The Screaming Skull * (1958, John Hudson, Peggy Webber, Alex Nicol, Russ Conway, Tony Johnson) – Classic Movie Review 13,015

Alex Nicol debuts as director in the 1958 horror film The Screaming Skull, in which he also plays the mentally challenged gardener of a country home where a woman believes she is being haunted by the ghost of her new husband’s first wife.

In 1958, the actor Alex Nicol made his first feature as a director, the independently made American black-and-white horror film The Screaming Skull, in which he also acts as Mickey, the mentally challenged gardener of a country home where a woman believes she is being haunted by the ghost of her new husband’s first wife.

He recalled: ‘We shot the picture in six weeks and it did very well, so I was happy with that.’ American International Pictures released it in double bills with either Earth vs the Spider or Terror from the Year 5000.

Though quite bad, it is an entertaining farrago, an undigested jumble of disorganised, haphazard and nonsensical ideas and elements, but an amusing hodgepodge anyway. Somewhere here, with the mashup of Rebecca and the Bettiscombe screaming skull, with the screaming noises and the attacking skull, there is a great horror movie, but this isn’t quite it.

A 1958 cinema ad for The Screaming Skull and co-feature, Terror from the Year 5000.

Peggy Webber stars as Jenni Whitlock, a young newlywed who believes she is being haunted by the ghost of her new husband’s previous wife. John Hudson also stars as Eric, Jenni’s new husband.

Jenni and Eric arrive at the palatial country home of Eric, whose first wife Marion died when she slipped, hit her head and drowned in a pond on the estate. Eric tells his friends, the Reverend Snow and his wife, that Jenni spent time in an asylum after her parents were also drowned.

Mickey, the mentally disabled gardener. believes that Marion’s ghost wanders the estate. Jenni thinks Marion’s self-portrait resembles her mother, and when she hears screaming noises and see skulls, she concludes Marion is haunting her.

John Hudson and Peggy Webber in The Screaming Skull.

To interest Webber in starring in the film, Nicol told her that he was planning a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and brought over to her house a copy of the screenplay. So the story has similarities to Rebecca but is also is loosely based on a 1911 short horror story by Francis Marion Crawford inspired by the ancient legend of the ‘screaming skull’ on display at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset, England. The story went that the skull belonged to an African slave once owned by the owner of the house, who was refused a burial in his homeland. Any attempt to bury his skull elsewhere would cause the skull to scream. There were then strange occurrences and shrieking noises from the wooden box the skull was kept in.

It was shot at the Huntington Hartford Estate, (now Runyon Canyon Park) on a small budget with a small crew and a small number of actors paid only $1,000 each.

Shot of the attacking skull from the 1958 film The Screaming Skull.

Webber found she was pregnant while filming, so several scenes were re-written, including one where she would fall down a staircase.

It is shot by Oscar-winning Floyd Crosby. John Kneubuhl writes the screenplay and produces the film with executive producer T Frank Woods and associate producer John Coots. The score is by Ernest Gold.

It opens with a statement that a free burial would be provided to anybody who died of fright while watching the film, a gimmick similar to one already used for Macabre (1958) by William Castle who offered free life insurance to every viewer who bought a cinema ticket in case they died watching the film. Nicol did not contact an insurance company, though Castle did.

The Screaming Skull’s prologue explains that it is so frightening it may kill its viewers.

In the prologue, a narrator explains over a scene of an opening coffin that the film’s climax is so terrifying it may kill viewers, but that’s OK because if they die of fright they will receive a free burial service. Inside the coffin is a card reading :’Reserved For You’. Fun going to the movies in the Fifties, huh?

The cast are John Hudson as Eric Whitlock, Peggy Webber as Jenni Whitlock, Russ Conway as the Rev Edward Snow, Tony Johnson as Mrs Snow, and Alex Nicol as Mickey.

The Screaming Skull was released in August 1958, but it was not registered with a copyright office, and is in the public domain.

Alex Nicol (January 20, 1916 – July 29, 2001) appeared in more than 40 films, especially Westerns, notably The Man from Laramie (1955). He directed many TV shows including The Wild Wild West (1967), Tarzan (1966) starring Ron Ely, and Daniel Boone (1966). He also played often on Broadway. He played Eddie Slovak is an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1958) (Season 3 Episode 14: “The Percentage”).

Alex Nicol in The Screaming Skull.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,015

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