dfswatter

The Screaming Skull is a little dufus of a movie quickly designed to cash in on the William Castle type of gimmick Shurlock that was doing so well at the time. Believe it or not there was a time when kids of about the age of six were really creeped out by things as simple as skulls so the idea of a screaming one really sent tykes into the theater to pee in their seats when things got rolling in the last fifteen minutes.The Weakest point of the film and there are many is the fact that the skull sounds more like a peacock than anything else. A babe with a good set of pipes and a little reverb would have added much to the minimal chill factor.This film probably got made because the director could get the mansion for beans before the new tenants moved in.Despite the bashing this is receiving here it does have some fun moments sprinkled amidst the leisure and there isn't a serious collector of horror films I know that doesn't have this in his/her collection.So there.

I've seen some pretty lame horror comedies but this is one rancid hair ball. Your ten year old comes home with funnier jokes than this. So bad it makes you angry at the waste. Dean Stockwell has never looked more ill at ease or has been more miscast that he is in this miserable attempt at satire.It's so noncommittal about it's style of comedy that it takes about ten minutes into the film before you can figure out it is indeed a comedy.I know some of you may be thinking how could it not be with at title like The Were Wolf Of Washington? Well around the same time Dick Clark produced a TV special called The Werewolf Of Woodstock and it was definitely not intended to be comedy though it was so awful it induced howls of another kind.This is so bad it's just bad.Two thumbs up...the keester.

If you analyzed all of the elements and faults of this picture it would seem that there would be absolutely no reason for enjoying it but still I go back to it as late night comfort food again and again.It just has a bottom of the barrel we got no money but screw it sincerity to it that I have to admire and if you took away all the stale acting,looney dialogue and dire effects you can find a pretty good and original concept or two for a teen flick of it's time one of it's notions would crop up twenty some years or more for ALIEN.Pretty cool.If this movie had a script by Charles Griffith,Beverly Garland as one of the Femmes and had a much better critter than the left over Monster from Teen Age Cave Man than this would be more of a minor Corman classic like Not Of This Earth .Roger Corman executive produces for the company that his brother Gene briefly tried to maintain.Bernard Kowalski keeps it grim and moving faster than he did in Attack Of THe Giant Leeches. Give it a break. I bet the people slamming it even enjoyed it a little.