulsed by sex, which certainly seems to have a lot to do with his murderous rages.Although Scream Bloody Murder is not a very well-acted movie, it actually is quite effective. The tension generated near the end in the scenes where the poor woman is incarcerated and attempting to escape from the house is well handled. So too the various murders, they are certainly brutal enough to give the film an agreeably sleazy veneer. The murders in the mansion are particularly vicious and Matthew even kills the dog! The idea of combining the violent episodes with the scary visions of the bloodied dead mother is a good one too. I would classify this film as one of the spawn of Psycho, seeing as it's about a deeply disturbed mother-fixated young man who murders people when they stir uncomfortable sexual feelings inside him. However, it also contains original elements too, that would appear in later movies such as Don't Go in the House and Misery.This is a quite decent early slasher film that is well worth checking out if you enjoy the genre and also if you appreciate scuzzy low-budget 70's American exploitation movies.

Yes I truly gave this flick an 8. Well done movie for a B Flick. Fixated Oedipus Complex Matthew, imagines every woman to be his mother from as early as 7.... leaving nothing but blood for every poor soul that dares to touch a woman or a woman that dares to like being touched, if you know what I mean. From murder, to theft to hostage holding . This film features a villain that is truly a villain in the true sense of the word. Just a teen but evil beyond his years, Matthew with his hook hand delivers before Freddy,Saw and of course Jason. We have a highly , intelligent bad guy here that dresses to impress so to speak, murdering into upper class. Good acting and done mostly in PG mode. Would have liked some R action with maybe some gratuitous nudity . Still, a nice unexpected surprise .