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Access Channel 31 Schedule
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Access Channel 15 Schedule
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Monster Island Theater presents
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The Monster Island Theater Peacock Recipes... |
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The Plot The PlotEric and Jenni Whitlock are newlyweds moving into Eric's country estate – the very place where Eric's former wife Marion died. She had seemingly tripped, smashing her skull and then fallen into a pond and drowned. Jenni's parents had also drowned years earlier. Strange things begin to happen, things like skulls appearing and disappearing. Is the mentally defective gardener - Mickey - behind the eerieness? He had been very attached to his childhood playmate Marion and still talks to her day and night. Is Jenni, who has had mental problems of her own, going insane? Film NotesProducer's WarningIn 1958, the following message preceded the theatrical showing of The Screaming Skull: The Screaming Skull is a motion picture that reaches its climax in shocking horror. Its impact is so terrifying that it may have an unforeseen effect. It may kill you! Therefore the producers feel it necessary to provide free burial services to anyone who dies of fright, while seeing the Screaming Skull!" A Grand English TraditionThere is tradition of screaming skulls in England. Skulls, somehow separated from the rest of the body, forever haunt whatever premises in which it resides. Poltergeists go wild until the skull is reunited with its bony companions. This has nothing to do with The Screaming Skull. So, Then, What?The Screaming Skull was one of scores of late 1950s films that combined ghosts, haunted houses, conniving spouses, poltergeist, Freudian psychology, sexual repression, etc into messy low budget stews. They generally explored madness, usually focussed on ordinary folks. Insanity or real supernatural interferance. The answer could be one or the other. Or in such films, as The Screaming Skull, they end up being both. At their best they could be The Haunting. At their worst, well, it's tempting to say The Screaming Skull really is the worst, but the cinematography from Floyd Crosby (David Crosby's dad) has its moments real creepy spookiness. The Screaming Skull Sees All - What You'll See in the FilmPonds, roses, a cool sports car, a skull falling down the stairs, the guy who played both Moochee's and the Hardy Boys' father, a grave stone decoration based on L'Inconnue de la Seine (a death head's mask of the unknown woman of the Seine), a skull bouncing on a lawn, Jenni getting ready for bed by candlelight, a skull biting a man's neck, people walking up and down stairs, screaming peacocks, people walking around gardens, a greenhouse, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, a skull flying out of the hedges... Floyd of HollywoodSomehow the winner of the 1931 Academy Award® for cinematograpy ended up on The Screaming Skull. Yes, Floyd D. Crosby, the the cinematographer for F.W. Muranu's masterpiece - Tabu, found himself often working on the lowest end of Hollywood quality scale. The cinematogarpher for such classics as Oklahoma and High Noon also put his lens on The Snow Creature and Beach Blanket Bingo. Somewhere in between would also be his long time relationship with director Roger Corman on his classic Edgar Allan Poe films Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, plus more. Alex Nicol - The Director and MickeyActors Studio trained Alex Nicol did some Broadway work, even playing Brick in the original produciton of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, replacing original cast member Ben Gazzara. But most of his career was spent as a supporting actor, generally on the wrong side of the law, and mostly in westerns. He did have the occassional lead in such noirish early Hammer Films such as The Black Glove and The House Across the Lake. These were part of a deal between Hammer and Alameda's Robert L. Lippert for a series of films produced in England and released in America by Lippert. He only managed to direct a handful of theatrical films, including Then There Were Three, in which he also starred, he directed a number of TV episodes, including Tarzan, Daniel Boone, and The Wild Wild West. His acting career continued until the late 1970s. Look for his best role as a sadistic mama's boy in James Stewart's The Man From Laramie. --Ed Schneider - Alameda TV Cast
Production Credits
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