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The Screaming Skull/Werewolf Vs Vampire
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| Part No: | B00005A07V |
| Manufacturer: | Madacy Records |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 3.0 / 5.0 |
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| Good Haunted House Movie - The Screaming Skull !!!! | 2008-12-20 | 4 / 5 |
| Ok, so its not the greatest or most sophisticated movie in the world. But for a low budget, fifties,black and white B movie its pretty good. In fact I would call it a first rate haunted house flick. The subtlety of the sets, sounds and atmosphere done without glitzey sound affects makes the movie all the more spookey. Less can be more.
The gimick with the reserved-for-you coffin, and the scarey ending are terific movie.
Highly reccomended |
| Heads Will Roll | 2006-06-28 | 1 / 5 |
| As the film begins a narrator warns us THE SCREAMING SKULL is so terrifying you might die of fright--and if such happens a free burial is guaranteed. Well, I don't think any one has died of fright from seeing this film, but a few may have died of boredom. THE SCREAMING SKULL is the sort of movie that makes Ed Wood look good.
Very loosely based on the famous Francis Marion Crawford story, SKULL is about a wealthy but nervous wife who marries a sinister man whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. Once installed in his home, she is tormented by a half-wit gardner, a badly executed portrait, peacocks, and ultimately a skull that rolls around the room and causes her to scream a lot. And to her credit, actress Peggy Webber screams rather well.
Unfortunately, her ability to do so is the high point of the film. The plot is pretty transparent, to say the least, and while the cast is actually okay, the script is dreadful and the movie so uninspired you'll be ready to run screaming yourself. True, the thing only runs about sixty-eight minutes, but it all feels a lot longer. Add to this a truly terrible print quality and there you are.
There are films that are so bad they are fun to watch. It is true that THE SCREAMING SKULL has a few howlers--but the film drags so much I couldn't work up more than an occasional giggle, and by the time the whole thing is over your head will roll from ennui. If it weren't for Peggy Webber's way with a scream, this would be the surefire cure for insomina. Give it a miss.
GFT, Reviewer |
| Not the worst ever, but a runner up | 2006-01-17 | 2 / 5 |
| | I couldn't resist. Alpha Video sells a T-shirt with the cover art on the front. Turns out that's just about the best part. Newlyweds return home to the creepy empty mansion driving a gull-wing mercedes (one of the highpoints of this movie). Very subtle foreshadowing on his lack of funds. Creepy pastor and his wife show up and fawn all over the new wife. Dead first wife in the pond. Creepy portrait, creepy gardener...the wife is bingo from her parent's accident and she reads Henry James to put herself to sleep. She gonna die!! Effective scary point in the middle, laughable "Bride of the Monster" quality special effect of the skull attacking the husband...in the pond even! Only 68 minutes long so it will serve as a great Halloween movie for my attention-span impared children. Other than that...buy the T-shirt and SAY that you saw the movie. |
| At least it was not the Werewolf vs. the Screaming Skull... | 2005-04-19 | 3 / 5 |
| The saying better late than never does not really apply to this Killer Creature Double Feature. Our first feature, "The Screaming Skull," comes with a guarantee that if the movie has the unintended consequence of scaring you to death, you get a free burial. That promise is a lot more interesting than the movie itself. The music they play while the fake drive-screen announces the featured presentation was more interesting than this 1958 horror flick which was actor Alex Nicol's first directing credit (he plays Mickey). Of course this film was given the "MST3K" treatment during Season 9, but the Don, Servo and the gang are not around to help you make it through this boring little horror film.
Eric Whitlock (John Hudson) and his wife Jenni (Peggy Webber) move into a house where something not very nice happened once upon a time, namely Eric's first wife Marian died. Creepy Mickey the gardener is hanging around and when creepy things start happening involving a skull the Whitlocks think Mickey is responsible. The problem is that (a) not of the creepy things are scary and (b) Mickey does not have enough brains left to be doing anything to anybody. But Jenni has a "nervous condition," which allows her to be creeped out quite easily, especially when the local reverend decides that describing Marian's gruesome death is appropriate dinner conversation. Meanwhile, Mickey is clearly more upset over Marian's death than Eric, so we are suspicious, but since Webber's performance as Jenni is so inept we do not care.
This movie is 68-minutes long and I am here to tell you that Nicol's had to really drag it out to make it that long, which is not a good move. The appearance of the skull itself does not help matters and the "special effects" are too stupid to even get credit for being hokey. There was some notion of psychology being involved here as a fourth-rate takeoff of "Rebecca," but I think that gets thrown away at the end simply so Nicol can think he has surprised his audience with the finale. The only thing we are surprised about is that we sat through this whole film.
"The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman" ("La Noche de Walpurgis") has to be the better film by default, so at least things are looking up heading into the second feature. This 1971 film is in color and has a lot more going for it than a skull. Usually you expect a corpse to rise up as a vampire, but in this case you would be wrong (the same thing if you think the werewolf will bark like a dog rather than growl like a cat). This Spanish/West German film stars Paul Naschy (a.k.a. Jacinto Molina) as Waldemar Daninsky, who is the werewolf. Then we have the young women, Genevieve (Barbara Capell) and Elvira (Gaby Fuchs), who show up to be the damsels in distress. Elvira is a student who feels it is necessary to defile the tomb of a Hungarian Countess ostensibly for her course work but really so she can end up dripping blood on the corpse so it can come back to life. Next thing we know, the Countess Wandessa d'Arville de Nadasdy (Patty Shepard ) is up and about and women are biting each other on the neck. Periodically Waldemar turns hairy and runs around in the woods. It seems like these two plotlines should have more to do with each other given the title, but neither character is in a hurry to get to that point as ancient evil and a lengthy curse take a back step to a trip to the local market. When we get to the climax and the fight between the title creatures, I swear it happens because they ran out of anything else for the characters to do.
The day for night shooting is pretty dark and you can never really see what is going on until we get a close-up of the blood on the corpses. No wonder the Vampire Woman runs around in the sunlight. The director likes to cut back and forth between shots really quickly when something is about to happen. The music in this film becomes almost oppressive it is so unrelenting as it tries to provide more atmosphere than the actors and scenes have created. At lest there is something reassuring about gold old fashion time lapse dissolves for werewolves to turn hairy (and visa versa) and vampires to become skeletons. It is just that the big fight at the end seems so anticlimactic, especially for "the most sensational fight to the finish ever filmed," and even the pathos of freeing a loved one from a curse seems so mundane. The final credits are the best part of the film, not because it is all over, but because it is actually the most atmospheric part of the whole thing (really).
As is usually the case with these Killer Creature Double Feature DVDs there are trailers for both of the main features, both of which are better than the films themselves, with the trailer for Hammer's "The Brides of Dracula" starting off the evening's festivities. Intermission is a Max Fleischer Betty Boop cartoon, "Morning, Noon, and Night" recorded by Rubinoff and his Orchestra for what that is worth. Basically cats are going after baby chicks and a determined Betty comes to the rescue, although dancing is involved first and a rooster and other fowl of the air do most of the work. How day turns to night here was pretty cute. However, unlike the DVDs from Something Weird there the extras here are too skimpy to make up for the shortcomings of the films.
The math for this week has "Screaming Skull" coming in at 2 stars and "The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman" earns 3 stars, so we divide in half and round up because the second flick does cover all of the bases for good old European horror film from that period. Next week we try again, not only to have a double feature to watch on Saturday night instead of Monday but also to find some better bad movies as we screen "Naked Evil" and "Exorcism at Midnight" as we try biker gangs and voodoo mixed up together in England. |
| Not much to miss here... | 2005-04-06 | 2 / 5 |
| I'm usually a big 50's sci fi buff so how could I resist such a great title and cover art, right?
It was a decent story and well done but there really wasn't much to it. Nothing really creative as far as scares or special effects - just the same plastic skull rolling around on the floor over and over. It probably would have played better as a 1/2 hour episode of Night Gallery. For reference purposes on 50's horror, I prefer House on Haunted Hill or Tingler to this film. Screaming Skull is not bad, just uneventful with a lack of real scares or creativity.
One thing to note on the Good Times version - it has a decent transfer, the sound has a hiss and crackle and there is a GoodTimes 'GT' logo that stays in the bottom corner of the screen the entire picture. I guess GoodTimes will always be lame.
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