Movies That Suck: The Screaming Skull (1958)

The Screaming Skull starts up with a shot of a coffin's lid opening by itself, as a narrator states that, because the film's climax is so "terrifying," you may die as a result and, "Therefore, its producers feel they must assure free burial services to anyone who dies of fright while seeing The Screaming Skull." There's even a plaque inside the coffin that reads, "Reserved For You." When he talked about it during his 2010 "Camp Cult" edition of Cinemassacre's Monster Madness, James Rolfe said, "If you're gonna die of anything, it's laughter." I disagree. While there are certainly ridiculous aspects of this movie, you're not going to die of either fear or laughter; instead, it's going to be of boredom. My own personal introduction to this movie is among the most memorable in my life, as it was one of two on a double feature VHS that I got for my birthday in 2001 (the other being the Paul Naschy movie, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman). That tape was meant to simulate the experience of a drive-in double bill, with cartoons and trailers before and in-between the two movies, and while it was definitely unique, I can't say it was one of my most treasured birthday/Christmas presents. As for the movies themselves, I had never heard of either of them, as I didn't grow up reading any major horror magazines and had only had the internet for a year-and-a-half at that point. And after I saw The Screaming Skull, I understood perfectly why I'd never heard of it. Now, to be fair, it was at a great disadvantage due to how crappy the video and audio quality was on that VHS, with some awful jump-cuts in the print, but it's still really slow and boring, with a badly convoluted plot, and moments and images that are likely to inspire either laughter or groans, instead of fright. As James Rolfe said, it does have some nicely atmospheric moments, thanks to the setting, the cinematography, and music score, and some of the technical filmmaking is a bit inventive for a movie that you know was made for virtually no money, but it's still a dud at the end of the day.

Eric Whitlock brings his new wife, Jenni, home to the large house he shared his deceased first wife, Marion. Not long after she and Eric were married, Marion died after slipping and falling into a small, decorative pond on the property. Jenni is warmly received by Eric's two friends, Reverend Edward Snow and his wife, but the property's mentally disabled, childlike gardener, Mickey, who was extremely close to Marion, remains ambivalent. When the reverend and his wife stay for dinner that night, Eric tells Mrs. Snow that Jenni's parents drowned right in front of her, and it's left her very sensitive to sadness and bad memories; she also turns out to be very wealthy. During their first night in the large, unfurnished, dark house, Jenni is awakened by the sound of an open window panel blowing in the window, and is then frightened by a bizarre scream and the sight of a portrait of Marion, who happens to resemble Jenni's deceased mother. Eric, however, believes that Jenni is simply getting herself worked up and that what she heard were the peacocks that roam the grounds. The next day, Eric goes into town and Jenni stays behind, attempting to make friends with Mickey. The two of them take some flowers to Marion's grave on the property, and Mickey claims that he hears her cry in the night. By dark, Eric still hasn't returned and Jenni prepares for bed. Later, she's awakened from a nightmare by another scream, and a skull suddenly appears in a cabinet by the bedroom window. She tosses it outside, only to then hear a loud knocking at the front door, which she answers to find the skull on the doorstep. It rolls through the doorway towards her and she faints. She's later awakened by Eric, who says that he didn't see any sign of a skull when he found her. Now, Jenni, who spent time in a sanitarium following her parents' death, which she still feels partly responsible for, is unsure whether she's going insane again or if Marion's ghost is actually haunting her.

Distributed by American-International Pictures, The Screaming Skull, like a lot of horror and sci-fi flicks that played at the drive-in at the time, was made independently, with a screenplay by veteran screenwriter John Kneubuhl, loosely based on a 1906 story of the same name (however, neither that story nor its author are mentioned in the credits). The director was Alex Nicol, who was mainly an actor, having started his career on the stage and would appear in nearly seventy movies and television shows from the 50's all the way up to his retirement in 1976. Feeling that he'd been pigeonholed in the type of roles he was getting, Nicol decided to try his hand at directing, with his first film being The Screaming Skull, which he also acts in as Mickey. When he talked about it years later, he admitted that he wasn't emulating any other filmmakers or trying to be auteur himself, saying, "I just worked my way through the script, blocking it out as I went along, trying to get the film shot on time." However, he did maintain some affection for it throughout the rest of his life, saying it gave him the change of pace he was hoping for. Regardless, it didn't open many doors for him as a director, as he only did a few more movies afterward, with his last being a 1971 film called Point of Terror (which has a lower IMDB rating than The Screaming Skull). He did, however, manage to direct a bit of television, doing shows like The Legend of Jesse James, Daniel Boone, and The Wild Wild West. He died in 2001, at the age of 85.

Nicol said that in order to get Peggy Webber, who plays Jenni, interested in the film, he told her that he was planning on a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. While it wasn't exactly a lie, as Eric's deceased wife, Marion, is used in the story in a similar vein to the title character of Rebecca, I don't think this is what Webber, who actually appeared in Hitchcock's The Wrong Man a couple of years prior, had in mind. And sure enough, like another woman most famous for her role in a low-grade cult film that we'll get to in a few days, Webber was not at all fond of The Screaming Skull, saying it made her want to throw up. In any case, the character of Jenni has a lot of psychological baggage, the depth of which is only gradually revealed over the course of the film. First, Eric tells Mrs. Snow about how Jenni witnessed the drowning death of her parents, which left her in a fragile state of mind and very impressionable when it comes to anything that may remind her of it. Later, Jenni herself not only admits to Reverend Snow that she was in a sanitarium for over a year after the tragedy, but it was more complicated than her simply being devastated by the loss. It turns out that she always hated her mother, who resented Jenni for not being more like her, and often wished she were dead. Then, one day, Jenni's wish was granted, and while she did try to save them when their boat overturned, she feels that she may have actually wanted them to die and thus, didn't try as hard as she could have. This horrible feeling is compounded by how the portrait of Marion in the house looks like her mother, and as more and more bizarre and frightening things happen, Jenni begins to wonder if she's losing her sanity again. But, even though Webber is given a lot to play with, her performance, be it her own fault or due to the failings of the script, while not terrible, is nothing to rave about. It doesn't help that the subplot about the painting doesn't amount to much, and when she's supposed to be terrified in the night, all she does is either sit up in bed, listening, roam around the house for minutes on end, or just scream her damn head off (her scream can be quite irritating).

Less than twenty minutes before the movie's over, Eric (John Hudson), despite seeming like a dutiful but misguided husband, turns out to be trying to drive Jenni insane again because of her family's wealth. That's not a spoiler (and, by the way, if you're somebody who doesn't want to be spoiled, don't read reviews on something you haven't seen), as that secret is very clumsily hidden, especially when you re-watch the movie. First, Eric is really nonchalant about his first wife's death (no doubt because he, in reality, killed her, as Reverend Snow considers at the end), which Jenni should have seen as suspicious. Second, Jenni being a mentally unstable woman who's also wealthy makes you suspicious about Eric as soon as you learn about it. Third, whenever she experiences the spooky happenings, Eric is nowhere to be found and only appears after it's stopped (which leads to big plotholes that we'll discuss later). Fourth, his way of "caring" for her is forbidding her to talk about the disturbing thoughts that once plagued her (he even says as much), as well as refusing to let her leave the house, despite how much it frightens her. He comes up with reasons as to why, saying her presence brings him happiness and that he wants to cure her by showing her how loved she is, but it doesn't come off as all that genuine. Fifth, again, Eric's plot is revealed earlier than it should've been, when they burn the portrait and a skull is revealed in the ashes. Eric says he doesn't see it, but after Jenni faints, he picks it up and drops it into the pond, where's been hiding it. Most mysteries wait until the end to reveal their twist, but by doing so when there's still a fair amount of time left, the film really destroys what little suspense it had going. And it's also eventually revealed that there is something supernatural going, but by that point, you just don't care anymore. If they had waited until the end to reveal that Eric was trying to drive Jenni mad, along with there being actual paranormal phenomena, it still may not have made sense in retrospect but at least it would have been a bit more effective.

Acting-wise, Alex Nicol is passable as the mentally slow, child-like Mickey, who was really close to Marion and doesn't seem to like that Eric has remarried. More significantly, Mickey is meant to be the one you suspect is behind the strange happenings, given how he seems a bit menacing when you first see him, and is often revealed to be hanging around whenever something creepy happens to Jenni. But, because it's so obvious, you know he's actually a red herring. In fact, he turns out to be completely pointless in the story, as all he does is sneak and wander aimlessly around the grounds, "talk" to Marion, and get blamed for the strange occurrences, with Eric even assaulting him a couple of times. Knowing that, as well as how much Nicol wanted to break out of the kinds of roles he was stuck playing, you have to wonder if Mickey is in this movie just so he could play against type. The only significant thing he does is find and take the skull that Eric was using in his plot to Reverend Snow and his wife, making them realize that he's behind what's been happening, but you could've easily had them learn that for themselves. The ending also suggests that Mickey, who claimed to hear Marion cry in the night, has actually been interacting with her spirit in some manner, but rather than adding intrigue, it just makes you go, "Whatever."

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 performances, coming across as warm, compassionate people who welcome Jenni with open arms, grow quite fond of her, and become concerned when things start to unravel, especially after they each learn the extent of her past mental issues. Both of them lend an ear to Jenni and Eric when they talk about the past and what's happening, with Snow trying to ease Jenni's fears and listening to her when she talks about the true root of

her problems. They're disappointed when Eric reveals late in the film that he's taking Jenni back to the hospital, and then shocked when Mickey brings them proof of what Eric has been up to, with Snow insisting that Mickey tell them the truth, which he does. They go back to the house that night, but by the time they arrive, the climax has already taken place. They find Jenni completely hysterical, and when Sam searches the grounds for Eric, he finds his body in the pond where Marion drowned. The two of them then escort Jenni away from the house.

I wasn't able to appreciate it before, due to the crappy quality of most prints up until Scream Factory's pristine-looking Blu-Ray from 2017, but I can now say that The Screaming Skull is well shot. Yeah, shockingly, when you can actually tell what's going on, it is easy to admire the shadowy nighttime cinematography, courtesy of Floyd Crosby, who was working with Roger Corman during this period but had also won an Academy Award in 1931 for F.W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. It's a look

that gets across the feeling of an old, dark house that doesn't have any electricity, forcing Jenni and Eric to resort to candles, and it also sometimes makes it seem as though the characters are in a dark void. The nighttime scenes in the foyer and the landing atop the stairs, where the only light source is from the flickering of the fireplace downstairs, look especially cool, almost Expressionistic. Also, the daytime exteriors always have a dreariness to them, as if it's constantly overcast and on the verge of raining. The

camerawork also sometimes get a bit creative, like when, after Jenni throws the skull out the window and it lands on the ground, we cut to its POV as it slowly rights itself, and the camera then slowly pans across the front of the house, before pushing in towards the door. It's pretty eerie-looking, although, as James Rolfe said, the effect is impaired when you realize that what you're seeing implies that the skull is essentially floating around outside. The camera setups and editing are sometimes a tad clumsy. One of the most glaring examples comes when Eric is searching

the grounds for Mickey. As he yells for him, there's a shot of Mickey running towards the camera, as if he's heading towards Eric. but after a cutaway to Eric, the next shot of Mickey is him running away, clearly trying to hide from Eric. I also think Nicol filmed John Hudson performing two different scenes in one setup. When he's talking with Mrs. Snow about Jenni near the beginning of the movie, and then with the reverend near the end, where he claims he fears that Jenni may attempt suicide, the close-ups of him in both scenes look identical.

Besides the beautiful, pristine quality, the HD remaster also benefits the movie by repairing several unexpected jump cuts, which I not only saw but so did James Rolfe and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys (as well as probably just about everyone else whoever watched it before). During the first nighttime scene, Jenni gets up when she hears a persistent knocking sound and goes to investigate. She finds it's an open window that's continually slamming due to the wind blowing outside, and starts

across across the room towards it when, in the public domain version, there was a sudden-cut and, the next thing you know, she was crying in Eric's arms ("Oh, the film broke and it was horrible!"). In the complete version that's now available, you see that Jenni closes the window, only to be startled by the sound of the skull screaming and then seeing Marion's portrait for the first time, which leads to her running towards the door and into Eric, as he steps into the doorway. There was another one when Jenni is talking to Eric following her first encounter with the skull. When she

said that she wanted him to call the doctor who saw to her in the sanitarium, for a millisecond, it cut to a close-up of her face, and there was a brief bit of music (both of which were from the scene afterward, where she talks with Reverend Snow), and then it went back to the shot of both of her and Eric in the frame. Again, this error has been fixed, and while it may not make the film any better, at least it's more coherent.

I also can't help but really like the setting of this isolated, palatial country home and its grounds, mainly because I tend to like settings like these in general. The house itself (actually the former Huntington Hartford Estate, now Runyon Canyon Park, in Los Angeles), while certainly beautiful, can also be spooky on both the outside and inside, especially at night. The lack of any furniture, with Jenni and Eric having to sleep on cots in their bedroom, gives the place a barren feeling that adds to

its creep factor. The same goes for the lack of any electricity, forcing them to either light candles or use the light from the fireplace in the foyer, giving it an almost Gothic feeling in some scenes. We don't see much of the house's interiors, save for the foyer, the landing atop the stairs, the bedroom, and this room at the other end of the landing that houses the portrait of Marion, but since there's no furniture, we're likely not missing much, and the parts we do see do their job adequately. The grounds themselves are also memorable, with the lovely expansive yards, different

types of plants and flowers scattered throughout (including what looks like bamboo in spots), peacocks and peahens roaming about, the infamous decorative pond where Marion died (and from which the screaming skull itself emerges during the opening credits), an old, overgrown greenhouse, a building where Mickey keeps his gardening tools, and a spot where Marion's grave is marked by an obelisk with a carving of her face on its side. The only other setting in the film that we ever visit is the ordinary-looking home of Reverend and Mrs. Snow, which we only ever see the outside of.

Whether or not it was entirely successful aside, I can't deny that there is an attempt to create atmosphere here, with the aforementioned spooky nighttime cinematography, both outside and inside the house; some classic haunted house tropes, like that window banging in the wind, a tree branch brushing against the side of the house, and the eerie shots of the portrait in the darkness (that thing is kind of unnerving in and of itself); and sound effects like the screaming of the peacocks (a stock sound I've heard

before), the freakish sounds made by the skull itself, and parts of the music score. Also, they did try to be sophisticated and suggestive when it came to the deceased Marion's role in the story. As noted earlier, she is quite reminiscent of the title character of Rebecca, both the Alfred Hitchcock film and the book it was based on, in that she's long dead by the time the story starts but memories of her personality remain with those who knew her and, in a way, make her something of a presence in her own right, long before

she actually appears as a ghost. Also like with Rebecca, you get a bit of a read on the type of person she was from the way people talk about her. Shortly after she and her husband meet Jenni, Mrs. Snow tells Eric, "She's not at all like Marion, and I think that's for the best." She later tells the reverend the same thing, adding, "She's so gentle and timid." Also, Eric mentions that, when he and Marion first moved into the house, she threw out all the furniture her parents had left her, insisting that the two of them choose what they wanted. And Jenni's noting that her portrait

resembles her rather cruel mother might say something about Marion herself as well. Finally, taking a note from William Castle (specifically when, for Macabre, he offered life insurance to anybody who bought a ticket), that opening disclaimer about promising free burials for anyone who dies of fright, was probably meant to start the film off on a tongue-in-cheek note, making you think it's going to be spooky fun. Unfortunately, where it really fails is in the entertainment section.

What kills The Screaming Skull is that it's often just plain boring..Alex Nicol goes for a slow build approach with the terror, but the way it's done is agonizing. After she first sees the skull around the thirty-minute mark, when she's by herself at night, Jenni runs back to her bedroom and sits up in bed, listening to sounds like the wind outside, the tree branch brushing against the side of the house, loud bangs elsewhere, and what sounds like footsteps walking down the landing, towards her door. It may

sound scary but, for nearly two full minutes, you're watching the movie cut back and forth between her sitting up in bed, looking around warily, and various shots from both outside and inside the house. Then, after she gets up, tosses the skull out the window, and goes back to bed, another 90 seconds or so is spent watching the thing's POV as it slowly floats along the house's exterior, while Jenni, again, is doing nothing but sitting in bed and looking scared. The next part, where she hears a knocking at the door and goes downstairs to answer it, takes an eternity, as it

consists of this pattern: Jenni walks a little bit, there are a few knocks at the door, she stops. She walks a little more, there are a few more knocks, she stops again. Needless to say, as cool as the cinematography may be, this gets monotonous really quickly. And speaking of monotonous, while it's probably only three, it feels like you watch Jenni go to that window in the room with the portrait numerous times. Things don't improve from there, as the film continues to move at a snail's pace (while not nearly as long as what I just talked about, Eric spends a lot more time searching the grounds for Mickey than is necessary), and it's not long before Eric is revealed to be gaslighting Jenni, basically sealing the film's doom.

As similar as she is to Rebecca, where Marion differs is, one, you see a portrait of her, whereas you literally see no image of Rebecca, and two, her vengeful spirit does indeed return. And that's where this movie gets downright silly. Not only is it nigh impossible to take seriously the threat of a skull, even if it does float, roll, and even knock on doors (more on that later), but, while it does attack Eric at the end of the movie by attempting to bite his neck, the execution is comparable to Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster, where

Bela Lugosi, or rather, his stand-in, tried to make it seem as if the giant octopus was attacking him by flailing the tentacles around himself. Also, Jenni's reactions when she sees the skull are a tad overdone. The idea of a skull that seems to be stalking you is eerie, but you'd think she'd get used to it after a while and stop screaming her head off. And while the sound it makes is kind of freaky, it's less of a scream than it is a high-pitched roar akin to something you'd hear in a Japanese kaiju flick. Things get even sillier during the climax, when Marion's spirit comes out in full

force. First, she's a transparent, full-bodied apparition (though she still avoids objects rather than just pass through them), but when she appears to Eric at the front door, she's now a solid skeleton in a dress, hat, and veil. Eric (whose reaction to this is the opposite of Jenni's, as it's too subdued), throws a chair at her, smashing her to bits, but is then chased by the skull, which you see floating in the air. Again, while floating, it's transparent, but when it attacks Eric, it becomes solid again.

When it comes to the effects depicting the ghostly phenomena, they range from fairly impressive for the low budget to laughable. The moments where both the skull and the apparition are transparent and floating don't look half-bad, as do images like when the skull is superimposed over the portrait's face in one scene, the faces of several people, talking about Marion appear on the image when Jenni is having a nightmare while she's at home by herself, and the lightning that crackles through the night sky during

the climax. The physical effects for moments like when the pond's water is bubbling and the skull rises up out of it aren't too shabby either (although they probably shouldn't have done it in a spot with so many lily-pads, as one covers the skull when it first emerges), but that's more than I can say for the effects to make the skull move around. When it rolls at Jenni when she answers the door to its knocking, it's obvious that somebody literally rolled it from off-camera. And after Eric smashes the ghost's physical form, he finds the skull on the stairs and when it rolls down at him, you can see the section of the step behind it raising it up to send it tumbling down.

Eric's plot to drive Jenni insane by using a skull does not at all mesh with the revelation that Marion's spirit is actually haunting the place and takes that very form. Until we actually see the ghost, we're led to believe that everything 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 cabinet where Jenni first finds it, but after she throws it out the window, are we supposed to assume that those POV shots of it righting itself and then apparently

floating were Eric's doing? Why would he slowly and methodically turn the skull over, pick it up, and carry it to the front door? Moreover, when Jenni answers the knocking at the front door and sees the skull at her feet, she backs away in fear and the damn thing suddenly rolls toward her. How did Eric pull that off? (In the moment, the film tries to make it seem as though it's Mickey's doing, but that doesn't make since, either, even if he is in cahoots with the ghost.) Or were these moments caused by the actual ghost?

That would be a better explanation, but the end of the film suggests that she's specifically after Eric, likely because he murdered her. So why does she scare and chase poor Jenni, who never even knew her? Again, like with Rebecca, it's suggested that Marion wasn't a very good person but, if they were going to go this route, they should've made that notion more concrete and thus, understandable as to why both Jenni and Eric are being haunted. Let's now go one step further and talk about when Eric and Jenni burn the portrait. This is when we learn that Eric is behind "everything"

and yet, we hear the skull scream as the painting is burning. How did Eric manage to produce that sound from it (moreover, how did he create that sound and emit it throughout the house in the first place)? And how did he get that skull underneath the painting and within the little pyre without Jenni noticing? Did he ask her to stay behind while he first set the painting up and before we see him dousing it with lighter fluid? If so, I again have to ask why Jenni didn't think that was suspicious. The problem is that movie wants to have it both ways and be both a ghost story and a psychological thriller, but neither part works and, even if it did, the payoff is not worth it in the slightest.

Case in point, the climax, which is really ridiculous. Jenni, thinking Eric is going to take her back to the sanitarium, roams the grounds at night, searching for Mickey to say goodbye. Making her way to the greenhouse, she opens the door, only to see Marion's ghost at the other end of it. She runs back to the house in terror, with the ghost behind her (there's one shot where the ghost is actually prancing!). She runs into the house, screaming and searching for Eric, unaware that he's planning to strangle her to make it seem as

though she committed suicide, as he suggested to Reverend Snow that she might do. When she runs upstairs and across the landing, Eric jumps her from around a corner and seemingly chokes her to death. Once he's done, he hears a knocking at the door and answers it, only to be faced with Marion's ghost. That's when he tosses a chair at the skeleton, then gets chased outside by the skull as it floats through the air. This last part is a confusingly-edited mishmash, as Eric runs around the yard, seemingly unable to escape the skull (John Hudson's reactions to it suddenly

appearing to him really do bring to mind the crappy acting in Ed Wood movies), as random lightning flashes in the sky. He even runs to his car and opens the door, only to find it in the seat, waiting for him. Eventually, he runs to the pond in a panic, the skull comes at him, attacks him by biting at his neck, and he struggles with it before falling into the water. He continues fighting with it in there, while back at the house, Jenni wakes up, goes back downstairs, and finds Marion's dress lying on the floor. The sight of this really scares her, and this is where Reverend and Mrs. Snow find her when they arrive, with the reverend finding Eric's body out in the pond.

I used to be amazed that the score was the work of Ernest Gold, someone who would not only go on to do music for over a hundred movies but would win an Oscar for his work on 1961's Exodus, as I found it to be just as dull and unremarkable as the movie itself. Again, I think that mainly had to do with the poor audio quality of the available versions back then because, having heard a crisp version of it, I don't think it's that bad. That said, there's still one repeated motif, a lousy horn theme, that I really don't care for, but otherwise, the music is pretty fair, with the most memorable parts involving a choir of ghostly female voices that are especially effective during that slow pan across the front of the house. Also, the opening credits feature a tuba version of "Dies Irae" from Symphony Fantastique, which can be heard in many other movies, including major ones like the original Star Wars (when Luke finds that his aunt and uncle have been killed) and The Shining (when Jack is driving to the Overlook during the opening credits). This particular version also features pounding piano keys and that ghostly female voice, although in this case, it tries way too hard to creepy and just comes off as silly.

Because of its public domain status, The Screaming Skull has been seen by tons of people over the years and, thus, probably has a good number of genuine fans. That's great and all, but to me, while it does have instances of atmosphere, an appealing setting, good cinematography, some fair special effects, and a not half-bad music score, it's not an enjoyable watch, even at just 68 minutes. I don't really care about any of the characters, despite how fair the acting sometimes is; the plot is convoluted, aspects of it are impossible to take seriously, it shows its hand much sooner than it should, and neither of the major revelations add up when watching the film in retrospect; and, above all else, try as might to be creepy, it's often just plain boring. Even with the really nice-looking, repaired print of the movie that's now available, the only entertainment I can see myself having with this flick in the future is watching its Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.