The Screaming Skull (1958) A Campy and (already) Derivative Haunted House Chiller

If the film’s macabre candlelit prologue is to be believed, The Screaming Skull (1958) is a motion picture so terrifying that it could pose a threat to the viewer’s life. The film’s first-time director, regular Hollywood western supporting-player Alex Nicol, was so confident of this that he proudly assured that if any movie-goer was to pop their clogs from fright during a screening of The Screaming Skull, the studio would offer to pay for their burial. You may or may not be surprised to hear that this offer was never redeemed, and Nicol wasn’t the first to pull this marketing stunt for a low-budget ‘50s chiller – for as delightfully ghoulish as the idea is, gimmick-master William Castle beat the makers of The Screaming Skull to the punch by offering life insurance to anyone who might die of fright during a screening of his premature-burial spooker Macabre (1958), and in that case he actually did go so far as to get in contact with a real insurer (the offer was, once again, never redeemed).

Eureka Entertainment have unfortunately stated that they will be unable to guarantee Nicol’s decades-old offer of a free burial to those who purchase their new Blu-Ray release of The Screaming Skull, but those wishing to test their nerves will nonetheless be in for a nice new remaster of a largely forgotten slice of cheapo haunted-house gothic courtesy of Nicholson and Arkoff’s A.I.P., a studio with a catalogue full of early indie-horror gems that Eureka have been mining over the past year, and will hopefully continue to do so (see also: my thoughts on Eureka’s new release of 1977’s Empire of the Ants). Frequently seen over the years either as part of a beloved episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or via a low-quality transfer on bargain value Region A 100-film multi-packs due to its public domain status, Eureka’s edition marks the film’s first time on Blu-Ray in the United Kingdom, if not its first official home-video release here past the days of VHS. Eureka may have brought The Screaming Skull back from the grave; could they, like many times before in the label’s history, have unearthed a buried classic? The answer is, unfortunately, a definite “no”.

Loosely based on the 1908 short story of the same name by Francis Marion Crawford, The Screaming Skull follows Jenni (Peggy Webber), a woman traumatised by witnessing the accidental drowning death of her parents when young, who moves into the stately home of her new husband, Eric Whitlock (John Hudson). Eric has some skeletons in the closet of his own – his first wife, Marion, died on the estate under mysterious circumstances; Mickey (director Alex Nicol), Eric’s learning-disabled groundskeeper, hasn’t been able to fully process the tragedy, confessing to Jenni that he hears the former Mrs. Whitlock cry out in the night. Soon, Jenni begins to experience supernatural phenomena for herself – screams in the night, unexplained knocking, and most shockingly of all, the appearance of Marion’s skull around the house. The Screaming Skull asks viewers an age-old question – is Jenni losing her mind, or does Eric’s late first wife have some unfinished business to settle?

If any of this sounds familiar, it isn’t merely down to The Screaming Skull being an early serious attempt at a haunted house picture a’ la’ The Uninvited (1944) which sets up many of the classic tropes and beats of the subgenre – to make this clearer, I also feel the need to state that the film features a creepy painting of the former Mrs. Whitlock which plays a major role alongside her suspicious drowning death, doting family servant, and creepy empty house in the middle of nowhere. The Screaming Skull cribs heavily from the plot of Hitchcock’s – and by that extent, Du Maurier’s – classic thriller Rebecca (1940), albeit with the ghostly undertones of said story made explicit here. There’s also, without giving too much away, a lot of inspiration taken from Patrick Hamilton’s play Gaslight and its 1940 and 1944 movie adaptations, all of which were over 10 (and, in the case of Rebecca, closer to 20) years old at the time The Screaming Skull was made. Whilst this isn’t inherently a bad thing, and it could be fun and endearing in itself to watch a crusty low-rent A.I.P. riff on these renowned gothic chillers, it ends up feeling more derivative than it does a fun, a slightly shonky stand-alone work in the mould of the classics.

CLICK THE IMAGE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN TO BUY THE SCREAMING SKULL, AND TO SUPPORT THE GEEK SHOW

The reason for this is quite simple – The Screaming Skull is deathly dull and bone-dry in its presentation. Perhaps it would be more effective if it leaned more into the schlock and B-movie scares that its marketing and title promised, or if it took more direct inspiration from its source material and the real-world legends of screaming skulls that inspired it (such as the one allegedly housed at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset), but as an attempt at a serious drama-thriller picture with the occasional, half-hearted appearance of the titular troublesome head, it fails to engage. Unlike its forebears such as Rebecca and Gaslight, its central mystery fails to generate intrigue or suspense, and feels like an afterthought cobbled together from aspects of previous works without a thought as to how they were supposed to function together in this new one. Even when The Screaming Skull doesn’t bore, it’s a farcically comical affair, which again isn’t inherently bad, and it is quite entertaining to watch Peggy Webber lob the skull around the house and garden with reckless abandon – which would be fine, if not for the fact that the film occasionally features moments which are unexpectedly eerie, all for them to be immediately sabotaged by some bizarre and clumsy creative decision, most obviously in the climactic chase scene which – though I don’t wish to spoil it for those who want to see the movie – contains one of the silliest runs that I’ve ever seen anybody do in a film.

This isn’t to say that The Screaming Skull is an entirely flawed work, though, because even if it wasn’t ever going to frighten anybody to death, it does carry an odd atmosphere about it which is occasionally genuinely unsettling. The Whitlock estate has an uncanny vibe to it that I can only describe as “gardener’s gothic”, with the house’s interior being strikingly bare and empty, yet its garden densely-populated with life and death alike; ghostly feet tread lily-pads from the pond into the house, peacocks shriek in the dead of night, bones are hidden among the plants in the overgrown greenhouse, and even Marion’s gravestone appears to be some kind of bizarre pyramidal garden ornament. Even beyond the film’s mood, there are interesting ideas being played with conceptually, even if not as well as they are in some of the aforementioned similar works; the opening scenes of the film contain some strangely nuanced discussions between the newly-wed Whitlocks about love and marriage after a tragic loss, and for all that The Screaming Skull should have answered its B-horror calling more, I also can’t help but feel like there is potential for a far more intelligent film hidden in its human drama. Plus, when it comes to scares, there’s a startling, hellish sound effect which plays during one scene featuring Marion’s creepy painting that I really wasn’t expecting from a film of this vintage, and it made me jump – so, for all its issues, The Screaming Skull still managed to give me a little bit of an actual fright.

For all my complaints about the film itself, Eureka’s presentation is as solid as I’ve come to expect from them over the years; the visuals are unexpectedly crisp for a cheap-as-chips A.I.P. flick from the ‘50s, and whilst the audio isn’t very good, I don’t think that’s Eureka’s fault in the slightest – having seen a handful of other American International titles from the ‘50s such as Swamp Women (1956) and Beast from Haunted Cave (1959), I’m not sure the sound recorded for some of these films was ever that great-quality in the first place. Unfortunately, when it comes to the set itself, I felt as though a lot more could have been done, particularly as this release appears to use the same transfer from the Region A Scream Factory Blu-Ray from 2017, but doesn’t contain any of the archive extras (including a making-of doc and the MST3K version). This probably wouldn’t bug me so much if the new bonus features weren’t so limited, and if the film itself wasn’t a brisk 68 minutes in length. I do wonder if, as with Eureka’s double-bill release of The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955) and The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), it would have been better to pair this with another picture for a more substantial release, as I think that would be a far easier sell than just The Screaming Skull and little else – it makes sense to do pictures like these as a drive-in style double-feature, and the movie was even screened alongside Terror from the Year 5000 (1958) upon its original release. And even if Eureka were struggling to find something thematically comparable from the A.I.P. library to pair The Screaming Skull with, this could have been a good opportunity to put out something like The Headless Ghost (1959) or Corman’s The Undead (1957). It isn’t a bad release, by any means, but I feel like a lot more could have been done with it – especially as I think the approach of selling The Screaming Skull as a lost, misunderstood classic of American gothic cinema might not land as well as Eureka would hope it to.

The new extras on this release include an introduction from Ghost Train and Chasm author Stephen Laws, who provides a little context towards the figures involved in the film’s production, though the featurette is most worth watching in order to hear his personal stories surrounding the film and his experiences growing up as a young horror fan in ‘60s Newcastle. The singular other on-disc extra, aside from a selection of trailers for the film, is the most substantial featurette included – a video essay from academic Mary Going which provides a good deal of insight into the production of The Screaming Skull, as well as its reference points in the literary gothic and the underlying feminist themes which trickle through from earlier works such as the aforementioned Rebecca and Gaslight among others. Stephen and Mary’s contributions to the release are proof that The Screaming Skull does have its enthusiasts who seek its critical and cultural reappraisal, and whilst I don’t feel the same way about it, I do appreciate that there are people out there willing to dig deep into a film which many (myself included) would dismiss as a sluggish, ineffective riff on other, better works.

ROBYN’S ARCHIVE – THE SCREAMING SKULL