A Scream in the Streets (1973)

Excellent but underrated film

Did you people see the same film I saw?

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

A woman-hating rapist transvestite killer on the rampage. Here's another oddity from the fine folks at Something Weird Video. To tell you the truth, this is just a basic subplot where the killer is mentioned in dialogue a few times (by cops) and has about three scenes with women in or near a park (including the opening credits where he gets to undress a fainted victim) where he earns their trust (even a woman cop undercover who tells him that she is undercover!) before threatening (and eventually killing) with a knife. Most of the film spends time with two plain clothes cops, on the job arresting druggies, a peeping tom, and a hold-up murderer. The rest consists of sex with a cop shagging the redheaded dispatching officer, two stoners (the peeping tom eyeballs them happily), the head detective and his concerned wife (she is worried about his safety with that rapist/killer on the loose; and rightfully so, since he'll meet a tragic fate thanks to the trans-psycho), and two lesbian lovers (peeping tom eyes them, too). There's a lengthy sequence in a "massage parlor" (that involves an old man banging one of the hired help; nothing makes me more flaccid than an old man's ass in close-up getting spanked or an old man faking pleasure in a weak-ass attempt to convince us in a softcore sex scene with her) which has the owner ordering his female employee to do her job as a pleasurer for their client who likes to rough up the girls (when she is whipped repeatedly by this old fart, the owner demands the police get him some help, not the least bit worried about the wellbeing of his employee; nice guy, this prick). As a plotted film, Scream in the Streets stinks. As a sex film, it has its moments. While not exactly beauties, the girls that get naked have nice figures and seem comfortable nude in front of the camera and joyfully randy with their partners. The film is a mixture of softcore/hardcore. You get oral sex and flashes of pecker. There are some shootouts with blood packets popping as the bad guys are downed by the cops. The dialogue has lots of laughable back-and-forth foreplay (particularly the cop and his dispatch lady) or "cop talk", with the criminals verbally antagonistic towards them. Then the wife voices her concerns to the cop who tries to assure her that everything will be alright (but her concerns are warranted and end up coming true). Without the sex (which can be a bit too softcore and staged; like the stoners because the girl's panties stay on while her man dry humps her on their waterbed, and he orally pleasures her with them on), I can't figure this film has much of interest to even the hardcore SW audience. The transvestite is clearly a man under a grandma wig (could have come right off the head of Vicki Lawrence from Mama's Family) although he fools everyone, including the male cops at the end. Seeing an old man shagging a much-younger girl does have a niche audience who enjoys that kind of sex, but the softcore work between the two actors is so poorly performed, I can't imagine even that crowd will find this scene much to be desired. For me, the girls aren't bad to look at and I enjoy women who are uninhibited in front of the camera, but otherwise, this left me wanting. I guess as a curio before the hardcore sex craze in the 70s fully bloomed this film might be of some intrigue. I can't imagine it offers much more than that, however. As a cop film, the cast, characters, and their story need to be compelling enough to keep our attention; but this is clearly more inspired as a sex film.

A cross-dressing serial killer/rapist in drag beats a woman to death before the opening credits start rolling, and that's pretty much the entire movie. From there we see two cops start going about their rounds to find the killer, which never amounts to anything except that this thing turns into a porno flick with endless sex scenes and a peeping tom who always happens to find the right window at the right time so he can watch. I like gratuitous sex as much as the next guy, but there is a limit in a straight "feature", and certainly not when it's unimaginatively presented and whatever existing plot line was initiated completely becomes ignored. This is a very bad movie. 0 out of ****

Anytime John Tull is in a movie it is hard not to like it. Something Weird Video offers many Tull titles and each one has its own ridiculous charm. I love the line in the film where he is talking to his girlfriend on the bed and says something like, "Now, for those split beaver pants"! (His girlfriend was dressed for a 1950s costume party...) Lines like this make A Scream in the Streets and John Tull a "gem" of 70s sleaze cinema. It's not only Tull that captivates me, but how about that scene where the robber holds up the convenience store? I love the look of "horror" on the owner's face. (Actually, it looks like the guy has no idea what is going on...) I also love when the robber jumps out of the glass door in slow motion. Hey, they don't make movies like this anymore! A movie so horrible that I can't help but love it! The cross dressing killer somehow goes unnoticed (though it is so obvious that "she" is a man), the dialog is amusingly horrid, John Tull bares "Tull junior", and don't forget the flaccid member during one of the sex scenes in the massage parlor! God, I wish I lived in the 70s to experience this stuff first hand!

WARNING SPOILERS INCLUDED 'The World is Full of Freaks' remarks one cop to another in A Scream in the Streets and the film itself seems on a quest to prove his point. A detective thriller by way of a transvestite horror movie by way of the down and dirtiest kind of sexploitation feature. Scream takes no prisoners, even as the credits are rolling we're privy to a berserk man in drag roughing up a girl and tearing her clothes off. The film takes place over a hot week in LA as cop Ed Haskell, married and by the book has to act partner to Bob Streeker a hotheaded bachelor. In a threadbare Dragnet fashion they drive around LA acting as a link to the films gamut of criminal behaviour. At a downtown massage parlour the bearded owner rages at one of his girls who wants nothing to do with a customer nicknamed 'Fanny Freak'. Mr Fanny Freak is a rich, decrepit, skinny bald old man whose rough treatment has already sent one of the girls down to the hospital. Eventually the girl plays along, Fanny Freak gets to give her the massage and genially gets his dollars worth from her but this does little to cram the urge for his vice. Fanny Freak eventually goes into a tantrum smashing the owner over the face with a bottle and moving in on the girl- chasing her around the parlour with his belt. Deeper in suburbia a bloated voyeur who like a punch drunk boxer is mad at the world, peeps through a window at a swinger couple smoking dope. Dressed in a joke shop 50's nostalgia outfit the woman inexplicably resembles some gangster's moll who has fallen on hard times and has to appear in loops with the ugliest looking man imaginable. It all gets too much for Streeker who seems to be in one foul mood that gradually gets worse and worse as the week progresses. He works off his aggression by blowing holes in bank robbers or stomping suspects. All the while the threat of the transvestite sex killer looms in the background. Despite his fat legs, pink dresses and blonde wig, the transvestite is somehow undetected as he prowls around a park. Whenever he's near a woman he freaks-out, laughing hysterically while issuing twisted demands at knife-point before performing psycho surgery on the women when things get too hot. 'I hate you, I hate all women, you're rotten ohhhh' he says as he pummels an undercover policewoman. Too empathise what a fiend the transvestite is we're told he's picked off one of Haskell's teenage neighbours, a fact that jars Mrs Haskell who its revealed was the victim of a similar teenage assault. We last see the Peeping Tom trailing a woman home, in the process learning she's part of a bored housewives group who have made making out behind their husband's backs an afternoon pastime. A mock twister game provides the films lewdest sight gag as the girls manage to keep the peeper occupied while phoning the police at the same time. Scream was shot in 1972 the same year that would see Deep Throat and its ilk legitimatize triple X rated films. Seemingly anticipating the gradual change from softcore to hardcore, Scream takes 'soft X' as far as it would go... maybe further. Like in the late Carl Monson's most popular offering Please Don't Eat My Mother the appearance of well known sex actresses in the cast as well as an hitherto unheard of on screen frankness poses a good case for Scream being shot as hardcore and then cut down for a more general release. Scream is also a bigger Trojan horse in that like producer Harry Novak's 1970 film The Booby Trap its extreme nature was down-played in its publicity which favoured to sell it as a straight forward crime thriller. A Scream in the Streets is less a straightforward narrative than a group of sadistic outbursts that skips on few fetish. You sit transfixed, always anticipating the worst as its degenerate character actors get ready to explode like fireworks. Uncannily suited to their scummy parts you wonder if Monson didn't just spot these people on the streets of LA, roll down his window and holler 'hey creep wanna be in a movie? theres some really purrtey girls in it'. Rarely seen in its 86 minute entirety, cut versions bearing titles like Scream Street and Girls in the Street often lose quite a deal of footage with the fanny freak or the bored housewives club scenarios being the first to be snipped or lost. A Scream in the Streets waves its Hollywood Boulevard sleaze flag high, capturing a place at its most extreme and lawless which makes its on the street shootouts and grubby massage parlours all too believable. The weeklong madness ends in its final sucker punch. The transvestite works over another girl then kills Haskell in the confusion. Finally he gets his comeuppance when he learns that men in dresses should not call an armed cop a 'schmuck'. The ironic fade out brings full circle the films cycle of violent men who can't control themselves, but what really sticks in your mind is that Scream's violent events are probably all ready to be played out again the following week.