The Skull (1965)

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Peter Cushing stars in this Amicus production about a collector of supernatural antiquities who comes into possession of the Marquis de Sade’s skull. Christopher Lee (in a cameo) warns him that the skull has the power to possess its owners and force them to do evil things. Cushing poo-poos the notion at his peril and ends up fighting the skull’s intentions for him to kill his own wife.

I love Peter Cushing, and I normally enjoy most British horror movies to at least some degree. But The Skull is simply too little story spread over too much run-time. It is ponderously dull, padded with long, drawn-out flashbacks of the skull’s previous conquests. And make no mistake about it — there is no way to make an inanimate skull frightening. Not with music, not with sound effects, not even with the brilliant reactions of one mister Peter Cushing. In the climax of the film, the film pulls out all the stops and makes the skull levitate and float through the air. Ooooh. Pardon me while I try to shit the tiniest little brick. And what does the skull do to its victims? Do they melt? Do they burn? Do they even disappear? No, they just lay there dead — more likely from boredom than from fright.

With Patrick Wymark, directed by Freddie Francis.