Frozen Scream
Frozen Scream (1975/1981/1983)
I seem to be on a bit of a “filmed years ago then finished off later” tip at the moment and it’s not on purpose! Just one of those things.
Frozen Scream is a big, cheap, mess of a film that likely would have passed entirely without incident had it never been included in the UK’s ridiculous video nasty register. Funnily enough, whenever I think of first watching banned stuff, Frozen Scream’s vibe is exactly the sort of thing I think of. Cheap, barely holding together as a film and completely unfathomable as to how or why anyone would think it’s a danger to anyone or anything.
There’s the odd bit of murderings but it shares more in common with cobbled together fifties cheapies than anything else. Yep, there is tits and gore here but for the most part, it’s incredibly talky with dialogue that rambles on and on until it’s done or until a narrator cuts in over it, whilst everyone is still rambling on.
Given my fondness for largely narrated fifties cheapies tat, I appreciated the effort.
This one scene where a couple of women are chatting away over a bed seemed to be going on forever, completely aimlessly, and I was already giggling at this. Then the narrator starts talking over it, and it’s so divorced from what’s on the screen, it increased the giggling ten fold. Because, and don’t ask me why, the narration is largely done in the style of a hard boiled detective story. It’s honestly fucking brilliant just how jarring this is. And it keeps doing it! Scenes go on for ages and at some point, it’s like someone wakes up and goes “shit, where were we?” and tries to guide things back into zombie land. Love it.
The story supposedly revolves around some mad science guff that creates zombies whilst someone is attempting to find the secret to immortality, when it remembers it has a story anyway. (The “frozen scream” is a reference to the science hinging entirely around low temperatures for, err, reasons). Mixed in with this is some occasional bloody murderings, some genuinely brilliantly awful dubbed over dialogue which makes me wonder how bad they thought the original dialogue was to replace it with whatever that is, and to make sure it stays on the edgier end of things, a typically nihilistic seventies ending.
Given the film didn’t make it onto the shelves until 1983 and the film is all over the place, it loses a lot of whatever shock value the ending might have had. Instead in its quest to surprise, it ends up the other one. You know how this shit works and it is exactly as you’d expect.
Obviously, I don’t think this is a problem. Quite the opposite! It’s perfectly fine with me and I did get a cheap thrill out of guessing that they were going for the nihilistic ending long before the nihilistic ending. I think I’d have been more disappointed if it didn’t go for it, tbh.
A special mention goes to the dude doing an evil laugh down the phone too, full on bwahahahahaha stuff, because I love that shit.
Quite fun then, all in.