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.
Review of A Scream in the Streets
