The Screaming Woman (1972)

The location of the areas attributed to the estate of Olvia DeHavilland's character and surrounding homes is unknown to me (possibly Pasadena, California), but her mansion, inside and out, is located on the Bliss Estate in Monetcito, Califoirnia, which is directly south of Santa Barbara. It sits on 35 acres purchased by the Blisses after their marriage at the beginning of the 20th Century. The mansion has 100 rooms, half of which devoted to servants' quarters. (The exteriors of DeHavilland running from the woman for the first time, passing walls, pillars and a fountain, is not part of the estate.) During WWII Mrs. Edward G. Robinson used the mansion as headquarters for her "Desert Battalion" of 500 women who entertained GIs around the world. For a while after the war it was a girl's school and today it's a retirement village. The main house is still intact.

Someone hit it on the head when they talked about the dirt caked on the woman's face. It made her look like a monster herself! When the side views of her were on screen I was so scared, I would hide my face against the couch and it was like somehow I could magically still see the horror of it. She looked 500 years old with the dirt! And the moaning, "Helllllp Meeeeeeee" over and over. Id love to see it again now, Im sure like many movies that used to scare me it would seem much tamer now, but anyway, it was so good to find any reference to this movie from my long ago, that I've never met anyone who has seen it. I guess this will be my last post on here. I'm not sure that I can always write ten lines about everything I've seen, and I hate taking the time to apostrophe words when I am typing on the internet. This was an incredibly scary movie to me when I was 7-8 years old but I didn't have 10 lines of material prepared for it, so I guess I will just be enjoying everyone else's posts about obscure movies that I thought I was the only one who had seen it. Anyway, Thanks for listening, and hopefully I have 10 lines and no apostrophe errors, goodnight.

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

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.