This was among the first vintage horror films I recall watching, but it took me this long to re-acquaint myself with it (after I had foolishly abandoned the prospect of a second viewing as part of a late-night Italian TV program hosted by two amiable ghouls \u2013 the same thing would also happen with Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL [1974], which I then had to wait some 13 years to catch up with!).<\/p>\n
Anyay, though the film’s premise, in itself, is rather daft \u2013 that of a host of antiquarians being ‘possessed’ by the skull of the Marquis De Sade \u2013 the result is very stylish and altogether one of Hammer rival Amicus’ most satisfying outings. Apart from director Francis, the men behind Amicus \u2013 Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky (the latter also scripted, from a story by Robert Bloch of PSYCHO [1960] fame) \u2013 again recruited Hammer’s two most popular stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, for this production. As ever, they play extremely well off each other \u2013 even if Lee, ostensibly, is only a “Guest Star” \u2013 delivering typically committed performances: Cushing has fun acting crazy \u2013 under the influence of the skull \u2013 towards the end (and also during a surreal nightmare sequence in which he’s forcefully taken before a judge who promptly hands him a gun to play at Russian Roulette!), whereas Lee gives surprising poignancy to his role. Supporting them is a splendid cast indeed \u2013 led by Patrick Wymark, who actually matches the stars with his seedy supplier of generally weird artifacts, and the brief (albeit equally welcome) presence of the likes of George Coulouris, Michael Gough, Nigel Green and Patrick Magee!<\/p>\n
While Francis creates wonderful atmosphere via the cinematography (particularly when shooting through the skull’s eyehole) and the set design (the film starts off as a period piece but then reverts to a modern-day setting for the central plot line), I do feel that the possibilities presented by the nonetheless intriguing theme are regrettably constrained by censorship and budgetary restrictions \u2013 so that the Marquis De Sade’s legacy seems somehow to have been mixed up with that of Jack The Ripper! In any case, THE SKULL is generally considered nowadays as Francis’ best directorial effort \u2013 though I personally feel NIGHTMARE (1964), THE PSYCHOPATH (1966) and THE CREEPING FLESH (1973) to be superior to it\u2026<\/p>\n
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This was among the first vintage horror films I recall watching, but it took me this long to re-acquaint myself with it (after I had foolishly abandoned the prospect of a second viewing as part of a late-night Italian TV program hosted by two amiable ghouls \u2013 the same thing would also happen with Hammer’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movie-news","wpcat-1-id"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",1829,2783,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations-145x145.jpg",145,145,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations-197x300.jpg",197,300,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations-768x1169.jpg",768,1169,true],"large":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations-673x1024.jpg",673,1024,true],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",1009,1536,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",1346,2048,false],"gridflex-1422w-autoh-image":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",1422,2164,false],"gridflex-1074w-autoh-image":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",1074,1634,false],"gridflex-360w-300h-image":["http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/cinema-sunday-the-skull-1965-magazines-and-monsters_grave-rip-skull_home-decor_christian-home-decor-blogs-country-pinterest-diy-nautical-decorating-ideas-vintage-decorations.jpg",197,300,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin1","author_link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"This was among the first vintage horror films I recall watching, but it took me this long to re-acquaint myself with it (after I had foolishly abandoned the prospect of a second viewing as part of a late-night Italian TV program hosted by two amiable ghouls \u2013 the same thing would also happen with Hammer’s...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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