"The Screaming Mimi" is based on a detective novel published around 1950 in which beautiful young women are being murdered. In the book, a hardboiled reporter named Sweeney becomes obsessed with solving the case, but the only leads he has are that one of the victims has survived, and that a macabre statuette of a screaming woman seems to link all the victims together. This is the same plot as the movie follows, but what boggles my mind is how badly the movie screenplay handles the events depicted in the book. The book only reveals it's secret at the very end. The movie, however, reverses the order in which the truth is uncovered, thereby destroying the entire twist.
*Spoilers follow from here!*
The movie opens with Anita Ekberg as Virginia, having a mental breakdown after being menaced by an escaped asylum escapee with a knife. The movie then flashes forwards to Ekberg again, who, after years of therapy, has changed her name to Yolanda, and is now trying to start a new life as a stripper (a sure fire way of having stable mental health!). She is then attacked again, apparently by the maniac who has already stabbed and killed several other women, and this is when the reporter Sweeney starts to take an interest in the case. Sweeney follows up clues, investigates who else had a copy of the statuette (it is a mass produced item), and generally starts to fall in love with Yolanda, who occasionally suffers night terrors and moments of memory loss. Eventually Sweeney manages to work out who the murderer is, but by that time, you may have nodded off.
I can't quite put my finger on why, but watching the movie is a really boring experience. None of the acting is any good. The two leads deliver really drab performances. There are many boring scenes set in the nightclub where Yolanda does her act. But the worst part is the way the movie messes up the plot of the book, which I will now explain:
*Last chance to avoid spoilers*
In the novel, we don't know about Virginia or her trauma. Sweeney only knows that there have been knife murders, and that the screaming statuette is somehow linked. Only at the very end of the book do we discover that the statuette depicts Virginia, and this is the first time we learn about the original attack and resulting trauma, and that Virginia and Yolanda are the same person. Yolanda is psychotic and it is in fact she who has been performing the murders, but outwardly she has been exhibiting a calm and controlled persona. That's the book. What the movie does, is blow this revelation by showing the original trauma at the start, showing that the statue is based on Virginia's terror, and showing that Yolanda is suffering from memory loss and nightmares, and shows that the sight of the statuette triggers her. What a disaster. There's no real attempt to divert suspicion away from her, so what we end up is a character study of Ekberg's madness, rather than the surprise explanation that didn't come to light until the final few pages of the book.
As a movie, watched with no prior knowledge of the book, it still doesn't work because everything that happens is so unconvincing. A sad waste of time.
*Spoilers follow from here!*
The movie opens with Anita Ekberg as Virginia, having a mental breakdown after being menaced by an escaped asylum escapee with a knife. The movie then flashes forwards to Ekberg again, who, after years of therapy, has changed her name to Yolanda, and is now trying to start a new life as a stripper (a sure fire way of having stable mental health!). She is then attacked again, apparently by the maniac who has already stabbed and killed several other women, and this is when the reporter Sweeney starts to take an interest in the case. Sweeney follows up clues, investigates who else had a copy of the statuette (it is a mass produced item), and generally starts to fall in love with Yolanda, who occasionally suffers night terrors and moments of memory loss. Eventually Sweeney manages to work out who the murderer is, but by that time, you may have nodded off.
I can't quite put my finger on why, but watching the movie is a really boring experience. None of the acting is any good. The two leads deliver really drab performances. There are many boring scenes set in the nightclub where Yolanda does her act. But the worst part is the way the movie messes up the plot of the book, which I will now explain:
*Last chance to avoid spoilers*
In the novel, we don't know about Virginia or her trauma. Sweeney only knows that there have been knife murders, and that the screaming statuette is somehow linked. Only at the very end of the book do we discover that the statuette depicts Virginia, and this is the first time we learn about the original attack and resulting trauma, and that Virginia and Yolanda are the same person. Yolanda is psychotic and it is in fact she who has been performing the murders, but outwardly she has been exhibiting a calm and controlled persona. That's the book. What the movie does, is blow this revelation by showing the original trauma at the start, showing that the statue is based on Virginia's terror, and showing that Yolanda is suffering from memory loss and nightmares, and shows that the sight of the statuette triggers her. What a disaster. There's no real attempt to divert suspicion away from her, so what we end up is a character study of Ekberg's madness, rather than the surprise explanation that didn't come to light until the final few pages of the book.
As a movie, watched with no prior knowledge of the book, it still doesn't work because everything that happens is so unconvincing. A sad waste of time.