A newlywed couple arrive at the home of the husband's late wife, where the gardens have been maintained by a gardener faithful to the dead woman's memory. Soon, eerie events lead the new wife to think she's losing her mind.
Trivia:
The death-mask on Marian's tombstone is a reproduction of the famous "l'Inconnue de la Seine", reputed to be the face of a young French suicide who, like the deceased wife in the film, died in the water.
Released as the top half of a double feature with Terror from the Year 5000 (1958).
The score is one of the earlier works of composer Ernest Gold, who would later go on to win an Academy Award for the soundtrack to Exodus (1960).
The newlyweds' car is a mid-'50s Mercedes-Benz 190SL gullwing.
The tuba music during the opening credits is the "Dies Irae" section of Berlioz' "Symphony Fantastique." A different version of same piece was later used during the opening credits of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).
Though it is never credited, the film is based on F. Marion Crawford's classic horror story of the same title, first published around 1906. Crawford's inspiration, in turn, came from the folklore surrounding the so-called "screaming skull" that was kept on display at Bettiscomb Manor in Dorset, England. The actual skull that inspired both the story and the movie is said to be that of a Jamaican slave whose request for burial in his native country was denied following his death and was subsequently followed by strange occurrences and unexplainable shrieking noises from the wooden box in which the skull was kept.
In 1963 a professor of human and comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons stated that the skull was not that of a black man but that of a European female aged between twenty-five and thirty.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBevkOiNJY