The Screaming Skull/Fun Facts

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< The Screaming Skull

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  • Released as the top half of a double feature with Terror from the Year 5000 (1958).
  • Though it is never credited, the film is based on Francis Marion Crawford's classic horror story of the same title, first published around 1906. Interestingly, Crawford's inspiration for the tale, in turn, came from the folklore surrounding the so-called "screaming skull" that was kept on display at Bettiscomb Manor in Dorset, England. The actual skull that inspired both the story and the movie is said to be that of a black slave whose request for burial in his native country was denied following his death and was subsequently followed by strange occurrences and unexplainable shrieking noises that emanated from the wooden box in which the skull was kept.
  • The death-mask on Marian's tombstone is a reproduction of the famous "l'Inconnue de la Seine", reputed to be the face of a young French suicide who, like the deceased wife in the film, died in the water.
  • The newlyweds' car is a rare mid-50's gull-wing Mercedes.
  • The score this film features some of the earlier work of celebrated composer Ernest Gold, who would later go on to win an Academy Award for the soundtrack to Exodus (1960).
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