Diagonaldi Very well executed

MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Michael_Elliott The Screaming Woman (1972) ** (out of 4) Decent made-for-television thriller has Laura Wynant (Olivia de Havilland) getting out of a mental hospital but on her first day home she goes for a walk. While out on the walk she hears a woman screaming from under the ground but no one will believe her. Soon everyone around her believes she's losing her mind again but Laura knows what she heard.THE SCREAMING WOMAN is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury and while there are a few good moments here for the most part I thought the film was somewhat weak. It's got a terrific cast and the story itself is quite interesting but sadly director Jack Smight just didn't do enough with it and in the end the film was just too boring.The biggest problem I had with the film is the fact that there really wasn't any sort of drama or thrills. Right from the start we know that there's really a woman in the ground so we must spend the rest of the running time listening to people tell Laura she's crazy. There's simply no drama that comes from any of this. Personally speaking it seems like it would have been better had we not been shown the woman down there so we could at least wonder if there really was someone there or if Laura was really losing her mind.The highlights of the film are certainly the cast members. De Havilland is good in her role, which requires a lot of screaming but she handles it like a trooper. Both Ed Nelson and Laraine Stephens are good in their roles and we get supporting performances by Joseph Cotten and Walter Pidgeon. These 70's made-for-TV movies were at least always good at getting the Golden Era stars on the screen. As far as the film itself, it's decent and worth watching but it's certainly not one of the better titles out there.

dbdumonteil As a very big fan of Mrs De Havilland ,it was a great pleasure for me to see her with her old partner in crime Joseph Cotten (some will remember "hush hush sweet Charlotte" ),even though the latter has a too brief appearance.Ray Bradbury 's short story was modified and her heroine ,a young girl named Margaret ,was replaced by an older lady ,Laura.Actually the story recalls that of William Irish aka Cornell Woolrich ,"fire escape" (transferred to the screen as " the boy who cried wolf" ) in which a little boy told imaginary stories till a true crime happens.....just as the sheriff and his deputy do not believe that old bat who sees prowlers everywhere ...and who do not want "riffraff " around -the short scene where the "commoner" tells her :"you made my day,no you made my week" is worth the price of admission -Jack Smight succeeds in confusing the viewer: is Laura a lunatic? (after all,she forgot that the greenhouse was destroyed by fire)has she really discovered a buried alive woman ? Or has she been framed by her daughter-in-law who covets her money and would like her to be considered irresponsible ?As cousin Olivia and her old beau Joseph wanted to do pitiful Davis/Charlotte away from her valuable property in "hush hush sweet Charlotte" .De Havilland and Cotten met again in "airport' 77" but the movie was a spate of clichés and they were given poor parts.

bayardhiler Imagine for a moment that you're out walking about in your yard or a field when you could swear that you just heard someone call for help -a woman perhaps- but no one seems to be there. You hear the sound again and strangely enough it seems to be coming from the ground but that would mean... someone's been buried alive! You rush back to get help for this poor person but alas, because of you recently having a mental breakdown, no one believes you. That is the premise of "The Screaming Woman" and it plays out in a way that's more compelling than most movies today. Olivia de Havilland plays Laura Wynant, a wealthy but recently released mental patient who tries in vain to get anyone to believe her,be it her son, her lawyer, and the cops, knowing that every second that ticks away is another second in which the buried person is dying a slow and horrific death beneath the dark, damp earth. Miss de Havilland shines here, from those first five minutes of realizing the awful truth ( a scene that will send shivers down your spine) to the stunning conclusion, de Havilland keeps your eyes glued to the screen in a solid performance of a desperate woman. So desperate in fact, you can see the anguish in her eyes each time she realizes people thinks she's nuts. It also helps that the film is well written and directed on what must have been a modest budget. However, as this film proves, you don't need an enormous budget to make a good movie; you just need a good story and good actors to tell it. At the same time, one may feel a little bit of sadness while watching this because you only have to look at modern television to realize how far we have fallen in terms of what our culture now considers entertainment. Still, if you long for some quality entertainment, I highly recommend this on you tube.

ggcook 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!!!