Entertainment
 

The Screaming Skull

From MST3K

912 - The Screaming Skull
Air Date August 29, 1998
Movie Director Alex Nicol
Year 1958
Cast John Hudson, Peggy Webber, Russ Conway, Alex Nicol
Preceded by 911 - Devil Fish
Followed by 913 - Quest of the Delta Knights

Contents

The Short: Robot Rumpus

Gumby

Synopsis

A cautionary tale of our over reliance on technology. Gumby uses toy robots to do his chores. Initially Mrs. Gumby is thrilled by her son's ingenuity. ("This way we don't have to hire illegal immigrants!"-Mike). But unfortunately for our plasticine hero, things go awry ("Gumby was nude!"-Tom) and the malfunctioning robots wreak havoc throughout the house and yard. ("Well, if you use those older Philips analog chips with your robots, you're going to get this kind of thing."-Tom) They spray-paint graffiti on the house ("Clay figures go home!"-Crow) and begin to tear down the Gumby's garage. ("Habitat against humanity."-Crow).

Mrs. Gumby panics and calls her husband at the fire department, who races home in a fire truck ("I'll just take the company car."-Mike) and tries to stop the malignant mechanical men. However, he is quickly overwhelmed by the machines and dumped in the trash. Gumby manages to rescue his father but another robot breaks through the wall with a lawnmower ("I'd better mow the shag carpeting."-Tom) and frightens Mrs. Gumby. Gumbo tries to stop a rogue robot who's digging up the flowerbed, but is thrown onto a nearby roof and takes the impact in the groin. ("Thank God for the internal genitalia!"-Crow). Gumby gets him down but not even a wrench can stop the robot! (Gumbo gets it thrown through him.) Gumby hijacks a crane ("Where did Gumby get a class-F license?"-Crow) and destroys the last robot. Gumby's parents force him to do all the chores by himself.

Information

Believe it or not, this was the first Gumby short ever aired. [1]

The Movie

Synopsis

Eric (John Whitlock) and Jenni (Peggy Webber, the sand-phobic wife from MST's "The Space Children") are newlyweds. Eric is a joyless widower, jobless and without a vocation, but he does have a Mercedes as well as a mansion that is set on huge landscaped grounds. The mansion is from his first marriage. Jenni is a mentally fragile heiress who has spent time in a sanitarium due to a traumatic incident in her past involving the drowning of her parents. She blames herself for not being able to save them and also for hating her mother and wishing her dead.

Eric and Jenni return, from their honeymoon, presumably, and meet two of the denizens from the area, an unlikely minister (MST veteran Russ Conway as Reverend Snow) and his Romulan wife. Also, there is "Mickey" (director Alex Nicol), a limping, filthy, unshaven, nonverbal grounds keeper who can't make eye contact, and whom, it is said, was extremely close to Eric's dead wife, Marion, having grown up with her.

Rev Snow and wife do their limp best to act as welcoming committee. The Reverend, who begins every sentence with the word "why", confides to Jenni the story of wife Marion's mysterious violent death. "She slipped on a leaf in the rain and hit her head on a wall and the base of her skull was bashed in and she fell in a pool and drowned", he says. Plausible, to be sure, and also a great Benny Hill sketch.

Eric goes to town on an errand while Jenni does her best to befriend the dissociative Mickey. He is painfully weird, but hey, the grounds are so beautiful and you know how hard it is to get a good gardener, so he stays on. Meanwhile, Mickey talks to the painting of Marion in the lobby of the house. "Send them away!", he begs her/it.

While alone in the house, Jenni hears strange noises - knocking, distant shrieking, doors banging in the wind. A cabinet opens by itself. She finds a lily pad from the pond where Marion drowned on the floor of the house. The audience sees the image of a disembodied skull floating before the portrait of Marion. Eric blames the presence of the lily pad on Mickey, who enters their house unannounced at night, Eric says - and promises to "speak to him".

Mickey and Jenni pick flowers and place them at Marion's creepy shrine on the estate grounds. Marion appears to have been about eighty years old, by the way. The barely understandable Mickey tells Jenni that Marion "cries at night".

One evening, Jenni hears loud knocking on the front door. When she opens it, there is a skull sitting on the doorstep which rolls of its own accord into the house. Mickey observes from outside. When Jenni tells Eric of the skull incident, Eric pretends to confront Mickey as though he suspects the latter is responsible.

As part of Eric's non-conformist ideas of how to promote mental health, he gets the idea to burn the portrait of Marion from upstairs because it reminds Jenny of her mother. They do so, but the painting shrieks while burning. Jenni and Eric bury the painting ashes on the lawn in Eric's idea of a cathartic ceremony, but that unearths yet another skull. Jenni swoons while Eric pretends to see nothing. Eric, leaving Jenni supine and alone on the lawn, takes the skull and hides it in the garden pond, secretly observed by Mickey. Jenni prepares to return to the sanitarium.

Reverend Snow becomes suspicious of Eric after hearing of the whole ashes and skull ceremony. He tells Jenni he is sending some men to search the estate for the skull and she relays the information to Eric. Eric races to retrieve it from the pond, but it's not there. He confronts Mickey, who tells him "Marion" took the skull.

Jenni, on her way back to the sanitarium, takes a last walk on the grounds to bid goodbye to Mickey and sees a strange figure in the distance - someone in a white dress and veiled hat. It must be the dead Marion! Jenni screams and begins to flee with "Marion" in hot pursuit, shrieking. Meanwhile, Eric prepares a noose to fake Jenny's suicide. Jenny runs into the house screaming hysterically and Eric proceeds to throttle her into unconsciousness.

Suddenly, there is a loud knock at the door. An intruder has arrived. Who... or what... could it be?

Will Eric get away with murder yet again, or will his treachery be revealed? Will Marion attain vengeance? Will Mickey ever change his clothes?

Information

Released as the top half of a double feature with Terror from the Year 5000 (1958).[1]

The Episode

Host Segments

Prologue: Tom reveals that he has become a beautiful butterfly.

Segment One: Although he doesn't look like it anymore, Tom is still a beautiful buttery. Meanwhile, Pearl, Brain Guy, and Bobo pull a not-so-fast one on the crew, wasting time and money in the progress.

Segment Two: Crow and Tom create their own little cartoon based on the Gumby short, only to breakdown from the pain caused by it.

Segment Three: The Bots try to scam their way into getting a free coffin.

Segment Four: Crow disguises himself as a screaming skull to scare Mike. The plan works, but it results in Crow getting hit repeatedly with a baseball bat and golf club.

Closing (Segment Five): Tom's coffin arrives and reveals that to pay for shipping, he maxed-out Mikes credit card. Later, Bobo tries to pull the same trick on Mike and the Bots from before, resulting in him getting shrunk by Brain Guy.

Stinger: Eric flings a stool at the skeleton.

Obscure References

Robot Rumpus

  • "No! Don't! That's Wallace and Gromit's lawn!"

Wallace and Gromit is a stop-motion television series by Nick Park that features the adventures of a bumbling inventor and his dog.

  • Habitat AGAINST Humanity.

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit Christian organization that builds houses for families in need around the world.

  • Sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older...

These are the first two lines of the chorus of the 1946 folk song, Sixteen Tons, which is about the drudgery and poverty of coal mining.

  • Hey, you use one of those older Philips analog chips in your robot, you're going to get this.

This refers to an attempt by Philips in 1992 to create the Digital Compact Cassette, a cassette recorder/player that was compatible with analog cassettes and that could compete with MiniDiscs and DATs. It never caught on, and was discontinued in 1996.

  • I'm going to set you on Don Knotts strength!

Don Knotts (1924-2006) was an American comedic actor. His most famous roles--deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, the titular character in the movie The Incredible Mister Limpet (about a bashful and nerdy bookkeeper who turns into a fish and helps defeat the Nazis) and landlord Ralph Furley on Three's Company--played up his thinness and lack of physical prowess for humorous effect.

  • "Davey and Goliath are moving in next door. There goes the neighbourhood."

Davey and Goliath was a Christian television show by Art Clokey (also the creator of Gumby) that featured the adventures of a claymation boy and his talking dog who gave moral advice.

  • "Now I'm ready for years of powerful Adlerian therapy, Mike!"

A reference to types of psychotherapy based on the theories of Alfred Adler.

  • This is worse than Seven!

Seven (also called Se7en) was a 1995 thriller about two detectives' pursuit of a serial killer, who is killing people in ways that make them embody the deadly sins the killer feels they are guilty of. The deaths of the victims are graphically depicted and extremely gruesome.


The Screaming Skull

  • Thank you and good night.

Thank You and Good Night (1991) was a documentary on the elderly, aging and death.

  • Looks like a dead person won the Kentucky Derby.

The Kentucky Derby is an annual American race for three-year-old thoroughbred horses that, since 1875, has been held on the first Saturday of May. It is also called the "Run for the Roses," because the winning horse is draped in a blanket of red roses.

  • Al Lewis's one-man show!

Al Lewis (1923-2006) was best known for playing the vampire Grandpa in the sitcom The Munsters.

  • Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.

The frog chorus from Aristophanes' comedy, The Frogs, which was first performed in 405 B.C. Yale University uses the frog chorus as a cheer.

  • My Sharona...

My Sharona was the debut single by the Knack in 1979, and re-entered the charts in 1994. It's noted for having a hard, fast bassline.

  • Mazo-ola corn goo-oodness....

Refers to an ad shown from the late '70s to the early '80s. The three above words were chanted by Native American men in an attempt to connect Mazola corn oil with Native Americans, the natural world and quality. The 1982 version of the ad may be seen here, from 1:37 to 2:01.

  • I knew an Alex Kristy McNichol once. Thank you very much. Good night.

Kristy McNichol was an American actress who was best known for her roles as a teen and as a young woman in such TV shows as Family (1976-1980) and in such movies as Little Darlings (1980), Only When I Laugh (1981) and The Pirate Movie(1982). McNichol's last onscreen role was as Barbara Weston in the sitcom Empty Nest, which she left in 1992 after being diagnosed as bipolar. She returned in the series finale in 1995, which, to date, was her final appearance onscreen, though she has done some voice acting since.

  • Help us! NBC is after us! Hide us!

The pretended speakers are the peacocks in this scene--and NBC's logo is a peacock.

  • Poor Mickey. He's so fine, he blows my mind, poor Mickey.

A slight misquote of Toni Basil's song "Mickey". The lyrics are actually Oh Mickey, you're so fine/You're so fine you blow my mind/Hey Mickey, hey Mickey. Full lyrics are here.

  • "Fruma Sarah!"

This refers to "The Dream" from Fiddler On The Roof. In this notable sequence, the "ghost" of Fruma Sarah is part of a story that Tevye weaves to explain a change in an arranged marriage.

Notes

The last MST3K episode ever broadcast (January 31, 2004).


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