“Cry of the Banshee” (1970)

Cry of the Banshee

Grade: C-

Cry of the Banshee is worth watching if only for one scene: toward the middle of the film, Vincent Price, as a comically wicked 15^th-century magistrate, chokes out his adult son in a shadowy corridor, kisses him and then walks offscreen laughing maniacally. The camera lingers on the son, who — after a few moments — looks at his sister and breaks out in laughter, too. Real laughter, that is. It’s clearly an unscripted (yet wholesome) reaction brought about by Price’s — nay, the entire film’s — ridiculousness: the type of unintentional, improvised hilarity that only a low-budget B-movie from the 1970s can provide. Credit to director Gordon Hessler for leaving it in the final cut.

Other than that, Cry of the Banshee is … well … a low-budget B-movie from the ‘70s, the only lens through which it can be accepted. Ignore the thin storyline, the cheap sets, the softcore sadism and the fact the filmmakers clearly don’t know what a banshee is — that all comes with the territory. Instead, find entertainment in Price’s dark, sinister performance (Lord Whitlock is one of his most evil characters), Les Baxter’s jazzy, unnerving soundtrack (this is the closest the veteran easy-listening composer ever came to classical avant-garde, almost sounding like Bartok or Penderecki in The Shining at times) and, of course, that aforementioned laughter scene (no art form depicts genuine human emotion better than film). Cry of the Banshee is so bad that it’s good, that’s why I like it, but I can also admit that it’s still really, really bad. A complete dud of a British folk-horror flick.