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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little weird, but fine horror entertainment nonetheless, April 14, 2004
When the Screaming Stops is the American release of the Spanish film Las Garras de Lorelei (Grasp of Lorelei), a 1974 film directed by Armando De Ossario of Blind Dead fame. The American release, as I understand it, has seemingly had some of the original gore and nudity of the original film edited out (boo, censors), but you still get to see some nudity and the gore factor is certainly acceptable in my opinion - if your monster rips out victims' hearts, you pretty much have to show a little bit of that. I wasn't sure what to expect going in, exactly, since this is an American release of a Spanish film set in early 1900s Germany, but I came away rather impressed with what I saw. When the Screaming Stops has some problems, but De Ossario did some good things here.Lorelei is a legendary monster said to guard the treasures of the Niebelungen somewhere on the Rhine River. In order to live indefinitely inside her wonderfully curvy body (supplied most appealingly by Helga Line), she has to come up and eat a number of human hearts every so often. Unfortunately, she doesn't just walk the streets swaying her hips to attract victims; instead, she takes the form of some giant reptilian monster with really long claws. Well, you know how people are - a few folks get ripped apart and have their hearts jerked out of their chests, and all the nervous nellies in town start complaining. A professor at the nearby school for girls asks the mayor for protection from the killer, and he obliges by sending them Sirgurd (Tony Kendall), a hunter with (supposedly) a lot of experience. Now things start to get interesting. For starters, all of the girls at the school are apparently double majoring in wearing two-piece bikinis and having fun in and around a swimming pool. I don't have a problem with that. Then we see the professor who came to town asking for help in a brand new light, and immediately I forgave the director for killing off the attractive lady featured in the opening scene. Gone is the wet noodle professor with the hair in a bun, replaced by a vision of loveliness (Silvia Tortosa in all her glory) with the silkiest, shiniest hair I've ever seen. Sirgurd isn't much of a hunter, if you ask me, but he does bear a resemblance to Elvis - I lost count of how many Elvis impersonations that spontaneously came out of my mouth as I watched this guy operate. Naturally, the monster keeps killing, and the idea that the myth of Lorelei might actually be true starts to gain credibility. Sirgurd has some close encounters with Lorelei along the way, but he seems to possess an incredible talent for ignoring the obvious for extended periods of time. The ending isn't all that bad, really, although it left a couple of subplots dangling. Let's talk about the monster. It's obviously just another guy in a rubber suit, but it is hard to get a good look at the thing's face because the camera jumps around continuously from the victim's perspective. One of the most talked about features of the film is the inclusion of a red flash immediately prior to each deadly attack - that seems sort of wacky and counter-intuitive to me, but I honestly didn't notice a single one of these red flashes anywhere. The whole Lorelei myth is a little far-fetched, but I can go with it. The filmmakers did make a mistake, in my opinion, when they threw in a wacky scientist who "proves" that normal human tissue can be mutated to an atavistic reptilian form (and thus "proves" that the Lorelei myth might be true). There are also a few weaknesses in character development, particularly concerning the lovely professor and Sirgurd, but there is certainly no denying the fact that Silvia Tortosa is a beautiful woman; if her character wants to bounce back and forth between schoolmarmish conservatism and coquettish sensuality, that's OK by me - as long as the monster doesn't slash her lovely face up the way it does a number of its victims. And you get to see human hearts torn out of people's chests, as well. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe any film with a beautiful woman and a monster ripping people's hearts out is well worth watching. Honestly, though, I found When the Screaming Stops to be a pretty darn good film, much too good to be classified as a "bad movie."
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