By 1972, when this long-lost cheapo horror cheesefest had come out, aging star Olivia DeHavilland (Gone with the Wind), who plays the titular “screaming woman” in the film, seemed to be following in the footsteps of other grande dames of Hollywood like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford by spending the twilight of her career slumming in low-budget B-movie fare, some of which was so bad it was interesting (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte) and some of it so bad it was simply bad (The Swarm).
Here, in this former ABC Movie of the Week though, she’s got faded Hollywood old-timers Joseph Cotten and Walter Pidgeon to keep her company among a cast of young whippersnappers. This made-for-TV adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story about a man who buries his wife alive has a few creepy (even macabre) moments (especially for prime-time 1970s TV), but much of its time is filled with DeHavilland’s on-camera hysterics: she plays the aristocratic Laura Wynant, a former mental patient, who returns to her country estate to recover from her ordeal in the local rubber room.
One day near her home she sees a neighbor’s dog digging at a patch of dirt in a vacant lot, then is sure she hears a woman’s voice moaning from under the ground. At this point, Wynant begins screaming uncontrollably, just as the beginning titles flash across the screen (bold literalism? Unintentional humor? Who’s to know?). Naturally, when she goes door to door in her neighborhood hoping she’ll find a sympathetic ear, all her snobbish young neighbors refuse to take her seriously and dismiss her as just the town nut job on another crazed rant. And certainly, the Mayberry-like local police want nothing to do with any serious crimes.
So Wynant eventually has to take matters into her own hands (despite chronic arthritis) and solve the mystery for herself once and for all—much to the chagrin of the true town nutcase, the homicidal husband who fears Wynant will uncover his grisly plans for a permanent separation from his wife. It’s impossible to know whether this twisted little teleplay did any justice at all to Bradbury’s vision for it, but whatever the case, the film is fairly typical 1970s made-for-TV fare in which the movie is more or less tension-free until the blindingly obvious climax/resolution hits in the last ten minutes or so. Not recommended.