You know why I love those old “classic” horror movies so much? Because for all their problems and limitations (mostly due to lack of budget and the primitive state of special effects at the time), those movies, the really bad ones, took themselves way too seriously. Case in point: THE SCREAMING SKULL.

The plot is an old one. Widowed husband brings new wife to old home with the intention of driving her either insane or to suicide in order to gain her inheritance. The husband in this case is Eric Whitlock (played by John Hudson) who’s bringing his new wife Jenny (Peggy Webber) back to the mansion he shared with Marion before her untimely demise. Untimely in that Eric didn’t wait long enough to kill her before she revised her will and all he got was the house and the land, but where’s the money? Luckily new wife Jenny is loaded. And she’s got a history of mental illness to boot--score for Eric!

Rounding out our cast are curious onlookers Reverend and Mrs. Snow--friends of Eric and Marion, now Eric and Jenny--and Mickey the gardener, played by Alex Nichol who also directed.

Spending her nights alone in the mansion while Eric is “in town” tending to the business of their moving back into the place, Jenny is woken by a screaming late at night, which turns out to be coming from a skull she finds stashed in an armoire. Jenny tosses the skull out the window, but it finds its way back onto the porch and begins knocking loudly at the door until Jenny opens it to let it in. But when Jenny tries to explain to Eric what’s happened, he insists she’s simply having a reaction to the new home and a portrait of his deceased wife that reminds Jenny of her own dead mother.

The audience, meanwhile, is left to wonder which of the three possibilities is really at play here. It’s either Marion’s ghost come back to haunt the mansion, or it’s Mickey trying to scare away the new wife (Mickey and Marion grew up together and she was one of the only people the feeble-minded gardener could relate to). Or, it could be stone-faced dead-inside Eric. The whys of this last theory don’t come out until close to the end, so for the most part we’re led to believe Mickey the likely culprit.

The only problem . . . the only REAL problem the movie could have solved but didn’t (you can’t hold crappy effects and even worse acting against them, it was 1958) is that the movie never really makes up its mind. Yes, of course it’s really Eric trying to get his hands on Jenny’s money without the trouble of an actual wife hanging around, but the skull Jenny finds really does move on its own, and she’s clearly haunted by a real ghost while Eric is out looking for Mickey and is nowhere near the house. So THE SCREAMING SKULL actually wants to have two protagonists at once--the murdered wife, and the sociopathic husband. In the end it just leaves the audience confused.

I had originally seen this movie years ago on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000, and it’s probably one of my most-viewed episodes, so it’s almost impossible to watch the regular version of the movie and not hear the jokes in your head. But believe me, if you know the jokes, just say them out loud because you’ll need something to take your mind off how truly boring this movie is.

And now back to that part about taking themselves too seriously. In the 50s, moviemakers used to come up with some crazy ploys to get audiences in the theaters, such as William Castle’s vibrating seat device during screenings of THE TINGLER. THE SCREAMING SKULL played the same game, including a short introduction stating the climax was so frightening you might actually die, and insuring free burial to anyone who did succumb to the “shocking horror”. Well, if super-imposed skull images growing to giant proportions over the backdrop of the scene is enough to scare you literally to death . . . you’ve got bigger problems than bad taste in movies.

THE SCREAMING SKULL is a movie with simply too many strikes against it. The story is predictable, the pacing is eternal (even at only 68 minutes, it feels like a week). The editing is choppy, the sound is off balance, and the lightning changes from shot to shot. The dialogue is ridiculous, the acting even worse, and watching John Hudson writhe around while clutching a skull to his neck and pretending it’s attacking him is just embarrassing.

As much as I love crappy old horror movies, THE SCREAMING SKULL doesn’t even qualify as cheesy bad; it’s just plain bad. If you want to revel in your lack of quality, at least have something original to bring to the table. This isn’t it. And that’s why it wound up on MST3k in the first place.



other Horror Classics
Carnival of Souls: http://www.epinions.com/content_403446140548
Atom Age Vampire: http://www.epinions.com/content_403512856196
Creature from the Haunted Sea: http://www.epinions.com/content_403596349060
Nightmare Castle: http://www.epinions.com/content_404037799556
Black Dragons: http://www.epinions.com/content_404796575364
The Invisible Ghost: http://www.epinions.com/content_405221379716
One Body Too Many: http://www.epinions.com/content_405861076612
White Zombie: http://www.epinions.com/content_405939326596
Attack of the Giant Leeches: http://www.epinions.com/content_409233493636


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older