L'enterrée vive

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.

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.

TV-movies from the early '70s, and particularly those legendary "ABC Movies of the Week", make it look so easy to deliver tense and compelling thriller stories! I truly love most of these gems, and "The Screaming Woman" instantly became a new personal favorite! Like the very best of its kind, this film is short and sober but tremendously compensates in atmosphere and plot-intelligence what it lacks in action footage. When a film is based on a story written by Sci-Fi genius Ray Bradbury, you can rest assured the script is pure quality. The plot is simple and straightforward, but oh-so ingenious and intriguing! The ageing and wealthy but mentally unstable Mrs. Laura Wynant returns home to her country estate to recover from a period in an institution. During her first estate tour, out on the horse carriage, however, she hears petrified woman's screams coming from underneath the soil. While Laura is convinced that an innocent woman is buried alive at her property, her greedy family members see her hysterical behavior as the ideal opportunity to control her finances. The already capturing story is made extra stirring thanks to the grisly sub plots and mysterious supportive characters, like the constant bickering between Laura Wynant's son and daughter-in-law and the odd-behaving neighbors. The amazing Olivia de Havilland is phenomenal as the misunderstood and disrespected elderly lady in distress, but she also receives good support for the entire rest of the cast, notably Ed Nelson, Charles Knox Robinson and Laraine Stephens. Jack Smight ("Airport 1975", "Damnation Alley") was one of the most underrated directors of his generation and he delivers some of his best work with this film. My only main complaints are that Joseph Cotton (one of my favorite actors of all times) should have had more screen time and that also the luscious Alexandra Hay's role is too small. The climax is genuinely spine-chilling and guaranteed to haunt your memories for the rest of your life.

The theme of a woman buried alive on the grounds of a wealthy woman's estate is nicely handled here for a maximum of shock and suspense. A bit overwrought at times, with Olivia de Havilland having to convince police, family and neighbors that they need to rescue a woman whose faint cries for help have startled her. The trouble is, she's a woman with a known mental illness and nobody believes her.

This was a highly popular ABC made-for-television movie and successful at the time. Nice to see the supporting cast includes Joseph Cotten, Walter Pidgeon, Charles Drake and Ed Nelson. Nelson has a pivotal role as the man who knows the truth about the woman's screams.

Suspenseful and worth viewing despite the now grainy print of this TV film being shown on cable. And by the way, it was photographed in technicolor, not black and white as a previous comment suggests. That viewer must have been having trouble with TV reception!!