You see before you the skull of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.
In 1965, the same year it released its first horror anthology, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, starring Hammer vets Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Amicus Productions turned out its first full-length horror film, The Skull, which was also headlined by both horror icons (although this time Lee is credited as a "guest star"). Again directed by Freddie Francis and written by producer Milton Subotsky (based on the Robert Bloch story "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade"), The Skull opens promisingly enough on a desolate graveyard where a body is being exhumed by a phrenologist who only wants its head. He doesn't get much time to examine it, though, after he's divested it of its rotting flesh and the skull pays him back by making him drown himself -- a detail that isn't revealed until occult writer Christopher Maitland (Cushing) is told about the skull's provenance by Marco (Patrick Wymark), the shady provider of his "research materials" who doesn't tell Maitland where he gets them. In this case, the skull used to belong to deep-pocketed collector Sir Matthew Phillips (Lee), who warns Maitland that it's possessed by an evil spirit which gets up to mischief on the two nights of the new moon and compels its owner to do the same. Thanks to one of his other relics, Phillips managed to avoid doing anything more heinous than overpaying for a quartet of demonic statues at auction, but his more skeptical colleague fails to adequately protect himself from the skull's influence, with dire consequences.
While it may be lacking in genuine scares -- unless the sight of a skull levitating through the air is enough to wig you out, in which case this could be the scariest movie you ever see -- The Skull skates by thanks to Francis's creative directing choices (skull-cam, anyone?) and the integrity of the performers. That also goes for the ones wasted in minor roles like Michael Gough (as the sinister auctioneer), Nigel Green (as the Scotland Yard inspector who shows up when a murder has occurred), and Patrick Magee (as the police surgeon who accompanies him). Their scenes may not amount to much, but it's possible to imagine that Magee's character was the next one to have his life hijacked by the Marquis de Sade's diabolical skull. At the very least, Magee would take center stage just two years later, playing the man himself in Peter Brook's film of Marat/Sade. As for Lee, his next encounter with de Sade would be his role in Jesús Franco's 1970 film Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion. Now that's a frightening thought.
