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Night Of The Skull
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1976; color
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring: Alberto Dalbes, Evelyn Scott, William Berger & Lina Romay
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Jess Franco is definitely one of the more prolific directors of our time; and while I greatly admire his work ethic, it stands to reason that when you've made over 180 films, some of them are not going to as memorable as others. The Kommandant is a huge Franco fan though and has never let that stop him from watching any movie with his name attached to it. Recently we took in a couple of his films from the late '90s, neither of which were really worth mentioning, particularly if you like to follow my mother's advice of not saying anything at all if you can't say something nice. Suffice it to say, when I saw this was from the mid-70s I was much more enthused about watching it. Night Of The Skull is one of those movies where the plotline starts out kind of murky and confusing. Then once you settle in and start to get the gist of the story and kind of figure out who's who and what's what, the layers of secrets begin to slowly peel themselves back, only to reveal an even more confusing story. (I'm sure there is a name for this genre but I'm not sure what it is.) Movies of this ilk are all about the bait and switch method of plot revelation too so, should you actually want to try and figure out who did it, you'll need to employ reverse reverse psychology. And then reverse that. Personally, I don't like to try and figure these out too much; it distracts me from actually watching the movie. Plus, inevitably, once you think you've figured it out is just when you'll learn that that's totally not what really happened because some other unforeseen nonsensical thing will pop up, totally proving everything you thought right to be wrong. Then the movie will end. Probably abruptly. That's just the way they did it back then. Anywhoo, it is on a particularly dark and stormy night that we come to the palatial Gothic seaside estate of Lord Archibald Marion. At first he seems like your basic old aristocratic dude - you know, the type who overdresses for a night at home, is mean to his servants, and is always checking up on his wife and niece - but we soon learn that he has at least one outside interest, reading out loud from large books whose words make no sense. Or rather, the occult. He's also trying to predict his own death via a certain page in the aforementioned book. We don't get to learn much else about him though because mere moments after Marion reads a passage about man meeting his fate through one of the four elements - earth, wind, water and fire - some evil do-er in a black hooded robe and skull mask comes along and puts an end to this nonsense by knocking his ass out, dragging him outside, beating him with a shovel and burying him (still alive) face down in the dirt with his hands tied behind his back. (For insurance purposes it is the dirt that killed him.) At this point we start to become more familiar with the characters surrounding the recently deceased in a Clue-esque fashion. There's the newly made Widow Marion, the niece who may or may not be his niece, the creepy servant couple and, just to keep things interesting, some ancillary distant relatives and one illegitimate son, all of whom become suspects in the Lord's death as soon as they gather for the reading of the will / dispersal of the riches. At first it seems like the niece is gonna clean up, especially when we learn that she's not his niece but in fact his illegitimate daughter and has now inherited everything she was entitled to but never got. But wait - there's another will. One that says something completely different from the first will. Hmmm. Better call Scotland Yard to come and straighten this mess out, which is exactly what they do. Except calling Scotland Yard doesn't so much make things clearer as much as it makes things more confusing by adding at least one more big twist to this already twisty plot. Which will will prove to be valid? This is not for me to divulge. Nor can I tell you who dies by wind, water or fire; or who the masked vigilante is. But I can tell you that when the illegitimate son and illegitimate daughter finally do "it", it's not incest. Make of that what you will. Rest assured, when this kooky tale of murder and intrigue and murderous intrigue eventually comes to an end, closure will be given to almost every anecdote. The explanations might not make logical sense but, still, there will be closure. Night Of The Skull may not be one of Franco's best efforts but it's certainly not one of his worst either.
—Bunny
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