PETER CUSHING AND CHRISTOPHER LEE CANDID PHOTOGRAPH: 'HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS'

PETER CUSHING: 'LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF' REVIEW AND STILLS GALLERY TOMORROW!

HERE TOMORROW REVIEW AND GALLERY!

HAMMER FILMS PRODUCTIONS: 'THE MUMMY' (1959) EXTRA GALLERY: PETER CUSHING : CHRISTOPHER LEE

HAMMER FILM PRODUCTIONS: 'THE MUMMY' (1959)

PETER AND HELEN CUSHING: TOY SOLDIERS PRESS PHOTOGRAPH

Peter and Helen Cushing pose for a press photograph with his some of the huge collection of toy soldiers he collected. These along with his hand made models, model theatres and painting were sold at auction and now belong to private collectors.

PETER CUSHING AND SHERLOCK'S PIPE! THE PIPE MAN OF THE YEAR 1969

PETER BEING PRESENTED WITH AWARD ON THE SET OF HAMMER FILMS PRODUCTIONS 'FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED' (1969) AT ELSTREE FILM STUDIOS

DR WHO: PETER CUSHING AND ROY CASTLE DANCE ON THE SET OF 'DR WHO AND THE DALEKS' (1965)

PETER CUSHING AS DR WHO AND CO STAR ROY CASTLE IN A OFF CAMERA MOMENT DANCE AND JOKE AROUND AROUND. THIS IS A SCREEN GRAB FROM AN EXTRA INCLUDED ON THE LATEST BBC DR WHO DVD RELEASE. YO0U CAN FIMND MORE DETAILS ON AN EARLIER POST. CLICK HERE: PETER CUSHING DR WHO EXTRA BBC DVD

PETER CUSHING: BEHIND THE SCENES: 'EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN' HAMMER FILMS (1964)

Behind The Scenes: Peter Cushing shooting 'back projection' shoots as BARON FRANKENSTEIN in HAMMER FILM PRODUCTIONS 'EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN' (1964) 

PETER CUSHING AND NIGEL STOCK: 'THE GAME IS AFOOT!' SHERLOCK HOLMES BBC TELEVISION SERIES

PETER CUSHING AND NIGEL STOCK IN THE BBC TELEVISION SERIES 'SHERLOCK HOLMES' (1968)

PETER CUSHING: THE SKULL / LE CRANE MALEFIQUE. . . WITH SOME HELP OF A QUICK PASTE JOB!

DID YOU KNOW? The estate of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade upon hearing of Amicus Films production THE SKULL in 1965 pressed charges to prevent any use of de Sade's name on any of the advertising material. Changes on posters and lobby-cards were made at the very last minute, by sticking the new title "Le Crâne Maléfique" ( "The Evil Skull") on top of the the offending title, "Les forfaits du Marquis de Sade" (meaning "the Infamies of Marquis de Sade"). Only on that condition could the film be finally released in the French territory. (Look carefully at the title panel on this lobby card and you'll see where the new paper panel has been stuck on top of the original title)

FLOATING HORROR' PETER CUSHING CHRISTOPHER LEE : THE SKULL: REVIEW AND STILLS GALLERY

CAST:
Peter Cushing (Professor Christopher Maitland), Christopher Lee (Sir Matthew Phillips), Patrick Wymark (Marco), Jill Bennett (Jane Maitland)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Freddie Francis, Screenplay – Milton Subotsky, Based on the Short Story The Skull of the Marquis de Sade by Robert Bloch, Producers – Milton Subotsky & Max J. Rosenberg, Photography – John Wilcox, Music – Elisabeth Lutyens, Special Effects – Ted Samuels, Art Direction – Bill Constable. Production Company – Amicus. UK 1965

SYNOPSIS:

A disreputable fence offers Christopher Maitland, a professor of occult studies, a skull, which is reputedly that of the Marquis de Sade. A fellow collector who once owned the skull warns Maitland that de Sade was possessed by an evil spirit. The spirit still inhabits the skull and emerges on the two nights of the new moon, the traditional nights of witchcraft and Devil worship. As the new moon arrives, Maitland finds himself being possessed and driven to acts of murder by the skull.

COMMENTARY:

The year prior to making The Skull, the English production company Amicus, headed by producers Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, had made Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1964). There they clearly set out to imitate the success in the horror genre being had by England’s Hammer Films around the same time. Dr Terror offered up a portmanteau of horror tales and proved a modest hit. The Skull was Amicus’s second horror film. Subotsky and Rosenberg reunited much of the same team behind Dr Terror – director Freddie Francis, musician Elizabeth Lutyens and art director Bill Constable, as well reemployed Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, two mainstays of the Hammer success, who would both go on to apperar in a number of their films. The Skull also saw Amicus in the first of several collaborations with horror writer Robert Bloch, who around that time had found some fame as a result of authoring the original novel that became the basis of Psycho (1960). With The Skull, Amicus only adapted one of Robert Bloch’s short stories, The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (1945), but in subsequent collaborations, beginning with The Psychopath (1966) and passing through The Deadly Bees (1967) and portmanteaus such as Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970) and Asylum (1972), Bloch would write screenplays direct for Amicus, often adapting a number of his own short stories.

The Skull is one Amicus film that has been well reviewed by everybody who has seen it. This makes my own disappointment a puzzle. The film has many similarities to the other Amicus-Francis-Bloch collaboration Torture Garden stamped all over it – Torture Garden included an episode where an obsessive collector resurrects a writer (Edgar Allan Poe instead of de Sade). Indeed, Robert Bloch’s original story has the pace that one feels more properly belongs at anthology length – The Skull would probably work perfectly at the 15-20 minute length of one of Amicus’s portmanteau episodes.

The very first scene tips the story’s one and only surprise – that the skull is possessed – if the publicity campaign hadn’t already. From there on, all that is left is Freddie Francis’s uncustomarily heavy-handed atmosphere, aided by an equally overblown score. That is if it is possible to find subtlety and suspense in the somewhat foolish notion of Peter Cushing being pursued by a floating skull, where the camera even gets to charge around peeping out of its eyesockets. The best sequence, one where Peter Cushing is dragged before a judge by police and forced to play a game of Russian Roulette, is irritatingly unexplained – is it real or an hallucination or what?

The central premise is silly and Milton Subotsky’s script never develops it or offers any surprises on the basic idea of a possessed skull running around. The Skull might have been a much more interesting story if it had been portrayed something akin to The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) where we could not have been sure if the possessed skull is real or a figment of the central character’s imagination. Moreover, the film is inaccurate to the historical Marquis de Sade, portraying him as a Satanist and irredeemably evil, whereas de Sade was merely a very horny pornographer whose personal tendencies ran toward the dom end of the BDSM market, something that hardly classifies as evil incarnate.

Freddie Francis’s other genre films are:- Vengeance/The Brain (1962), Paranoiac (1962), Nightmare (1963), Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Hysteria (1965), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), They Came from Beyond Space (1967), Torture Garden (1967), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1969), Trog (1970), The Vampire Happening (1971), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Tales That Witness Madness (1972), Craze (1973), The Creeping Flesh (1973), Legend of the Werewolf (1974), Son of Dracula (1974), The Ghoul (1975), The Doctor and the Devils (1985) and Dark Tower (1987).

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Review: Richard Scheib

Images: Marcus Brooks