Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Dreadfully Boring

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Starts really well and the simple tale is well set up with fabulous sets and a multitude of spooky artefacts. Lee and Cushing work well together and all the cast are effective, the ladies perhaps less so but then maybe I'm used to the stylish girls of Hammer and the Italians. Everything is seemingly going fine until about halfway through and then it slows almost to a stop. There are moments when nothing happens and the cameraman is left to pan around the rows of masks and various trophies. The script ran out and with it the film and although it does pick up for the ending it is rather a shame. I would have though even a little back story of what the mask has been up to in the past years would have been relatively simple to film. Still, a little bit different and those wonderful sets look great in Blu-ray.

Reading the letters page in an issue of UK film magazine The Dark Side,I found out that whilst most of the titles in Netflix UK's Horror section are recent flicks,that they have actually put a rarely mentioned Amicus movie on the site.Becoming a fan of Amicus Horror during the 2015 October Horror Challenge on IMDb's Horror board,I decided that it was time to unmask the skull.The plot-The 1800's:Robbing the head from the grave of the Marquis de Sade, Pierre gets set to find out if Sade's head contains the power to make people go insane. Whilst boiling the flesh off the skull (charming!) the "power" of the skull grips Pierre and kills him.The present:Losing out in a bidding war over ancient statures, Christopher Maitland goes to talk to friend and winning bidder Sir Matthew Phillips.Asking why he spent so much on the items,Maitland is taken aback,when Phillips tells him that he has no idea why he purchased them. Seeing Maitland's disappointment,sly antiques dealer Marco breaks into Phillips house and steals an item to sell to Maitland. Meeting up with Maitland,Marco reveals that he has tracked down an item just for him:the skull of the Marquis de Sade.View on the film:Lining up (most of) the biggest stars in British Horror, Patrick Wymark/ Patrick Magee/ Michael Gough/Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee each give great performances,with Wymark making the skin crawl as slime ball Marco,whilst Gough and Magee give the film a touch of class in their small roles. Meeting up at auction, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee both give splendid performances as Phillips and Maitland,with Cushing sending Maitland into a cold sweat over getting his hands on the skull,and Lee casts a shadow of unease over the tightly coiled Phillips.Made from an "outline" by Amicus studio's co-owner Milton Subotsky's take on a Robert Bloch short story,un-credited writer Freddie Francis cracks open a head filled with eerie Occult Horror,as Francis wisely decides to avoid focusing on the origins of De Sade's power,to instead look at the horrific reactions,turning Maitland from a mild mannered gentlemen into a wide-eyed mad man.Although the visible wires making the skull "float" do pull some of the chills down,director Freddie Francis & cinematographer John Wilcox paint De Sade's skull in dazzling psychedelic Art-Deco,glowing in red,black and green patterns breaking Maitland's madness in extreme close-ups,as the skull sets its sights on a new victim.

An early attempt by Amicus at a Hammer style horror movie, The Skull opens in wonderful Gothic mode with a night-time grave robbing scene, complete with unkempt, windblown cemetery, creaky metal gate, random owl hoots and a howling dog (the foley artist really went to town on this one). The desecrated grave in question turns out to be that of the infamous Marquis De Sade, the reason for the illicit exhumation being the retrieval of his skull, which is apparently host to an ancient demon called Baalberith, who drives men to commit blasphemy and murder.Unfortunately, the enjoyably excessive Gothic atmosphere of the film's opening scene is virtually abandoned when, many years later, said skull falls into the hands of obsessive antiques collector Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing), who becomes possessed by the demon and proceeds to do its evil bidding. Apart from director Freddie Francis's (over)use of unusual POV shots and a couple of cool floating skull shots, the film exhibits very little flair or innovation, lacks genuine thrills, features almost no graphic gruesomeness, and quickly becomes tiresome. The film's most interesting aspect—the involvement of a secret satanic society—goes absolutely nowhere (and seems to exist purely to pad out the weak story to feature length).It says a lot when my favourite scene in the whole film is Maitland playing snooker against fellow antiquities collector Sir Matthew Phillips (played by Christopher Lee): despite owning his own snooker room, Phillips seems to possess zero skill at the game, randomly hitting balls to no avail (although he does rack up some points on the score-board, the cheat!). Maitland is equally as inept. At least the film gave me a few giggles, I suppose.

Freddie Francis directed this thriller that stars Peter Cushing as Dr. Maitland, a collector of unusual objects who comes into possession of the skull of the Marquis De Sade, a reputedly evil man with supernatural powers. His friend(played by Christopher Lee) tries to warn him about its evil, and to get rid of it, but he doesn't listen, and as a consequence, is plagued by nightmares, as people around him start dying, and the evil nature of the skull tries to influence and then destroy him... Good cast of course, which also includes Patrick Wymark and Michael Gough, with intriguing back story, but film becomes tedious and far-fetched, leading to an unsatisfying, downbeat end.