American gothic… The Screaming Skull (1958), Eureka Blu-ray, Out now!

 

My memory (slips) on … to Marion Crawford and his horrid story of The Upper Birth, which (with The Screaming Skull some distance behind) is the best in his collection of Uncanny Tales and stands high among ghost stories in general.

Some Remarks on Ghost Stories, M. R. James’ essay in The Bookman (December, 1929)

I watched The Screaming Skull late at night with the lights turned off and a howling wind buffeting the house, carrying the screams of embattled birds over the roof as leaves swirled around our garden pond, the depths of which are unknown to man or dog… It was indeed a dark and stormy night and that’s always a good place to start with Alex Nicol’s unsettling adaptation of Francis Marion Crawford’s 1908 short story of the same name.

Crawford, though less well known, came before H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James and influenced both in their writing as the above quotation indicates. James, a fellow Cambridge University alumnus who would read his stories to fellow uncanny professors at Christmas, took his idea of supernatural physicality – as evinced in both the tales mentioned whilst H.P. took the idea of post-mortem remnants a step further with ideas of physical mortality transcending death and the persistence of ancestral curses. All of this is the stuff of horror films as they came to be defined and this film, an American International Picture, feels a lot like the kind of tense, lower-budget film being made over the pond by Hammer.

Newlyweds: John Hudson and Peggy Webber

Crawford died in 1909 – an untimely heart attack triggered by a lung injury some years before, but his influence grew. So it was that API who were establishing a significant horror brand looked to make a film of this simple but dramatic tale that would play on the imaginations of its characters and audiences alike with the singularly persistent physical remnant of a murdered women: her skull. 

This is a narrative which relies on the reactions of the characters and Alex Nicol’s controlled unwinding of their mental state and the audience’s awareness and fear of the reality of this haunting. There is also mundane murderous humanity at play but a sense that a balancing of the books is driving this spirit onwards. It was Alex Nicol directoral debut and he acts too as he did in  likes of The Man from Laramie, The Twilight Zone and many other staples.

Eureka Classics is now presenting his film on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK and it's a must-watch, even through fingers in front of your eyes as you hide behind the sofa.

The Screaming Skull starts, as so many films do, in the illusory safety of a large country house. Following her marriage to Eric Whitlock (John Hudson), the wealthy Jenni (Peggy Webber) moves into her husband’s secluded country mansion, inherited following the death of his first wife Marion. Upon arriving at the house, Jenni begins to feel uneasy about Marion’s fate: supposedly, she drowned after hitting her head on the edge of a decorative pond in the gardens. Jenni then learns that Mickey (Alex Nicol), the groundskeeper, believes that Marion’s ghost roams the estate – and soon Jenni herself has experienced things she can’t explain, terrified that she is in the grip of the supernatural.

Alex Nicol, acting and directing at the same time

Clearly influenced by gothic melodramas such as Rebecca and Gaslight and presaging the disquieting menace of such haunted house classics as House on Haunted Hill, The Innocents and The Haunting, The Screaming Skull is filled with hair-raising set-pieces and deserves its place in the pantheon of independent American horror cinema. But the line goes all the way back to Marion Crawford, Lovecraft and James... thei heritage wasn't writ on the page but in blood...

The transfer looks pristine and the set is haunted by some very enthralling extras… 

• Limited Edition of 2,000 copies
• Limited edition O-card slipcase and interior packaging featuring new artwork by John Dunn
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray
• Original English mono audio | Optional English subtitles (SDH)
• New introduction to The Screaming Skull by horror novelist Stephen Laws
• Shrouded in Mystery – new video essay on The Screaming Skull and the gothic horror tradition by film and literature scholar Mary Going
• Trailers

Not to be missed and only available with the Limited Edition is: a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the production and marketing of The Screaming Skull by film historian Jon Towlson, author of Subversive Horror Cinema

You can order The Screaming Skull direct from Eureka and from all good retailers but you will be haunted by regrets if you fail to get the Limited Edition.

Do it now!!

I love the begining were the film makers offer to cover the funeral costs of anyone who is dies from the film's shocks... there's confident marketing! I wonder how many they had to pay out for...?

Dare YOU watch till the end dear reader?