The SCREAMING Skull

REVIEW DATE 2/17/99

If this movie and Queen of Outer Space are any indication, 1958 was not a good year for American movies.

About two days in length, The Screaming Skull must be so named because it caused audiences around the country to scream at the screen helplessly. "Please God! Just let it be over, please, please!

Forty years later the cries of audience members (in this case, me) are still unheeded.

In the beginning we meet Jenny, a quite stupid and stereotypical woman who is returning from an insane asylum with her husband Eric. As so as they arrive they are greeted by the local priest, his anoying wife (yes, I know how strange that sounds, apparently the script writer didn't) and the psycho, beaknick grounds keeper, Mickey.

After they "get settled" Jenny dresses in layers and layers of clothing before going to bed. . .only to be awakened in the night by an unearth scream. Wonder what is making this noise Jenny does the only logical thing the scriptwriter could think off: she gets up and walks around the house in her18 layer nigh gown, searching for the source of the sound. I really hope you like scenes of Jenny walking around in a dress so wide that it could hide a family if midgets, because that'll be all you see for the next 5 hours of the movie (the IMDb says this movie is only 70 something minuets long. . .apparently the guy who did that figure never sat down and watched it).

Any who, we soon discover the Eric's previous wife was killed in and "accident" (Eric did it). That wife just happened to be rich (Eric did it), beautiful (Eric did it!) and allot like Jenny in some ways (Eric did it!), in a lot of ways actually (Eric did it, for God's sake, and he's going to do it again! Can we just get the movie over with?).

Yes, Eric did indeed kill her and she is the one making that screaming sound in the night. The titular screaming skull is the skull of Eric's wife and emits a strange form of mind control that makes you pick it up and hold it to your neck. Eric is killed by the ghost, some other damn thing happens, and I pull this tape out of my VCR (without rewinding, thank you very much), and clean the head immediately in an attempt to wash the stink of this movie out of my VCR as fast as possible.

I know, I know, I know what your going to say. Your going to say something like "Well, this movie was made in the 50's and all I have to do is cut it some slack." To those I say, "I just can't cut this movie slack because it just plain sucks". The "performances" (I suppose that's what they are) are almost as flat as a pancake that Godzilla has steeped on. Watching this movie is like watching sap run down a tree in the middle of February at the North Pole (now that's slow). Its like walking through mud, superglue, and melted plastic with 50 pound weights tied to your boots.

And speaking of melting plastic, that's just what Jenny is. Like other actresses of this era she  seams to have had superglue injected into the muscles of her face , thus rendering her face totally immobile. I've seen snakes with more facial expressions then this woman. Eric doesn't fair much better, in a couple of scenes its almost like he's reading from a Tele prompter. Or maybe the director just wrote his dialogue on really big cue cards and held them up to him off screen.

"If this movie is so bad why in Gods name you watch it," you ask? Simple: it was on MST3K. One would think that after Earth vs. The Spider and Quest of the Delta Knights I would have given up on movies that appeared on the venerable TV show. Shows what I know I know huh?

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

NOT TO BE VIEWED WITHOUT THE AID OF A CYANIDE PILL.

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