Die Screaming Marianne (1972)
Shriek Show / Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) / Color / 1 disc / 97 minutes

If you were only to judge a movie by its cover art, then Pete Walker’s DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE would be one hell of a picture. The title alone could sell this film — but then there’s that stark black and white image of the supine Susan George go-go dancing against a blood red background. Damn.

Unfortunately, this dreary excursion into pointless soap-operatic rubbish is neither horrific or as sleazy as the packaging promises. It’s a sad, slow, pointless journey that loops back onto itself where it started. Getting there is no fun at all.

George plays Marianne, a dancer by trade, who is a few weeks shy of her 21st birthday. She’s on the run from her family when she’s picked up by the painfully slender and foppish Sebastian (Christopher Sandford). Two weeks later and Sebastian wants to get married, but Marianne intentionally botches the paperwork and “accidentally” marries one of the witnesses at the wedding, Eli, who she eventually moves in with and begins a relationship.

Meanwhile, the wounded Sebastian aligns himself with Marianne’s presumably evil family — her father, The Judge (Leo Genn, from A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN) and her step-sister Hildegarde. He offers to bring Marianne to them for a fee. It’s eventually revealed that Marianne is the heiress to her mother’s fortune and a stash of evidence that would incriminate her father as a shady judge.

Once Marianne arrives home, The Judge and her sister make some half-assed attempts at killing her, succeeding in murdering her lover Eli instead. One of the plans backfires and The Judge buys the farm, leaving Hildegarde and Sebastian to scrap it out until the plodding, expected ending.

The film’s only high point is Susan George, whose perpetually wounded countenance is both sexy and unnerving, particularly after seeing her in films such as the violent Sam Peckinpah classic, STRAW DOGS (1971). Even so, the material she has to work with in DIE SCREAMING doesn’t allow her to stretch her talents.

Walker’s vision of Mod England is amiable enough, what with the fashions and language of the time. The opening titles are a real treat though: Marianne go-go dancing in a “Laugh-In” environment that likely inspired Cherry Darling’s dance in the opening credits for Robert Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR.

DIE SCREAMING, MARIANNE is reportedly Walker’s first excursion into horror film, if you can even call the film horror. Certainly there are despicable hints of abuse and incest and a scene or two of mild violence, but rest assured, this film is firmly rooted in PG territory. The film is well-made if you can overlook the jarring cuts and the tromboning zoom lens. Even the theme song is just horrid.

At best, a two-star effort. Skip this one unless you want to die slowly, from boredom.