Blu-Ray Review - The Skull (1965)

I’ve never been a fan of Hammer films, I’ve always found them boring and dated. The Skull was made the rival company Amicus which often hired some of Hammer’s best known directors and actors. The Skull is directed by Freddie Francis who made a bunch of Hammer films and it stars the two actors most associated with Hammer Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

It’s a frankly ludicrous premise but that’s where the fun factor comes in. Any ’60s film where it’s about the evil skull of Marquis De Sade is gonna at worst be amusing if not a totally bonkers ’60s flick which The Skull turns out to be. Cushing is Dr. Maitland who writes about the occult and collects strange occult items and a mutual acquaintance of his and Lee’s other occult collector offers to sell him the skull of Marquis De Sade. Little does he know it has murderous powers that he will soon entrapped by its powers despite warnings from Lee to not acquire it.

The film has one of the most extraordinary dream sequences of any film in the ’60s that was included simply for the fact they couldn’t do a S&M type scene. They replaced the scene with scene of Kafkaesque bureaucracy where some police officers arrest Maitland for no reason and make him play Russian roulette. The last 25 minutes of so when the skull overpowers Maitland is also told almost exclusively without dialogue which is rare in any film never mind horror cinema. The skull itself floats around and at times you can see the wires but for the most part aren’t visible on this new Blu-Ray. It’s all a bit hokey but it’s a fun blast of ’60s horror cinema with flashes of surrealism which is rare in British cinema.

The film was based on a short story by Robert Bloch who is best known for writing the source novel of Psycho so throughout the ’60s many of his stories were adapted for the screen often by Amicus. The score of the film is by avant-garde composer Elisabeth Lutyens which gives the film a more eerie atmosphere than the typical British horror film. The disc features interviews with Jonathan Rigby and Eureka’s go to when any film is somewhat horror related Kim Newman who as always speaks elegantly about these films. For a oft-kilter Halloween treat you could do much worse than The Skull and the new Blu-Ray looks great.