Customer Reviews

Cry of the Banshee [VHS]

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Cry of the Banshee is probably the least popular Vincent Price horror film but it's one of my favorites. aside from Price's usual great acting, what sells me on the movie is the mood and atmosphere of the film. i see nothing wrong with AIP capitalizing on the witchcraft genre with this, "The Oblong Box", and "Conqueror Worm". i liked all those movies, too. the trouble that most people have is that the stereotypical 'Vincent Price' isn't to be seen in these witch hunter flicks and for some reason, people can't learn to curl up on a cold day or a stormy night and plop in this rainy day movie and simply enjoy it for the entertainment. so what if the storyline sounds run of the mill or boring? on this film, Price plays Lord Edward Whitman whose family is cursed by Oona, a local witch. The Whitman boys and the only daughter look strinkingly similar to walk-ons and bit players on "The Oblong Box" and "Conqueror Worm"...well, the story tells about Oona sending a banshee to shack up with the Whitman's. i love the scene in which Price whips the stranger/banshee after catching him messing around with the daughter! i loved the hilarious ending that shows Price hop into his horse and buggy without noticing the driver falling over dead! the 'new' driver is none other than the banshee and as the horse and carriage speed off into the country side, we hear Price yelling "Bully Boy? Bully Boy..." and we see a close-up on the Banshee grinning! in a nut shell, Vincent Price films are always filled with great ACTING...this always wins over a bad script in my opinion. i feel that Vincent was right on the mark as the leader of this sadistic family and his cruel performance doesn't let you have any sympathy for him until the scene in which his entire family has been killed and you're rooting him on to go and kill Oona! this doesn't rank on the same level as the Roger Corman directed Poe films and it's unfair to compare "Cry of the Banshee" to any of them. for one thing, Banshee and the other witch-hunter films are in another genre and deserve to be compared with other witch movies...i'm afraid that many people see blood and gore and assume 'horror' which isn't the case on the witch-hunter movies. these are more like religious cult than true horror.

You know those great classic horror films that grab your interest right away and hold you glued to the screen for the nexthour and a half or so? Well, this film is not one of those, but it is not one of the other kind either. This film can best be described as uneven, although the good slightly outweighs the bad.

The plot is Vincent Price and his soldiers break up a pagan ceremony (complete with lots of young people dancing around in bedsheets) and kill a couple of the participants. The woman they say is a witch puts a curse on Price and his family, she also sommons a "man" who is supposed to bring this revenge around. Price and his followers hear strange sounds that they at first think are howls of a wolf, although they sound more like cross between a warped audio tape and someone stomach after they ate something that did not agree with them at all. Eventually the curse goes into effect and Price tries to figure out what is going on and how to stop it.

The story is nothing new and puts together aspects of previous Price classics Masque of the red death and the Conqueror Worm. The costumes, sets and acting are overall good. The film has some good action and some scary parts, but the parts with the witch and sound of the banshee just makes me shake my head and wonder what the producer thought was beneficial about these scenes? The idea of a banshee is very interesting to me, but the horrible sounds are not impressive. When I actually see the creature, I could not believe their budget only allowed them halloween grease paint probably purchased at a local drug store. The film could have been called cry of the wolf or werewolf because they completely lose sight of what a banshee is. However, they do pull this one out with a good ending and by using Vincent Price more than a lot of films did at this point in his career.

In all fairness, I would have given this film two and a half is I could because it is certainly interesting enough to be average. This is one of three Vincent price films directed by Gordon Hessler and it is definitely better than the boring Oblong box and the sci-fi/horror stinker Scream and scream again.

Surprisingly, I did not care for this one much. I usually love my Vincent Price movies like "Pit and the Pendulum", "House of Wax" & "Fall of the the House of Usher". I guess I had a hard time with Vincent Price and the partial nudity thing. The whole thing didn't make much sense. The ending was just as silly as the beginning. Oh, well.....off to the video graveyard!

Cry of the Banshee represents a low point in Vincent Price's acting career. I suppose that this is considered one of his Poe-based movies since they throw on a Poe quote at the beginning, but it has no real ties to the other movies in this series.

Similar to the flawed but still far superior Conqueror Worm, this movie has Vincent Price as the magistrate of a village who revels in his cruelty towards supposed witches. When he angers a real witch, a curse is visited upon him. If this sounds interesting in theory, it is not in execution.

Price looks like he is walking through his role, and despite his wooden acting, he is still the best in the bunch. Bad acting and writing makes this movie bad enough, but what kills it is that it's boring.

The only mildly interesting thing about this movie is the opening credit sequence, with Monty Python-style animation by Terry Gilliam, but even this misleads you into thinking that this movie might have some humor, which it doesn't. The only other good thing about this movie is it is relatively short (90 minutes) so it does eventually come to an end.