Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 26, 2016

Given their iconic status in both the Vincent Price and Roger Corman filmographies, it’s perhaps a little surprising to realize that the actor and writer-director only made eight feature films together. While the two previous Scream Factory sets of Price material, The Vincent Price Collection and The Vincent Price Collection II, have necessarily reached beyond that vaunted pairing to include other titles starring the legendary thespian, the dwindling supply of available titles may mean this third “at bat” will be the last. While there is a Price-Corman collaboration on tap here, this set, like its predecessors, reaches out into Price’s long relationship with American International Pictures (and others) to provide some charming if often hammy opportunities for Price.

For reviews of the many films released in the previous Price collections, please click on the following links:

The Vincent Price Collection Blu-ray review

The Vincent Price Collection II Blu-ray review

The Vincent Price Collection stepped away from what some might have perceived to be its “calling card”, namely the vaunted Poe cycle which often united Price with Roger Corman, to offer the intriguing 1968 film Witchfinder General, a quasi-historical opus supposedly based on a real life magistrate who was tasked with rooting out the Devil (and his minions) in an England torn asunder by Civil War. Witchfinder General was a good deal more graphic and sexually suggestive than the early sixties Price horror outings, something that in and of itself gave the film a rather unique feel, at least within the often outré environment of this era of Price’s cinematic canon. Around two years after Witchfinder General was released in May of 1968, Price returned to an at least somewhat similar role in Cry of the Banshee. Set a bit before Witchfinder General’s mid-17th century timeframe, Cry of the Banshee finds Price portraying Lord Edward Whitman, an English magistrate tasked with, well, rooting out the Devil (and his minions), albeit in an England more or less peacefully under the imperial thumb of Elizabeth I. As with Witchfinder General, there’s an extremely tangential (and frankly needless) connection made to Edgar Allan Poe via a poem, and also as with the previous film, there’s a rather shockingly salacious subtext to many of the proceedings.

In channel surfing a few days ago, I stumbled across the goofy new Comedy Central offering Time Traveling Bong, a patently wacky series which found two cousins utilizing the titular device to unexpectedly travel back to Salem at the time of the witch trials. One of the cousins was a male, and he found himself fêted by the populace with huge banquets, lots of pretty girls and a generally commodious entry into late 17th century village life. Unfortunately, the other cousin was a female, and was more or less instantaneously decried as a witch, soon finding herself shackled and pummeled by a ceaseless array of torture and harassment. It was all played for laughs, of course, but there was a rather potent subtext about the disconnect between genders back in the day, something that Cry of the Banshee plies in a much more dramatic and at times explicit fashion.

The imbalance of power between the sexes is even more pronounced in the so-called Director’s Cut which is presented here as the “featured attraction” (the release version, which reorders certain events and trims the nudity and some of the more provocative sexual content, is offered as a supplement). Women are shown to be mere chattel most of the time, something that makes accusing them of heresy all the easier. Cry of the Banshee, despite being an ostensibly "historical" piece, is a product of its era, and it’s not hard to see the “coven” as a stand-in for the free love Flower Power youth of the late sixties and early seventies. In fact, it’s notable that the closing credits list Whitman and his associates under the rubric The Establishment.

Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cry of the Banshee is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Sourced from an IP, to my eyes this is the most consistently satisfying transfer in this third volume of Price films, perhaps due to its relative newness (when compared to the older films in the set). The film's sometimes fairly graphically gruesome imagery (like a partially decapitated sheep) provides some gut wrenching levels of detail, and director Gordon Hessler's proclivity for extreme close-ups (seen quite clearly in several screenshots accompanying this review) offer abundant opportunity for excellent detail levels. The rather opulent production design also provides a wealth of textures in costumes and sets that this transfer presents cleanly and clearly. The palette looks vivid and naturalistic (within the hyperbolic confines of the film's kind of bizarre context). There are occasional soft looking moments, including the big "arrest" scene where the coven is dealt with underneath a series of netting. Grain encounters no resolution issues and provides an organic looking viewing experience.

Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cry of the Banshee features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that has some odd choices in terms of score (Wilfred Josephs, replaced by Les Baxter for the theatrical cut) and sound effects (also toyed with in the theatrical cut), but which offers excellent fidelity and a nicely robust midrange and low end. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly, though subtitles may be preferable when the coven is chanting its nonsense syllables.

Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Cry of the Banshee (Theatrical Version) (1080p; 1:26:37) is sourced from a color reversal intermediate. This version features a score by Les Baxter.


• A Devilish Tale of Poe - An Interview with Director Gordon Hessler (1080i; 17:52)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 2:28)


• TV Spot (1080i; 00:58)


• Radio Spot (00:30)


• Photo Gallery (1080p; 4:09) comes replete with either a warning or an enticement (depending on your point of view) that there's nudity involved.


• Audio Commentary features Steve Haberman.

Cry of the Banshee Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's really interesting to compare the Director's Cut to the Theatrical Release version also included on this disc, for they're really quite different in a number of intriguing ways. That said, the Director's Cut is inarguably more provocative, and as such may be a better reflection of the era in which it was made. The advertising for this film rather deceptively mentions Edgar Allan Poe, when in fact the film has only the most tangential (and forced) relationship to the author. That said, it provides Price with a nice latter day role and the film makes for an interesting double feature with the at least somewhat similar Witchfinder General . Recommended.