The Screaming Skull - 1958 film review

The Screaming Skull begins with a chilling warning coupled with an offer of a freebie. The story, we are told, is so terrifying that we may die of fright. But if watching the film kills us, the makers are willing to bury us free of charge. Very good of them. I did feel, however, that the terror induced by this macabre opening was rather undercut by the preamble on the TV channel when we were told that the film was rated "Parental Guidance". Maybe not quite so frightening in the 21st century, then...

The premise is rather like that of a minor Rebecca. A charming husband brings his nervy young second wife to the grand country home where his first wife met an unfortunate end. However, it has to be said that the screenplay writer, John Kneubuhl, was not Daphne du Maurier, while the actor playing the husband, John Hudson, was not in the Olivier class. I did, however, think that Peggy Webber, playing the wife, did a good job, and I was interested to learn that she became a leading radio actress and is still alive today, aged 94.

It soon becomes clear that creepy things are happening at the house. There's a mysterious gardener with an obsessive devotion to the deceased first wife, and a neighbouring vicar - who turns out to be an improbably cast Russ Conway, the British pianist who had two number one hits in the charts. The soundtrack, by the way, is the work of Ernest Gold (father of the gifted singer-songwriter Andrew Gold) who also wrote the music for Exodus.

A long time ago I toyed with the idea of writing a story called The Screaming Skull after reading about some legends concerning skulls. In the end, I decided against it, although I wasn't aware of this film at the time. Horror is a tricky genre. M.R. James' stories still exert a particular magic, but Kneubuhl, whatever his other gifts, was no M.R. James. I foresaw the main plot twist, and found the story distinctly unterrifying. And even the offer of free burial wasn't original to this film....

The Tractate Middoth - BBC Two review, and Mark Gatiss on M.R. James

Well, then, what did Santa bring you? I am now the happy owner of Darryl Jones' edition of M.R. James' Collected Ghost Stories, and this acquisition coincided with a Christmas Day James-fest on BBC Two. Mark Gatiss wrote and directed an adaptation of The Tractate Middoth, and then presented an excellent documentary about James' life and work.

The Tractate Middoth is not one of James' most famous tales, even though it combines an atmospheric library setting with a malevolent testator of the kind often found in Golden Age detective fiction. I've always had a soft spot for fiction dealing with mysterious wills - so much so that I'm not sure why I haven't written more myself. As for.James' story, it has to be said, suffers from a central flaw - reliance on a huge coincidence. One question in my mind was how Gatiss would address this.

His approach was not to tinker with that part of the plot, although he did jazz things up by changing the period in which the story was set - an initial scene in the 30s preceded the events of the main story taking place in the 50s. Viewers were distracted from the coincidence by the inclusion of small but engaging parts for several well-known and likeable actors - Eleanor Bron, Roy Barraclough and Una Stubbs. David Ryall played the wonderfully named Rant, while John Castle was as intense and sinister as ever as one of Rant's hopeful heirs. Gatiss's method worked pretty well, though a more daring attempt to explain more plausibly how the young librarian happened to come across the one other person desperately seeking a book to be found in his library would have been welcome. The Tractate Middoth does not rank as an absolute masterpiece, either as prose or as television but nevertheless supplies good light entertainment in both media.

I really enjoyed Gatiss's study of James, whose sheltered life in Eton and Cambridge was one of comfort and privilege. Like so many other Victorian writers, though (Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, and Stevenson are obvious examples) he was prey to dark imaginings, and although he was far from prolific, he produced ghost stories once or twice a year from the late nineteenth century until not long before his death in the 30s. Gatiss even discovered a charming old man who had known James at the end of his life, and liked and admired him. A fascinating man and writer, and having read his stories from time to time in anthologies for many years, I look forward to reading his collected works.

Ghost stories - a guest blog by AK Benedict

This is the right time of year for ghost stories, a genre I've always enjoyed. Last year saw the publication of my first ghost story, "No Flowers", and I'm tempted to write another before long. I'm also very much looking forward to seeing a new M.R. James adaptation and documentary, to be screened on the BBC on Christmas.Day.  Reviews will be forthcoming! Whilst in the mood for ghosts, I invited AK Benedict, who is not only a fan of the genre but an expert in it, to contribute a post to this blog. Alexandra is one of the most interesting and evocative new writers to have emerged in the last year or two, and her characteristically witty and thoughtful response delighted me. Here it is.

‘Tell me winter's tales,


And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night’

Marlowe

It is December 21^st, the winter solstice, and I am gathering ghost stories like logs in a forest that will blaze in the telling and see me through the longest night.

Ghost stories don’t sit well with summer: shadows are skimpy, days are long and spectres are rarely seen licking a Mr Whippy but now, in deepest December, when the wind slaps leaves on windows like parking tickets and the sun packs up early and slopes off to the pub, they are perfect.

The dark brings fear and uncertainty – we don’t know what lurks in the shadow in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs. Ghost stories let fear out of the cupboard and allow it to run around the house before locking it back in again, worn out for now. Much like the crime novel, the spooky story acknowledges and exorcises darkness, if only until the fire dies out.

I’ve loved reading ghost stories in winter since I was a child, from Dickens’ ‘The Signalman’ to Lefcadio Hearn’s retelling of the Japanese supernatural tale ‘The Boy who Drew Cats’. The latter’s haunting advice: “at night, when in large spaces, keep to small” once had me sleeping on the floor of my wardrobe for all of Christmas week.

Reading stories of spirits at this time of year is a tradition that goes back to the winter’s tale spoken of by Marlowe and Prince Mamillius in Shakespeare’s own A Winter’s Tale who states that ‘a sad tale’s best for winter: I have one/ of sprites and goblins’. In 1820 Washington Irving wrote of ‘strange accounts of popular superstitions and legends’ told by the fireside on Christmas day; Dickens popularised the ghost story as a yuletide activity in The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol, ‘The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain and other stories and Henry James brilliant ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is presented as a ghost story told at Christmas by the narrator.

Montague Rhodes James, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, read his ghost stories to his friends in the Chitchat Society on Christmas Eve. His stories begin in casual, conversational style with dry humour and a clear sense of place; his protagonists are men (always men!) of reason, curiosity and scholarship who, like in LeFanu and Lovecraft, end up knowing less about the world than when they started. Rationality is powerless when up against ‘a horrible, intensely horrible face of crumpled linen’ (‘O Whistle and I’ll Come to you, my Lad’) or ‘pale, dusty skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs longer than ever grew on a human hand’ (‘Canon Alberic’s scrapbook’). M R James was the reason I applied to King’s College and it was only when I got in, and sat in the dining hall beneath the stern gaze of his portrait, that I found out that he had obstructed degrees for women. Sometimes, what you most fear comes to pass, and no ghost story will stop them.

I will be inside on Christmas Eve, wine mulling, chestnuts burning, candles shivering, and reading from my pile of M R James, Sheridan La Fanu, E F Benson, Ambrose Pierce, E Nesbit, May Sinclair, Charles Dickens and Henry James. I will probably eat my body weight in mince pies at the same time, knowing that the sun will come back from the bar soon with a packet of nuts and a tale to tell. Meanwhile, sitting in a shadow-licked room, reading ghosts stories out loud, is a way of knowing that I’m not dead. Yet."