From Amicus Studios a film company that managed to make even lower budget horror films than Hammer Studios, comes one of their few films that isn't a compendium of short stories rolled together into one feature. The Skull is a fairly decent horror film made on a tight budget but the production team was a group of British filmmakers who did a good job making something out of next to nothing.
The Skull starts out with a phrenologist in the 1800's studying the heads of criminals to determine if one can identify a good or evil person. The phrenologist decides to dig up the grave and take the skull of the Marquis de Sade (everybody's favorite sexual sadist) to examine it. Big mistake as it turns out The Skull is possessed and anyone who owns it turns into a mad killer. Jump forward to present day England and The Skull is now owned by Peter Cushing who wants to add it to his collection of spooky stuff, another big mistake. Well you can guess where this story is going.
Amicus studios may have been a real cheapskate place but they did hire a decent cast. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark and Nigel Green. The director is the very good cinematographer Freddie Francis who photographed a number of classic British films. Francis had wanted to become a film director but the only projects he was attached to were horror films. Francis ended up returning to cinematography where he worked for directors like David Lynch and Martin Scorcese which wasn't a bad way to wrap up his career.
There's nothing particularly terrible about this film. It's well photographed and the actors all do their jobs, it's just nothing special. Freddie Francis probably did about as competent a job as he could considering the budget and the story but really any reasonably decent director could have made this film.
The film was written by Milton Subotsky from a story by mister Psycho himself Robert Bloch, the running time is 83 minutes,
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