|
The Skull
[Legend Films]
1965; color
Directed by Freddie Francis
Starring: Peter Cushing, Patrick Wymark, Nigel Green, Jill Bennett, Michael Gough, George Coulouris & Christopher Lee
|
|
Based on a story by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) The Skull revolves around the cursed, detached head of the Marquis De Sade. Although we don't know the head is cursed at the beginning of the film. And, in fact, it's still attached to the rest of De Sade's corpse. Until a creepy looking phrenologist digs up his grave and lops it off with a shovel. Then he takes it home and gives it a good ol' fashioned acid bath, a fateful act that somehow leads to the phrenologist himself bobbing lifelessly in a vat of steaming toxic liquid. After the credits and some other mumbo jumbo we're transported to an auction where Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are about to engage in a bidding war over some stone fetish type statues. (Pssst: the guy who played the doctor in Konga is the auctioneer. Awesome!) As is their normal way Cushing's character, Dr. Maitland, is the stuffier and more conservative of the two, while Lee's character, Mr. Phillips, seems slightly more sinister. Almost behaving a bit as if he were possessed by an unseen spirit. Later, we learn that's because he was possessed by a spirit. Not an unseen one though, one we've already seen - the detached skull of the Marquis De Sade. (Duh.) Anywhoo, after the skull changes hands, via theft, from Phillips to a shady antique dealer who, in turn, turns the skull over to Maitland - for a not-so-small fee of course - the curse naturally follows in it's footsteps and, naturally, it's only a short time before Cushing himself starts going gongwipdu. Not in a particularly De Sade-ian way, mind you. Just in the general way people go nuts in British horror movies; roaming dark hallways in the middle of the night, looming over family members' beds with pointy objects clutched in their fists, that sort of thing. Eventually Maitland realizes he must heed the word of his now dead homie Phillips and rid himself of the object d'evil and, eventually, he does. The end. This movie, like many films of this ilk, tends to drag a bit but I found it entertaining. I pretty much like any Cushing / Lee pairing though. (Can you blame me?) There was a bit of Ed Wood-ness afoot here as well; for example, sometimes you get a glimpse of reflection from the strings attached to the flying skulls. The Kommandant also swears the owl in the very first scene makes a cat noise when the phrenologist removes De Sade's head but these type of things don't detract from the film overall, at least not for me. I thought they were rather charming. (And I still maintain it could have been any number of animal noises emanating from the owl, many of which could have been of the bird species. I'll agree it didn't sound very much like an owl. At least not based on the noises owls in our neighborhood make. Of course we don't live close enough to the graveyard to really hear the noise an owl makes when it sees a person decapitating a corpse with an shovel so I think we should give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt.) My favorite gimmick of the bunch is definitely the view from inside the skull. Recommended for fans of Hammer horror (Amicus was Hammer's main rival back in the day) or anyone who has fond memories of Saturday afternoon monster movie matinees.
—Bunny
|
|
