Seeing this as a six year old on a local television channel in 1963 proved a traumatizing experience! One that generated nightmares for years.
Why you ask?--the sight of a forlorn, bedraggled, and very wretched young woman (Susan Douglas) wondering in absolute exhaustion, back bent, arms dangling forward through a skeleton infested ghost town. Only the wind and a few birds accompany her solitary odyssey.
Even in her exhaustion, she screams out "Somebody help me!" to no avail, her shouts in counterpoint to a tolling church bell the wind has activated, a bell and church no longer destined to call forth any living congregants.
Susan Douglas's predicament: a world in which she is seemingly the sole survivor--her emotional response: benumbed stupor--proved far more unsettling to this six year old than the exploits of Frankenstein.
Seen in 2008, those haunting images still retain their unsettling power. Miss Douglas, by the way, later became a regular cast member of the daytime serial, "The Guiding Light."
Why you ask?--the sight of a forlorn, bedraggled, and very wretched young woman (Susan Douglas) wondering in absolute exhaustion, back bent, arms dangling forward through a skeleton infested ghost town. Only the wind and a few birds accompany her solitary odyssey.
Even in her exhaustion, she screams out "Somebody help me!" to no avail, her shouts in counterpoint to a tolling church bell the wind has activated, a bell and church no longer destined to call forth any living congregants.
Susan Douglas's predicament: a world in which she is seemingly the sole survivor--her emotional response: benumbed stupor--proved far more unsettling to this six year old than the exploits of Frankenstein.
Seen in 2008, those haunting images still retain their unsettling power. Miss Douglas, by the way, later became a regular cast member of the daytime serial, "The Guiding Light."