England in the Sixteenth Century, and superstition rules the countryside.
Lord Edward Whitman, the sadistic local magistrate (played, somewhat
inevitably, by Vincent Price), takes it upon himself to rid the land
of witchcraft by stripping, flogging, branding and burning as many buxom
wenches as his corrupt family can lay their hands on.
Eventually the law of averages pays off and Whitman manages to find a
genuine coven of witches – or at least a bunch of pasty extras
prancing around a woodland clearing in white robes. Whitman wastes little
time in ordering the death of most of them but, for reasons that remain
bewilderingly mysterious, he opts to let the head witch, Oona, go free.
This, unsurprisingly, proves to be a mistake as Oona has a secret weapon
already esconsed in the Whitman household. It’s Roderick, their
groomsman, who was found wandering the forest as a child many years earlier
and was taken in by Whitman’s wife. Now all grown up, Roderick
is embroiled in a bawdy affair with Whitman’s daughter and – wait
for it – he’s also a werewolf. Night after night, Oona and
her remaining acolytes chant and sway, and Roderick sprouts fur and mauls
another Whitman to death.
But let’s rewind to the pivotal scene of this rather plodding gothic
melodrama, as Whitman’s goons round up Oona’s worshippers.
If you’re quick with the freeze-frame button you might be able
to spot the 24-year-old Stephen Rea as one of the scantily clad witches
interrupted mid-frolic. We get a fleeting glimpse of the future Oscar
nominee as he’s trapped in a net, right before he gets chopped
to bits with a hatchet.
Of course, following this inauspicious debut the Belfast-born Rea went
on to become one of Britain’s leading stage and screen actors.
From The Crying Game (for which he received his Oscar nod) through to
Interview With The Vampire and, more recently, V For Vendetta he’s
alternated between low budget British films and Hollywood blockbusters
with admirable aplomb.
Need to know: The banshee is a creature from Celtic
folklore, a female apparition whose unearthly scream heralds death and
tragedy
for those
who hear it. Despite the title, Cry of the Banshee features no such creature.
The movie also bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1968 horror
classic, Witchfinder General (released in the US as Conqueror Worm),
with both featuring Vincent Price as a witch-burning puritan – though
the 1968 film contains no witches or werewolves and is instead a powerful
study of hypocrisy and corruption.
Cry of the Banshee was produced and
distributed by American International Pictures and, despite having absolutely
no connection with the author, the studio sold the movie as part of its
Edgar Allen Poe series, which had previously found Price collaborating
with Roger Corman on a string of wonderfully baroque – and financially
lucrative - horror classics. Banshee was
directed by Gordon Hessler, who helmed several of AIPs later efforts,
as
well
as
The Golden
Voyage of Sinbad and the rock-horror of KISS meets the Phantom of the
Park.
The script was written by Christopher Wicking, who would go on
to write the incomprehensible Dream Demon (see: Timothy Spall). And don’t
be surprised if the opening titles for Cry of the Banshee look familiar – they
were animated by Terry Gilliam, then just embarking on the first season
of seminal TV comedy, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Honourable mentions: Cry of the Banshee wasn’t Rea’s only
brush with horror. In 1984 he appeared in another lycanthropic yarn,
the infinitely more respectable The Company of Wolves. He followed that
with the grave-robbing story of Burke and Hare in The Doctor and the
Devils, before playing a supporting role in the histrionic vampire soap
opera, Interview with a Vampire. As recently as 2002 he appeared in the
utterly ludicrous Feardotcom, so you should clearly never give up hope
of yet another return to cheesy horror.
Availability: Cry of the Banshee is available on DVD in a double bill
with The Oblong Box as one of MGMs Midnite Movies releases.
