Wide World of Mystery: The Screaming Skull

Vincent Gardenia, last seen being fed to Audrey 2 in the camp cult musical classic remake of Little Shop of Horrors (1960), oddly titled Little Shop of Horrors (1986), starring Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, Ellen Greene, John Candy, Bill Murray... and, well, you get it (but this is not the film I’m writing about). In 1973, Gardenia played Ollie in a little Dark Shadows-esque mini-thriller adapted from an old ghost story by F. Marion Crawford (the story had been adapted in 1958’s The Screaming Skull, which I reviewed long, long ago). The title has been used numerous times. Numerous. It’s a no-brainer.

Vince has sadly shuffled off this mortal coil, but, as far as we know, he hasn’t come back as a "Screaming Skull." Here, however, he plays a guy with the ultimately cool-as-ice name of Ollie, whose brother Luke (David McCallum) is married to Helen (Carrie Nye), a serious beeyotch who torments him daily—nightly, day and night (am I getting through here?) for letting their kid Alden (who we never meet in the show) die. You see, Luke is a researcher researching death, or skulls, or something. He should have been able to save little Alden. But he just couldn’t.

Helen, a rich old lady, quickly decides that it’s out the door with her skull-collecting husband, implying that Lucas married her for her money. She wastes no time and, taking a cue from ‘Ol Ollie/Vince, drops a little poison in her ear one night. And I bet, I just effin’ betcha he regretted it ever afterward. Well, the show seems to suggest he did.

Because Luke begins to be haunted by visions of... a Screaming Skull.

The Skull itself almost brings to mind that Stephen King story about "Chattery Teeth." It comes through a doorway and pops its mouth open in a manner most fetchingly fetch-like. Luke begins to hear it screaming in his head—but we don’t hear it screaming on the soundtrack. We do, however, hear a lot of what sounds like early experimental soundtrack music noodling. And it’s not half-bad.

Conveniently, Mrs. Helen can be buried in the family vault, which seems to be really close to the house. It’s all rather dream-like, surreal, symbolic: the "dead part of the house" (to borrow the title of an old "One Step Beyond" episode), a place where, like Madeline Usher, the feminine repository of all of Luke’s guilt and shame resides—bereft of life, cold in death, and food, unquestionably, for the worms. But like Madeline Usher, sin and guilt never die. They take on the brainless, gaping-mad maw of the disembodied revenant SKULL. And that skull chases poor Luke around the vast, empty house of pain, making his doom seem as certain as a lowering curtain of black. But symbolism, symbolism (hey, we have to fill the word count somehow, right?); symbolism is of paramount importance here.

Vast, empty house. Poison dropped in the ear (a miscommunication, or message), and the skull—the outer covering now an empty repository for the brain, the consciousness. It becomes the thing from beyond most feared—a machinery or enginery of vengeance lurking, like a bullet with Luke’s name on it, in the dark, shadowed spaces where his guilt and fear mix with his sense of doom.

Or maybe it’s simply a fetching yarn about a creepy guy who collected such imagery of death. Luke, the researcher, has a whole shelf of skulls, which causes Ollie to be taken aback when he first enters. It also makes the viewer ask themselves, "Self, wasn’t Ollie aware that his brother Luke—who sounds nothing like him and doesn’t seem as if he could actually BE his brother—had bats in his belfry?" I digress, though.

We enter the tomb twice here, once for the twist ending meant to shock. It does.

Vincent Gardenia, an old steady actor of commendable stripe, is a surprising pleasure to watch. All the performers, direction, special effects, wardrobe, sound, and even set decoration serve functionally to make this an unpleasant trip down memory lane. Now, someone feed me to a giant, singing, man-eating plant, as I’m all used up for the night.

Addendum: The Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe

It has come to our attention that gothic Victorian horror maven F. Marion Crawford was, quite likely, inspired to pen his story "The Screaming Skull" (published in Collier’s in 1908) because he first heard it told as a legend of a "Screaming Skull" from Bettiscombe Castle (or manor, or just a really, really big house, or some such place).

The legend goes like this: A group of intrepid ghost investigators travel to an old house in Dorset, England (birthplace of Thomas Hardy and Frederick Treves), where there is the preserved skull of an African slave. The slave was brought back by his master and died unexpectedly. He vowed he would not rest until his remains were returned and buried in his native soil. Alas, the skull is still there.

Is it still screaming? Who can say? It's not, according to that unimpeachable source, Wikipedia. But surely you don't believe that, do you?

WIDE WORLD OF MYSTERY -- The Screaming Skull ( First Season )

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