Review of Scream Bloody Murder

This is another one of those horror movies in which the psychopath character already spent several long years (nearly a decade, in this case) in a mental asylum, but upon his release immediately goes on a killing spree that is ever more insane and sadistic than the crimes he got committed for in the first place. What the hell do they do with people in those institutions? Play Scrabble? Although completely implausible and extremely low-budgeted, "Scream Bloody Murder" certainly isn't such a bad horror effort. It actually surprised me a lot, since it's really well-directed, fairly suspenseful and very gore considering the time it was made. The murders surely involve screams and blood, alright! When Matthew was just a little boy, he ran an agriculture machine over his dad but lost his own hand in the process. When he returns home from the mental hospital (with a hook for a hand), Matthew goes berserk again when he learns that his beloved mother met someone else and got remarried. He expresses his feelings of disappointment with a shiny, sharp axe and splits. Matthew butchers some random people, because the voices in his head command him, and ends up in the house of a whore/artist – lovely combination, I know – who befriends him. Odd story full of holes and improbabilities, but entertaining thanks to the excessive bloodshed and one-time-actor Fred Holbert's decent performance. The girl is pretty good too and Angus Scrimm appears in a little role long before he became a genre icon with the Phantasm-films. Worth a peek in case you're a fan of offbeat 70's exploitation cinema.