#1000: The Skull - You really are superstitious, aren't you?

Personally, I'm glad that we're starting things off around here with a little bit of class.  Knowing from cursory glances of the bottom half of the list, I'm bound to find myself wading through schlock and B-movies for quite a long while, it's good to know this blog gets to start off on a positive note.  We've got the chiller stylings of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to keep us company in this, the inaugural review, and it's all thanks to Hammer Fil...

...err, sorry, that's Amicus Productions.  The mistake's easy enough to make, given that both production houses frequently used the same actors and had the same basic Gothic tone to their films.  The primary difference of note here is that while Hammer usually tended towards Victorian times with their bloodier and sexier updates of the Universal Monsters classics, Amicus typically adopted a more modern setting.  Of course, Hammer Horror is widely considered one of the defining highlights of 50s and 60s horror, as evidenced by their frequent inclusion later on down the line, while Amicus' best known films today would likely be Dr. Who and the Daleks and its sequel Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150, adaptations of the sci-fi program Doctor Who that made the alien Doctor a human actually named Doctor Who.  Unfortunately, while Peter Cushing starred as the Doctor in those flicks, Christopher Lee never managed to stop by, leaving the franchise off his resume until his death.  We'll just have to settle with ONLY seeing his turns in Dracula, James Bond, the Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars.

Anyways, I'm getting a bit off track here.  As I was saying, our first film in this long series of reviews is Amicus Productions' 1965 film, The Skull.  Ranking in at #1000 in the first edition, and falling off the list entirely in the second, this nice little chiller seems to me improperly represented by its position.  I can certainly understand why it's so low - I'd certainly never heard of it once before looking at the list, and I doubt many of the rankings compiled to create it featured it very highly, if they featured it at all.  It seems a bit of an unknown film, which I find to be a real shame.  Even though I throw up in my mouth a little every time I see someone use the word unknown, and go full-force projectile if the phrase "underrated gem" is tossed out, The Skull really does seem to me like a rather underrated movie.  Let's get into why.

First of all, before I get into anything else about this film, I just wanna say how great a prop the titular skull is in this film.  The teeth in particular jut out in a way that give it a little extra boost of personality, and in the right lighting, this thing has incredible screen presence.  Throughout the review, I'll be sprinkling in some of my favorite shots of it, and you'll likely notice how much such a little, simple thing manages to dominate the screen.  If the whole movie's going to revolve around a single prop, it might as well be something that looks like this.

As to the plot of the film, that beaut of a human cranium you see up there is actually the skull of Marquis de Sade, noted French author, libertine, and all-around mortifier of common Parisian decency from the late 1700s.  According to the film's story, one can't just simply write extremely pornographic works like The 120 Days of Sodom as a means of experimenting with the boundaries of human decency or to satisfy one's own sexual needs - no, you see, the Marquis was possessed by an evil demon, and after his death, when a phrenologist robbed his head from the grave to see if his skull would indicate his true mental state, the demon lived on in his skull.  All who possess it have fallen victim to great misfortune, and wound up either locked away as murderers, or found dead after the night of the new moon.  Its history beyond these facts lie in shadowy mystery, but there is no doubt that it has a century-and-a-half long streak of terror, a streak that leads it to London, and into the world of Peter Cushing.

First of all, just want to say, the backstory of the skull is just a tad silly to me.  I fully understand that we're talking about mid-60s horror, when the occult and Satanism were all the rage, and some cursory googling tells me that some have speculated the Marquis dabbled in devil worship (though most of the sources seem to be either blind speculation or hardcore Christian right groups decrying Fifty Shades of Grey), but the pseudo-historical basis for this being a dangerous skull makes things that little bit more harder to swallow.  A skull with a demon inside of it that compels men to murder?  I'm right there with you, let's see what you've got to show!  A skull with a demon inside of it that compels men to murder because it used to belong to a noted aristocratic pornographer, and wouldn't you say that explains a few things hmmmmmm?  You're losing me a little.

Fortunately, as noted, this movie has some class to it, so we don't get the skull swinging around wildly praising Satan and quoting passages out of Justine to shock the audience.  There's a great deal of restraint to many aspects of the film, most notably the way it's shot and paced.  All the scenes in which someone falls victim to the skull's power play out in a slow, methodical manner, almost matter of factly.  You get very little tension out of the execution, and one could name that as a major flaw, but I find it works in a somewhat hypnotic way.  Just as the victim is compelled by the skull to slowly unfold the latest ritualistic murder without emotion or mercy, so too are we as the audience transfixed, and quickly desensitized by the slow, deliberate nature of every action, even the murders.  In that sense, I suppose having a noted sadist (and with good reason, as his title gives us the word "sadism") as the skull's origin point works - what better reason for this detached approach to homicide?

Also understated are the performances by Cushing and Lee as their characters, Christopher Maitland and Matthew Phillips.  Fellow researchers into the dark arts and occultism, they both find themselves in possession of the Marquis' skull, and must grapple against the temptations of the demons it brings.  Unfortunately, Lee isn't in the film much, and functions more as a side character than as a second lead role or even a supporting character.  But even without much screentime and with a measured performance, he still makes an impact, especially in an early auction scene where he and Cushing enter into a short bidding war over some items.  It's brief, but effectively establishes some subtle degree of rivalry between the two characters despite their general friendliness towards one another.  Though these are evidently two good friends, one can easily see why Maitland would opt to ignore Phillips' warning about the dangers of the skull.

Speaking of Peter Cushing, he does an admirable job in this film.  Being the skull's primary possession target, he has to carry the last half hour of the film out all on his lonesome with nothing but body language and facial expressions, and, well...

Damn if he doesn't pull it off.  Just check out the mix of terror and defiance.  He's rides that blend all the way through the final act, and while it's not what I'd call Oscar worthy or career defining or anything, it fits in with the casual, slow cruelty the skull exudes when exerting its power.  Even earlier in the movie when he's still in a right state of mind and not yet exposed to the skull, you get the sense there's something just a little bit off with Doctor Maitland, and Cushing's physical acting helps sell it.

(I'm not gonna give you the context of that scene, since I want to leave at least a few surprises for you guys in the movie, but I've gotta say, it's a real trip.)

I can't really sing the virtues of this movie TOO much without edging into gushing, and seeing as I'd like to avoid too much untempered praise, I will say it's not all chilling.  The side characters, including Patrick Wymark as the dealer who sells Maitland the skull, and cockney John Belushi Peter Woodthorpe as the dealer's landlord don't make any impact at all, and while their ultimate fates do play into the tone of the movie, I feel like they could have been established better to make us care a bit more about them to make the sudden yet serene nature of their fates stand out just a little more.  Maitland's wife, played by Jill Bennet, makes even less of a mark, and her role in the climax is subsequently lessened, marring an otherwise great scene...

...but oh man, that scene.  It may be far too strong a word, but I love the sequence wherein the skull finally takes possession of Maitland and compels him towards evil.  The way the camera casually slinks around the apartment as he sets things up in a haze, the nonchalant way the curtains burst open furniture is pushed aside as the spirit invisibly takes hold of him, all while the skull sits there with its unmoving, eternally patient grin.  The slow march towards the final destination.  And the way the skull finally gives us an overt display of its power, and Cushing's dawning realization of just what kind of forces he's messing with... it is a great example of how to make silent horror work.  The music might be a touch overbearing (I'd personally like to see how this plays out in silence), and the strings might be visible at the very end, but it's easily the highlight of the movie.

The Skull is ultimately a very basic "man should not meddle with ancient evil forces" story, and despite a quite nice looking set design and two high-profile actors, you can tell it's a budget pic from a budget studio by the simplicity of the story and the effects.  But for a movie that relies on a plot point that could have easily been "look at the scary flying skull, oooooh it's dripping blood!" the creators managed to get something pretty special out of it through a low-key tone, measured pacing, and a prop with one hell of a screen presence.  Though it means I'll have to clean this evening's dinner off the walls in a few minutes, I've no choice but to deem the Skull an underrated gem, and recommend you pick it up wherever you can.

Body count: We've got a total of six dead persons here.  Quite possibly a whole lot more between the time the skull began its demonic murder spree, but six bodies is what's on screen, so six is what I'll report.  Figured it'd be interesting to see who out of the 1000+ movies we'll be running through gets the highest corpse stack, and what the average winds up being.

Franchise potential: So I decided that for the one-off films on the list, I'd sit down and try to determine if the movie under review is deserving of more installments, just as a fun little exercise to engage in.  And in the case of this movie, I could totally see a series of Skull sequels popping up along the line.  Now that we know the basics of what this thing is and how it works, I'd love to see some more actors have it fall into their collection and have to struggle against the temptation.  Maybe you could have its legacy become well known, and have some corrupt priest steal it as a means to test their faith.  Or maybe a wife stuck in an failing marriage looking for that little extra push she needs to take the fastest route out.  There's all sorts of angles you could work on this one, and I for one would love to see what further explorations of man's vulnerability to temptation a sequel could wring out here.  Go back in time and grab Vincent Price for The SkuII.

That'll be all for now.  See y'all for the next review, covering 1958's Fiend Without A Face. 

(Seriously, he looks like John Belushi, doesn't he?)