Anyhow, on with the review of the first film of the month!
In my local area, we have a movie theater that has a regular sci-fi night that shows old, camp science fiction and horror films. You can eat pizza, drink beer, and socialize, if the mood strikes you. You also get to warm the cheesy cinema meter in your brain by getting to watch a string of bizarre clips from the internet, public library archives, and sometimes the local filmmaker community. With the ushering in of October made readily apparent in the weather, balmy with a touch of windchill, tonight's showing of a movie about a skull so terrifying that it has the potential to murder its audience seemed like a perfect kick-off to the challenge I've imposed upon myself.
As with most older films that are both black and white and have significantly less in-your-face moments from start to finish, this one delivered its "absolute terror" with grave patience, pun intended. My capacity for the pacing in older films is always maximized by environment, and having some pizza and beer with a crowd accompaniment certainly kept me excited. I could also make many observations about the steely awkwardness of the characters and their actions, which I feel always makes for a more engaging premise.
To put it simply; dude brings his new wife to his old house, where his first wife 'mysteriously' died, and unthinking, tells his new lady how much the last one loved him, and how much he loves his new wife and wants to make her feel at home. They meet the gardener (played by the director, Alex Nicol), who was like a confused brother-lover to the last wife, and is just a little "off" in the head. Silent, confused staring commences. With shots of peacocks appearing and disappearing in the yard. The tone of the film builds on this level of subdued tension, getting you really curious as to the death of the last wife, and immediately to the grounds of the property. The first wife was super into gardening, so is the gardener, and he has since kept it up in her stead, and talks to her as if she isn't really dead, like ya do, when your only friend was a lady who died in your favorite place.
The focus is simple and the film isn't bogged down by too many filler characters, nor is it aesthetically cheap looking in the face of a modest budget. There are in fact only five physical characters in the entire film, and the house on the large property is vacant of most furniture or other decoration, save for two cots, an empty wardrobe, and a creepy painting of the ex wife that's just leaning against a wall. What this does could either appear like they had no budget to work with and went scant on details, or, and in this case I believe it is the latter option, it creates the perfect, eerie atmosphere without being a cop-out. There's nothing in the house because it was all the ex wife's, and the man hadn't lived there in two years, so everything got taken down and sold. Good reason. There's only so many characters in the movie because that's all you need to carry the story, any more and it could have made the film too long and decidedly winded.
The emptiness of the house creates a cold and vacant impression that leaves one guessing to the mysteries surrounding the dead wife. The large, extremely well kept garden shows the devotion the gardener had, and gives the feel that the entire property itself is one huge memorial to the woman, basically making the whole place a single-plot grave. There is a gravestone in the garden for her as well. A creepy pyramid obelisk with the woman's face carved right into the stone, floating outward just a bit, like she's two steps away from escaping the Underworld to return to the living. It was weird.
So what does any of this have to do with a "screaming skull"? If you haven't guessed it already, the skull that is "terrorizing those that dare to love" is the skull of the dead wife. She wishes to send a message of the truth of her death to the living, in the most obtuse and cryptic bullshit way that ghosts always seem to have a bad habit of doing in movies. Nothing can ever be straightforward with ghosts, it always has to end in screams of terror and blood-curdling confusion. Yes, that's what I said. Because ghosts will befuddle the living daylights out of you with their abstract actions of rattling your windows and rolling their body parts down the stairs like they still own the joint. And somehow that's supposed to tell you that they were wronged and need your help to make things right.
All that aside, the movie is decent, kinda slow, but builds its creepy tension appropriately well, and with very good light and shadow usage. In fact, the film's cinematographer was Floyd Crosby, who won an Oscar for his work on the F.W. Murnau film Tabu. To be perfectly candid, the real hook to this film, as with most horror films of its era in the 50's and early 60's, was it's fantastic, over the top trailer. Nothing says, "I'm Sold!" like a film that threatens your untimely death by fright, and free burial services to go hand in hand with that popcorn you paid for, all explained by a narrator, who's voice holds about as much enthusiasm as Orson Welles in a cramped waiting room.
To be an unabashed copycat to my friend, who has been rating his October features with skulls, I'll change it up a bit and do mine in honor of the holiday month, and use Jack o'lanterns.
I give the Screaming Skull two and a half Jacks.
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