The Screaming Woman

Laura, a woman in her late 50's just recovering from a sojourn in a mental hospital returns home to her estate in the temporary care of her son and his wife. A rather dubious couple to say the least. While walking in the grounds one morning she hears or thinks she hears groaning sounds emanating from the ground and tries to raise the alarm. Unsurprisingly when help arrives the voice is no longer evident and so the seeds of doubt are raised about her sanity. Caught this one on the box very early one morning and scared me enough to have a really lousy sleep. De Havilland is in her element here as the recovering patient and gives her character enough credibility to even make the viewer wonder as to her mental state. The black & white photography enhances the suspense of the whole story. Unfortunately not available on dvd or video.

In THE SCREAMING WOMAN, Laura Wynant (Olivia de Havilland) is out for a carriage ride on her estate, when she hears what she believes to be someone calling for help. Adding to her distress is the fact that the pleas are coming from underground, in a filled-in basement! Laura quickly tells her relatives, who are unconvinced.

Of course, the viewer is shown right off that Laura isn't hearing things! Questioning her own sanity, she is coddled by her family, while knowing what she heard must have been real.

Meanwhile, quite conveniently, a close neighbor named Carl Nesbitt (Ed Nelson) has just lightened his marital load, with his wife having "gone away", after he supposedly told her of his affair with another woman. We have been shown otherwise. We know that old Carl has done something very bad indeed!

When Laura calls the police, their reaction makes it clear that everyone must believe that Laura is out of her mind. It so happens that she has recently returned home after a stay in a mental hospital. Will anyone believe her in time to save a life?

Now, one might think that knowing so much about the plot -much of it in the first few minutes- would decrease the overall tension. Instead, it increases it, by making it clear from the beginning that the clock is ticking! Laura does everything she can do, and tells everyone she can find, but no one wants to help. It's a nightmare! Annnd, the climax is... perfection!

Ms. De Havilland is astonishing in her desperate role, carrying the whole movie herself! The wonderful supporting cast includes Joseph Cotten and Walter Pidgeon!

Another outstanding made-for-TV movie from the 1970's! Watch this right now!...

I saw this TV movie as a kid with a babysitter and ended up so freaked out that I spent the night in tears waiting for a hand to reach up from under the bed and grab me. I saw it again as a young adult and it still sent chills up my spine with the side profile shots of the buried woman. Very haunting images.

Like many others, this is the one horror movie that really affected me when I saw it as a child. I used to have nightmares and get chills thinking about it. I remember really being frightened of the sounds coming out of the ground. Probably shouldn't have watched this type of movie at such a young age. As an adult, I have talked about this movie to friends who had never heard of it and told them that it would be great to find a copy so that they could see it. I'm sure it would still scare the heck out of me now. I would love to get it and invite a bunch of friends over and watch it in our theater room. The impact of this movie would be so much greater on a large screen versus the small television that we had in the 70's. It would be interesting to see how my teenagers would react to it and how they would compare it to the scary movies of today.

Obviously, for me, this horror movie did what it intended to do! SCARE ME!!!

I saw this on TV way back in the early 70's and it truly frightened the living daylights out of me.

Anyone from the industry reading this should surely consider a DVD release of this engrossing masterpiece