The Screaming Skull opens with a shot of a coffin which opens up by itself, with a narrator who tells you that because the film is so scary, you may die of fright and therefore, the producers have arranged a free burial for you in case you do die. There's even in a plaque inside the coffin that reads Reserved For You. In his entry of his 2010 Cinemassacre Monster Madness where he talked about this film, James Rolfe said that the only thing you're liable to die from in this movie is laughter. I disagree. You're not going to die of fear or laughter. You're going to die of boredom. I remember how I first came across this movie. It was one of two movies on a double feature VHS that I got for my birthday in 2001. The VHS was meant to simulate the experience of a drive-in movie double bill with cartoons and trailers before and in-between the two films (incidentally, the other movie was The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, one of Paul Naschy's werewolf movies). I had never heard of The Screaming Skull before I got this VHS and after I saw it, I understood why. Now, I'm all for cheesy, bad movies but this one just doesn't do it for me. I just find it to be a boring, stupid, convoluted piece of shit of a film.
Newlyweds Eric and Jenni Whitlock arrive at the old house where Eric used to live with his first wife Marianne before she died after slipping and falling into a small pond on the property. Jenni is warmly received by Eric's two friends, a local reverend and his wife, but the property's strange gardener, Mickey, remains ambivalent about her since she had a very close relationship with Marianne. It turns out that Jenni had a history of mental illness and spend a lot of time in an institution after she witnessed the drowning death of her parents. From the first night that Eric and Jenni spend in the house, strange things begin to happen to Jenni, most notably a skull that appears to her out of nowhere at unexpected moments. Is Jenni going insane again or has Marianne returned from the grave?
In the 1950's, independent films, particularly horror and sci-fi films, were played mostly at drive-ins, distributed by studios such as American-International Pictures (as this movie was), and weren't as prevalent or respected as they are now. Low budgets, especially in the 50's, force directors to be creative and use ingenuity to make a good movie despite their money limitations. As a result, you have such beloved films as The Blob, The Giant Gila Monster (which, despite its major schlock factor, is quite a charming little movie) or even the movies of Ed Wood, which one can't help but like despite how awful they are on every little. The bottom line is that a low budget is not the sign of a bad movie. It can result in a movie that's admirable or so bad that it's good. Unfortunately, a low budget can also hinder a movie, particularly when it's made by a director who isn't that skilled to begin with. That's the case with The Screaming Skull. The effects are bad enough with the low budget but when you add in a plot that's far too complex for its own good, you've got one stinker of a movie. I know there are some that enjoy this movie but in my opinion, everything in this movie blows.
The film's leads are played by actors who were mainly known for acting in radio and television. Peggy Webber, who plays Jenni, was in very few films in her career, appearing mostly on radio and in television shows like Cheyenne, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, I Spy, and many others. Her most notable movie appearance, even though her part in it was very small, was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. I'm pretty sure that this was one of her few leading parts and you can see why it was so. She tries her best but in the end, it's obvious that she can't carry a movie. Her attempts to come across as sympathetic and troubled aren't terrible but they're nothing to rave about. Her terrified performances, however, aren't that good because they involve her either sitting up in bed and looking around for about five minutes straight, walking around for about five minutes straight, or screaming her head off (her scream is particularly irritating, I might add). There's also mention that the portrait of Marianne in the house looks like her mother, whom she hated. Unfortunately, that subplot goes nowhere and she doesn't get to do much with it before it's discarded. I'm not trying to be mean and, again, she's not horrible but I just don't find her to be that remarkable of an actor here (although that could be due to the lack of good direction she probably received).
Eric is played by John Hudson, another actor who appeared mostly in television and whose last film role was in 1961 before he went into TV full time. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you right now that Eric is trying to drive Jenni insane again because her family is rich and he wants her money. Honestly, that secret is very clumsily hidden, especially when you re-watch the movie and think back on it. First, Hudson plays Eric as being really nonchalant about his first wife's death (no doubt because he, in reality, killed her), which Jenni should have seen as suspicious and, as a result, makes her look stupid. Second, whenever Jenni experiences the weird phenomena, Eric is nowhere to be found and only appears after the spooky stuff has stopped (which raises even bigger plotholes that we'll discuss shortly). Third, Eric's plot is revealed fairly early on when, after burning a portrait of Marianne that Jenni seems disturbed by, a skull is revealed in the ashes. Eric says he doesn't see the skull but after Jenni faints, he picks it up and drops it into the pond. You know, most mysteries wait until the end to reveal their twist but by doing so when there's still about twenty minutes left, you really destroyed what little suspense you already had. It's eventually revealed that there is something supernatural going as well but by that point, you just don't care anymore because it's been so clumsily handled. If they had waited until the end to reveal that Eric was trying to drive Jenni mad as well as there being paranormal phenomena going on, it still may not have made sense in retrospect but at least it would have been a bit more effective. (It's like if High Tension had that ridiculous twist right in the middle of the movie. The movie still blows but that would have made it suck even more.)
You may have been surprised that I didn't mention the movie's director before the cast as I usually do. That's because Alex Nicol, the director, also acts in the film as eccentric gardener Mickey. As an actor, Nicol was in over sixty movies and television shows from the 50's all the way up to his retirement in 1976. The Screaming Skull was his first shot at directing but he only directed a few more movies, two of them Tarzan movies, up until 1973 but he did manage to direct a bit of television. I've already mentioned some of the reasons why he didn't direct much after this and I'll go into more later but all in all, he proves with this film that he wasn't a very skilled director. Acting-wise, he's passable as the eccentric Mickey who was really close to Marianne and doesn't like that Eric is living in the house again with another wife. Mickey is, of course, meant to be the person whom you're supposed to suspect is the one behind the strange events occurring but he's not because it's so obvious. In fact, this character is completely useless. He never does anything except wander aimlessly around the grounds, "talk" to Marianne, and get blamed for the strange occurrences. The ending leaves us with the feeling that he knows about Marianne's spirit but that didn't even come into play in the grand scheme of things. The only important thing he does is let the kindly reverend and his wife know what Eric is up to but you could have easily have had them find that out for themselves. You have to wonder if Mickey is in this movie simply because Nicol wanted to act in it as well as direct because, as I said, he's an unnecessary character and his backstory is even more pointless.
As for Reverend Snow (Russ Conway) and his wife (Tony Johnson), they don't have much to do but they're fair enough in their acting. I thought Conway came across as a fairly compassionate reverend who cares for Jenni and wants to see her keep her peace of mind. Johnson also comes across decently and compassionately as Mrs. White but she has the least to do out of all of the characters. While Johnson apparently only appeared in one other movie after this, Conway was a veteran appearing in over 200 films and television shows up to the 1970's (most of his career was TV, like everyone else in the movie).
For the most part, this movie's camerawork and set-ups aren't that good. There are moments where it feels like Nicol doesn't how to set up a shot. One of the most glaring examples comes at a moment when Eric is looking for Mickey in the garden. As he yells, there's a shot of Mickey running towards the camera, as if he heading towards Eric. But the next shot of Mickey is him running away, like he's trying to hide from Eric. Nicol apparently didn't know how to direct himself or other actors. There are also moments where the whites in the picture go really strong for some reason (and since this movie is in the public domain, it can make an already bad print almost unwatchable). I don't know if I can blame Nicol for this or if I should just blame editor Betty Jane Lane (I couldn't help but snort when I saw that name in the credits) but this movie has a lot of really bad editing problems. There are several unexpected jump cuts. During the first night time scene, Jenni gets up because she hears a knocking sound and goes to investigate it. We see that it's an open window that's knocking due to the wind blowing but I'm not sure if Jenni saw it or not. In any case, she starts to walk across the hallway when there's a sudden jump-cut and the next thing you know, she ends up crying in Eric's arms. It's not just the print I saw. James Rolfe and even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys saw the same thing. There's another one where Jenni is talking to Eric later in the film. For a millisecond, there's a shot of Jenni's face and then it goes back to the shot of both of them in the frame. A similar thing happened in The Killer Shrews. You have to wonder how this happens, if the director or the editor don't know what they're doing or what. Either way, it's a distracting sign of terrible filmmaking.
When I said that the only thing you're liable to die from in this movie is boredom, I meant it. Even though this movie is only 62 minutes long, it was one of the most uninteresting and dull viewing experiences I've ever had, both when I first saw it and when I watched it again for this review. Nicol tries for a slow build with the terror and while that's normally a good thing, you've got to do it with actual creepy stuff happening. Most of the "terror" involves Jenni sitting in bed and listening to weird sounds. That can be scary if done right (look at Paranormal Activity for example) but when the sounds aren't particularly scary, when you're shown the same thing two times in a row, or it goes on far longer than it should, it becomes boring. That's the case here. That particular scene goes on for about three full minutes, if that. You're just like, "Do something!" The following scene where there's a knock at the door and Jenni takes a long time to finally answer it is equally dull. It has basically this pattern: Jenni walks a little bit, there's a few knocks at the door, she stops. Jenni walks a little more, there's a few more knocks, she stops again. It gets monotonous really quick. Like I said, there's a slow burn of suspense and then there's having nothing interesting happen on-screen for a while.
Where this movie gets downright silly is in the execution of the supernatural aspects. It's really hard to take something serious when the threat is a skull that floats, rolls, and even knocks on doors (more on that later). Jenni's reaction to the skull is a little strong, I feel. I know finding a skull that seems to be stalking you is eerie but you think you'd get used to it after a while and stop screaming your head off like she does. Even a bit of camerawork that could have been creepy, an apparent long-tracking POV shot around the house, is ruined when you realize that what you're probably seeing is the POV of a skull floating in the air. Things get even sillier near the end of the movie when the skull comes out in full force. Sometimes it's a transparent, full-bodied spirit and another time, it becomes a solid skeleton in a dress and hat. After that, you actually see the skull floating in the air and it's transparent. There's no consistency and the effects are ridiculous. The skull doesn't even really scream. Instead, it makes a high-pitched roar that sounds like something a monster in a Godzilla movie would emit. But here's the biggest problem and it's a simple one: it's a freaking skull! I'm sorry but I'm just not scared of a skull. Sure it does attack Eric at the end of the movie by attempting to bite his neck but the acting is comparable to how Bela Lugosi made it seem as if the octopus was attacking him at the end of Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster, ruining the effect completely. When your antagonist is nothing more than a skull, supernatural or not, you've got problems.
As I've said, Eric's plot to drive Jenni insane by using a skull and the presence of Marianne's vengeful spirit don't gel together very well. Up until the climax when Marianne really does rise from the grave and attempt to kill Eric, we're led to believe that everything we've seen up to this point has been Eric's handiwork but when you think back on it, it doesn't make sense. We can surmise that Eric put the skull in the dresser that Jenni finds it in at one point but after she throws it out the window, are we supposed to believe that those POV shots of the skull turning and then apparently floating were Eric doing so? Fine but why would Eric slowly and methodically turn the skull over, pick it up, and carry it to the front door? There would be absolutely no reason for him to do that. Moreover, when Jenni answers the knocking at the front door and sees the skull, she backs away in fear and the damn thing suddenly rolls toward her. How did Eric manage to do that? So these events are caused by the actual ghost? That would be a better explanation but the end of the film makes it clear that Marianne is after Eric. If that was Marianne doing that earlier, then why was she scaring poor Jenni, who never even knew her? The reverend and his wife talk about Jenni being much different than Marianne because she's kind, suggesting that Marianne was not a good person. It's only a suggestion but if they were going to go that route, they should have made it more concrete. If so, then it would have made a bit more sense why both Jenni and Eric are being haunted. Let's go one step further and talk about when Eric and Jenni burn the self-portrait of Marianne. This is where we find out that Eric is behind the mysterious events. Before that, we hear the skull scream as the painting is burning. How did Eric arrange for that sound to emit from the painting (moreover, how did he create that sound and emit around the house in the first place)? Also, how did Eric put that skull underneath the painting without Jenni noticing? Did he ask her to stay behind while he put the painting in the fire-pit? If so, once again I have to ask why Jenni didn't think that was suspicious. This movie wants to have it both ways, for it to be both a ghost story and a tale of psychological torment but neither part works and even if it did, the payoff is not worth it in the slightest.
It's amazing that the music in this movie was composed by Ernest Gold, who would go on to do music for over a hundred movies and would win an Oscar for his work on Exodus three years after this. The music in this movie is just as dull and unremarkable as the movie itself. It has two main bits: a lousy horn theme that goes "Dun, dun, da, da, da" and a choir of vocalizing voices that's meant to be eerie but just comes across as annoying. The opening credits music is nothing to write home about either.
I know there are fans of The Screaming Skull (while the film only currently has a 3.0 rating on IMDB, I know that there are supporters of it) and I hope none of them are too offended by my thoughts but to me, it's boring, stupid, and not scary at all. It's in the public domain so it's easy to find but I've never seen a very good quality print of it and I don't recommend seeing it in any case. If you want a laugh, though, I would advise watching the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that featured this movie. It is quite funny.
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