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 912 - THE SCREAMING SKULL with short: ROBOT RUMPUS
Genre:
Low-budget Psychological Horror (S: 1956, Color;
F: 1958, B&W) Don’s
Short Summary:
This experiment begins with a Gumby short in which the green stick of clay and his horse Pokey get, by some means, a bunch of robots to do their yard work.
Gumby’s mom is okay with it until the robot go haywire and start to destroy everything.
Gumby and his dad Gumbo then have to stop all of the robots by any means necessary. Don’s
Synopsis: The feature is a low-budget horror film that seems like it was trying to
emulate Hitchcock’s classic film Rebecca… but this movie falls
way short of that goal.
The plot is about the new bride of a man who lost his first wife in a freak accident.
The bride then begins to see a skull everywhere and is haunted by the sounds of peacocks.
The house’s groundskeeper named Mickey is a strange guy who apparently is
Torgo’s first cousin and – oh, yeah – the new bride is worth a lot of money.
It takes about ten seconds to figure out what’s going on in this movie but, unfortunately,
there’s still over an hour left to watch at that point.
Eventually it arrives at the laughably cheesy ending as the skull gets
its revenge.
Host Segments:
- Prologue: Servo has metamorphosed into a butterfly
- Segment One: Servo is back to normal; Pearl & the Guys are dressed in penguin costumes, so M&tBs have to improvise their own costumes (but
it’s all an elaborate joke)
- Segment Two: The ’Bots unleash their anger at the anti-robot Gumby short
- Segment Three: Tom pretends to be dead so he can get a free coffin,
as the movie’s prologue promised
- Segment Four: Crow is made up to look like a skull to scare Mike, but it works too well
- Segment Five (End): Coffins Etc. arrives to deliver
Servo’s order;
Bobo is in a monkey costume trying to fool M&tBs
Stinger: Husband throws table at skull
Don’s
Review: What an awful and ridiculous horror movie!
And probably the most ridiculous part of this movie is the warning
prologue stating that the producers will pay for the funeral of anyone who dies of fright from watching this movie.
About the only way anyone could die by watching this movie is if they laugh themselves to
death! This dated feature is so bad, in fact, that it was allowed to slip into the Public Domain because no one cared enough to spend the money to preserve its copyright. (This is also why the print is washed-out and scratchy looking
– no one bothered to preserve the original
film stock). The riffing by M&tBs, though, is rather weak and some of the worst of the show ever, in my opinion.
As for the host segments, the best are the ones about Servo ordering a coffin, but the rest
aren’t
that memorable.
So although the Gumby short and the riffing on it are very enjoyable, the movie itself turned out to be a very poor choice for the show given how it yielded such a sub-par episode (especially when the short is factored out). Don’s
Rating: 
[ S: 
F: 
]
Forrest’s
Short Summary: This short is the highlight of this episode.
It is about Gumby hiring a bunch robots to do his house work.
Since Gumby is such a good boy, his mother gives him crackers (WOW!).
Soon the robots go on a homicidal rampage, but all ends well when a fire man kills them all, and hangs the head of a robot above the garage.
This offends Crow and Servo more than anything else seen on the show. Forrest’s
Synopsis: A married couple goes to a
vacation house (I think), where the wife learns that her husband murdered his last wife (I think), soon a skull attacks the husband....and there's a priest involved too (I think).
Oh well, it was all worth it for Mickey! M-I-C-K-E-Y T-H-E M-U-R-D-E-R-E-R!
This Mickey was good, but nothing like the Mickey in Prince of
Space. Forrest’s
Review: Sorry for the lack of substance in my synopsis, but I can't remember a single thing about this episode.
The movie was just very forgettable. It seems to be one of those movies that's more concerned with atmosphere and feeling than plot, but since this movie fails to make any kind of haunted atmosphere or feeling, the lack of plot makes things even more confusing and more uninteresting.
The riffing on this, however, was entertaining enough. They at least made the film watchable.
The host segments, while forgettable for the most part, features a
humorous Gumby related skit, where the 'Bots try to get rid of their hate for the short featured, and another amusing skit features Mike beating in Crow's head, thinking he's a screaming skull.
The skit was amusing, but a bit overlong, and Mike's screams were a bit annoying.
Servo scamming a coffin was funny, but nothing to praise. The riffing here seems to just be for fun, totally random, and often very slapstick.
Nothing very clever, plenty of good laughs, but a forgettable movie, with not enough substance to riff on, keeps this episode from reaching a "great" status.
Nor a "very good" status for that matter. But I felt it was a "good" episode that deserves another look from Don.
[I did give another look, still not a very good one, IMO. -don] Forrest’s
Rating: 
[ S:
F:  ]
Related Links:
(1) Attack of the 50 Foot DVD! (Double-Feature DVD Disc Review)
(2) DVD Cult (Double-Feature DVD Disc Review)
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