THE Skull is an odd little cult curio of a film. Originally released to cinemas in 1965 and unveiled this month on blu-ray by Eureka, it stands proud as a strange, almost expressionistic example of British fantasy cinema at its best.
Directed by Freddie Francis and boasting a stunning central performance from the great Peter Cushing, it tells the cautionary tale of antiques collector Christopher Maitland (Cushing) whose faintly unhinged obsession for supernatural artefacts leads him to acquiring the actual skull of the infamous Marquis de Sade, a man whose dedication to decadence seemingly led him into the dark world of devilish desires and forbidden pleasures.
When Maitland's seedy underworld contact Marco, played with snuff-snorting zeal by Patrick Wymark, sells him the stolen skull, he is warned by his collecting cohort Sir Matthew Phillips (played with aloof allure by Cushing's old sparring partner Christopher Lee) that nothing but bad can come of it but by then the spell is cast and Maitland can think of nothing else but possessing the thing and tapping into its mysterious powers.
Before long Maitland falls fully under the influence of de Sade's skull and his descent into murderous madness begins.
Francis shoots all this with a beautiful eye for colour and framing – he was an Oscar-winning cinematographer with films like The Innocents to his credit, after all – and the rich palette of moody greens and reds recalls the classic work of Italian auteur Mario Bava.
He shoots certain sequences from within the skull's eye sockets, which sounds ridiculous but works in a very stylised way, and he carries off the film's famous dream sequence where Maitland is carried off by silent assailants to stand trial for his crimes with real aplomb.
The film was adapted by Amicus main man Milton Subotsky from a short story by Psycho scribe Robert Bloch, The Skull Of the Marquis de Sade, first published in Weird Tales in September 1945. And therein lies the one problem with the production: Bloch's original story clocked in a miserly eight pages and Subotsky's screenplay failed to add much more meat to the bones of the basic premise.
The result was a film where Francis was forced to pad furiously and stretch whatever material he had to try to make the film up to a passable length for release. That means scenes drift on way too long and a great genre actor like Christopher Lee is reduced to rattling out endless exposition to fill time.
Cushing steals the show with an almost psychotic performance as the driven collector who will stop at nothing and the aforementioned dream sequence, where he is forced to play Russian roulette by his captors, results in one of his finest ever screen performances.
There's a suitably crazed avant-garde score from Elisabeth Lutyens and a top notch supporting cast including superb character actors such as Nigel Green and Patrick Magee.
Eureka's blu-ray release includes interviews with historians Jonathan Rigby and Kim Newman and the print is crisp and clean, making for an attractive package all round.
