Just in case you also occasionally wondered whatever happened to that gorgeously cute Lauren Holly after she starred in "Dumb and Dumber" (I know I have), here's your answer! She's still a very ravishing lady, albeit nowadays old enough to portray the mother of rebellious and irritating adolescents, and she picks out the most horribly incompetent film scenarios to star in. This made for TV (ugh!) flick, produced by the morons of Syfy channel (ouch!) is dull and derivative straight from the beginning, and just to make things even worse, it gradually get more nonsensical, inane and dreadful when approaching the finale. Holly stars as an archaeologist teacher who stays behind in school during summer, along with a couple of students including her own insufferable teenage daughter, to clean up the basement. In a sealed off room, they stumble upon a mysterious box that naturally must be opened. It contains an – admittedly rather cool looking – decapitated head of a medieval old hag that somehow remained intact. But then the head awakes and her scream causes your ears to bleed and your mind to implode! From then onwards, professor Whelan and her students are non-stop terrorized by nerve-wrecking screams and bloody hallucinations in which they witness their friends and themselves die a horrible death. The curious artifact once belonged to the obsessive (and fired) previous archeology professor Broderick Duncan, so Whelan and her crew sets out to find him. There's absolutely nothing of interest about "Scream of the Banshee"
The titular creature is a truly fascinating mythological being (originating from the Irish folklore), but unfortunately there are hardly any good movies tackling this topic. The 70's flick "Cry of the Banshee", starring genre veteran Vincent Price, is the best so far, but certainly not a masterpiece. This particular one is ultimately forgettable. There are a lot of bloody and gooey killings, but the make-up effects are too obviously fake and artificial, and the plot is completely devoid of tension and/or atmosphere. How embarrassing for the nonetheless very talented Lauren Holly. Lance Henriksen also pops up in the film, but at least we are used to see him in inferior and downright retarded movies and he also openly admits that he accepts certain film roles solely to pay for his speeding tickets and the alimony
Review of Scream of the Banshee
