Installation goes to evil icon

I’m getting a strange error when I try to run install.php (first time installation) – the only thing that displays is one of the smilies, icon_evil.gif (kind of a frowny thing with little ears). At first I thought my setup was completely screwed up, but I found if I change the database name to a different value, I get a WordPress error telling me that I have connected successfully to MySQL, but the database name is wrong. This suggests that my database info & setup are OK. When I make the database name correct and run install.php, though, I go back to the evil icon. Thoughts?