SCREAM OF FEAR has a premise kind of similar to THE CAT AND THE CANARY -- it's about a young woman who is set to inherit some money and some greedy people who conspire to keep it away from her. I don't want to give away too much -- maybe I already have. This flick has plenty of twists and turns and I was definitely surprised by the ending.
The film starts as a ghost story -- a paralyzed young woman (Susan Strasberg) returns to her family home to find her father recently deceased and a stepmother (Ann Todd) she has never gotten along with. It's not long before the young woman starts spotting her dead father in dark rooms, his corpse or ghost haunting her every move, and then disappearing before she can prove what she saw. She's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and enlists her stepmother's hunky driver (Ronald Lewis) to unravel the help investigate.
Christopher Lee is on hand as a local doctor who was friends with the young woman's father and now seems to potentially have designs on the stepmother. We're not sure what he's up to, but it's Christopher Lee, so it can't be anything good, right? He certainly seems to be hanging around a lot.
Aside from being a nicely told mystery, the film is beautifully shot in black and white, taking full advantage of both beautiful of natural outdoor locations as well as the shadow-filled rooms of the family home.
The flick looks classy, but the story is nice and pulpy, and that adds up to a damn fine movie.
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