Shocktober Revisited: The Skull

  The Skull is a movie I had heard about but hadn't seen until very recently. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it was a more obscure Hammer title, but in fact it's an Amicus release. If that name doesn't sound familiar, I'd be willing to wager that most horror fans have seen at least one of their anthology films*: Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave, Dr. Terror's House of Horror, Asylum, or The House that Dripped Blood. The Skull is one of their non-anthology releases, and while it's a minor entry in the realm of British Horror, there are enough creepy and / or surreal flourishes to recommend the film - if you can find it.

 If this were a spoiler, I'd mark it accordingly, but before any character identifies the person who the titular object belongs to, the credits give it away by saying the film is based on Robert Bloch's "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade." After a prologue where a grave robbing phrenologist (Maurice Good) steals the Marquis' head and meets and unfortunate end for it, we move to modern day London. Amateur demonologist and collector Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is at an auction and in a friendly bidding war with fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips ("Guest Star" Christopher Lee) over a few statues representing Hell's hierarchy. Phillips bids far more than the statues are worth, but cannot explain why he was so intent on purchasing them.

 Maitland returns home, and is visited by the unsavory Anthony Marco (Patrick Wymark), who "acquires" rare pieces and sells them - cash only, please. He offers Maitland a copy of The Life of the Marquis de Sade, a book bound in human flesh, with a promise he has something "even more interesting" to bring the next night. Despite Maitland's wife, Jane (Jill Bennett)'s protestations, Marco prefers to let himself in, and the good doctor tells him that Marco is "always welcome." The following night, Marco brings along the skull of the Marquis de Sade, and seems willing to part with it for less than his initial offering price. Maitland is suspicious that it's stolen, and his suspicions are concerned when Phillips vouches for the authenticity of the object. It was stolen from him, and he doesn't want it back: the skull of the Marquis de Sade brings with it evil spirits who drive men to do horrible things during the new moon.

 But as The Skull is a horror movie, we know that Maitland will give in to temptation. It's a "curiosity killed the cat" sort of story, and while it sometimes drags a bit during its 83 minutes, once the skull starts working on Maitland, there are a few stylistic flourishes that keep you invested. The film features a rare pairing of Cushing and Lee where the latter is the voice of reason, which is worth watching, and there are a few small parts for recognizable British actors: Michael Gough (Batman) appears early as an auctioneer, and Patrick Magee (Die, Monster, Die!) is the police surgeon baffled by the means in which Marco meets his end (SPOILER). Genre go-to director Freddie Francis (Tales That Witness Madness) stages Marco's death scene without ever showing him die, in what is both an excellent bit of narrative suggestion but also a surreal break in the mostly straightforward narrative.

 Maitland hasn't decided to buy the skull yet, and is sitting in his study reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade, when his window begins to glow a strange green hue. Two policemen arrive and inform him he's under arrest, but will not tell him what he's charged with. Instead of taking him to the station, he finds himself in a large, mostly empty room. In the center is the Judge (Frank Forsyth), who never utters a word but instructs the "police" to force Maitland to play a game of Russian Roulette. When he lives, he's shoved into a red room which serves as a sort of "gas chamber" and awakens to find himself in the stairwell of Marco's apartment, a place he's never been before. Thanks to a flashback to the phrenologist's home, where his Executor is hypnotized by the skull and murders the dead man's mistress, we know that the skull is capable of creating a trance-like state, but the dream sequence adds a better sense of mystery to The Skull's midpoint.

 It also introduces the stairwell for a scene later, when Maitland returns to take the skull and confronts Marco's landlord (Peter Woodthorpe), leading to a death scene that may well have influenced the "stained glass" kill in Suspiria. I certainly thought of Argento's film when it happened, although the latter film embellishes the end result more than the earlier one does. There are several moments throughout the second half of The Skull with suspense and atmosphere, and despite some obvious wires carrying it around, the image of the floating head is striking.

 The (mostly) wordless climactic battle of wills between Maitland and the evil spirits goes on for far too long and becomes bogged down with awkwardly place religious imagery (although the return of one of the statues from the beginning is a nice touch). I get the impression that Francis and screenwriter Milton Subotsky (I, Monster) were trying to whip the audience into a frenzy of terror, but the lasting impression is more of histrionics than fear. I appreciate the ending, but at times it feels that The Skull might have been better as a part of an anthology rather than a feature unto itself. Still, for fans of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, it's worth seeking out as a minor chiller.





*They also released both of the Peter Cushing "Dr. Who" movies, but we won't get into that.

Shocktober Revisited: From Beyond the Grave

 Review originally appeared in 2010.


 "Now Cap'n," you say, "are you really going to keep telling me the From Beyond the Grave is a good movie when we all know that it's too tame, too comical, too scattershot, and worst of all, not scary?"

 And I will continue to say "Yes, I am."

 Do I admit that your description of From Beyond the Grave, the Amicus Production's 1973 horror anthology, is reasonably to very accurate? Sure, I'll cop to that. The film is rated PG, keeps most of its violence off-screen, the "Elemental" story is far goofier than I might have led on, the stories aren't all consistently great, and yes, it's not creepy in the way that Tales from the Crypt is. On the other hand, may I refer you to my review of The House That Dripped Blood from this time last year.

 These are all elements inherent to most anthology films: not just anthology films from the era (and specifically, most Amicus productions), but of the subgenre in general. I point you in the direction of Creepshow, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Trick 'r Treat, Tales from the Darkside, or Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. You'll find that with some consistency, every criticism lobbed at From Beyond the Grave is fair in each case.

 What I love about anthology films is that not every story works, that the tone varies from graphic to goofy, and that sometimes the parts don't add up to the whole. And yet, I come back to them over and over again. It's the cinematic equivalent of a short story digest; if you don't like what's in front of you, the next one isn't far away, so just relax.

 From Beyond the Grave is a lot like The House That Dripped Blood, save for a less successful consistency in tone, but the cast is game to make the stories that shouldn't work palatable, and the ones that do carry the weight for everything else.

 Like that old review, let's do a breakdown of segments, all held together by a frame story featuring Peter Cushing as the Proprietor of Temptations Limited, an antique shop that sells innocuous seeming items with supernatural repercussions.

1. The Gatecrasher - David Warner plays an antique collector who swindles Cushing out of a mirror, only to discover that it hosts a particularly hungry ghost with a grave deal for his new partner in crime.

2. An Act of Kindness - Ian Bannen plays a ho-hum middle manager looking for more excitement in his life, and finds it when he steals a medal from Temptations, Ltd. and befriends Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasance), a street beggar. When he discovers that Underwood's daughter Emily (Angela Pleasance) dabbles in a bit of witchcraft, he gets more than he bargained for.

3. The Elemental - Ian Carmichael is a well-to-do businessman that switches the price tag on one of Cushing's snuffboxes, only to be warned by a clairvoyant Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) that he's picked up an "elemental," an invisible creature attracted to the pleasures of the flesh, on his shoulder. He ignores her, only to see the elemental's effects firsthand when it attacks his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). Can Madame Orloff successfully cast the creature out of their country home?

4. The Door - Ian Ogilvy buys an ominous looking door from Temptations, Ltd., only to discover that when he shuts and reopens it, his storage cabinet becomes an entrance to a massive blue room, one that may house a man who used the occult to draw victims into his "trap."

 It's fair to note that the moral of From Beyond the Grave is "don't rip off Temptations, Limited," as the only character who isn't killed as a result of his visit to the shop lives because he paid in full for his door. Every other person who swindles the Proprietor ends up murdered, although not always in ways you might expect.

 As a matter of fact, the second story, involving a stolen medal as a pretense for befriending an old soldier, doesn't head in the direction one would expect at all. Typically, in anthologies, the ironic twist is the plot du jour, and while "An Act of Kindness" does have a twist ending, it's not at all one you're going to see coming, even if you are paying attention.

 The ending of "The Elemental" only falters because its grim tone follows the exaggerated Madame Orloff "casting out" sequence, which cannot be taken as anything but laughable. Had it been played like - and this is jumping forward quite a bit - a similar scene in Drag Me to Hell, there's a chance that the "twist" (which you can see coming a mile away) might be easier to accept.

 Of the stories, "Gatecrashers" works the most, and benefits from the film's rather tame PG rating. Forced to keep most of the killings off-screen, director Kevin Connor settles on a slightly hallucinatory tone as David Warner sets about killing girls to "feed" the mirror spirit. That we don't see the first kill at all, and are only hinted to what actually happened later makes up for the unbelievable behavior on Warner's part in the middle of the story (would he really not change clothes, or wash the blood off of his hands?). The ending is suitably eerie, even if it's not hard to suss out where the story is heading.

 From Beyond the Grave really suffers from the frame story, which never has the impact you hope it will. In part it's because "An Act of Kindness" and "The Elemental" really have nothing to do with what their respective protagonists take from Temptations, Ltd. The other factor (and it's a big one), is that Peter Cushing's kindly looking Proprietor has no sense of menace, of mischief, or really any presence at all until the film's coda, involving a thief that was casing the store all day. Cushing's make-up leaves him appearing older than he did four years later in Star Wars, and there's no real surprise to the "supernatural" - and undercooked - revelation about Temptations, Ltd. at the end of the film. By the time he addresses the audience directly (which isn't really new for Amicus), we're miles ahead of the "twist," so all that's left is the title card to end the film.

 So, like most anthologies, From Beyond the Grave has the not-so-good, the pretty-good, and the entertaining-in-doses components. Sometimes it's a little silly, yes. It lacks a persistent tone of dread, unlike Tales from the Crypt or even The House That Dripped Blood, and it's not going to knock any gorehound's socks off. But taken on its own merits, I'd say From Beyond the Grave is as watchable as any anthology I've seen, and better than quite a few in the last twenty years or so.

Quick Review: The Skull

 Like the previously reviewed Spider Baby, The Skull is a movie I had heard about but hadn't seen until very recently. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it was a more obscure Hammer title, but in fact it's an Amicus release. If that name doesn't sound familiar, I'd be willing to wager that most horror fans have seen at least one of their anthology films*: Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave, Dr. Terror's House of Horror, Asylum, or The House that Dripped Blood. The Skull is one of their non-anthology releases, and while it's a minor entry in the realm of British Horror, there are enough creepy and / or surreal flourishes to recommend the film - if you can find it.

 If this were a spoiler, I'd mark it accordingly, but before any character identifies the person who the titular object belongs to, the credits give it away by saying the film is based on Robert Bloch's "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade." After a prologue where a grave robbing phrenologist (Maurice Good) steals the Marquis' head and meets and unfortunate end for it, we move to modern day London. Amateur demonologist and collector Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is at an auction and in a friendly bidding war with fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips ("Guest Star" Christopher Lee) over a few statues representing Hell's hierarchy. Phillips bids far more than the statues are worth, but cannot explain why he was so intent on purchasing them.

 Maitland returns home, and is visited by the unsavory Anthony Marco (Patrick Wymark), who "acquires" rare pieces and sells them - cash only, please. He offers Maitland a copy of The Life of the Marquis de Sade, a book bound in human flesh, with a promise he has something "even more interesting" to bring the next night. Despite Maitland's wife, Jane (Jill Bennett)'s protestations, Marco prefers to let himself in, and the good doctor tells him that Marco is "always welcome." The following night, Marco brings along the skull of the Marquis de Sade, and seems willing to part with it for less than his initial offering price. Maitland is suspicious that it's stolen, and his suspicions are concerned when Phillips vouches for the authenticity of the object. It was stolen from him, and he doesn't want it back: the skull of the Marquis de Sade brings with it evil spirits who drive men to do horrible things during the new moon.

 But as The Skull is a horror movie, we know that Maitland will give in to temptation. It's a "curiosity killed the cat" sort of story, and while it sometimes drags a bit during its 83 minutes, once the skull starts working on Maitland, there are a few stylistic flourishes that keep you invested. The film features a rare pairing of Cushing and Lee where the latter is the voice of reason, which is worth watching, and there are a few small parts for recognizable British actors: Michael Gough (Batman) appears early as an auctioneer, and Patrick Magee (Die, Monster, Die!) is the police surgeon baffled by the means in which Marco meets his end (SPOILER). Genre go-to director Freddie Francis (Tales That Witness Madness) stages Marco's death scene without ever showing him die, in what is both an excellent bit of narrative suggestion but also a surreal break in the mostly straightforward narrative.

 Maitland hasn't decided to buy the skull yet, and is sitting in his study reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade, when his window begins to glow a strange green hue. Two policemen arrive and inform him he's under arrest, but will not tell him what he's charged with. Instead of taking him to the station, he finds himself in a large, mostly empty room. In the center is the Judge (Frank Forsyth), who never utters a word but instructs the "police" to force Maitland to play a game of Russian Roulette. When he lives, he's shoved into a red room which serves as a sort of "gas chamber" and awakens to find himself in the stairwell of Marco's apartment, a place he's never been before. Thanks to a flashback to the phrenologist's home, where his Executor is hypnotized by the skull and murders the dead man's mistress, we know that the skull is capable of creating a trance-like state, but the dream sequence adds a better sense of mystery to The Skull's midpoint.

 It also introduces the stairwell for a scene later, when Maitland returns to take the skull and confronts Marco's landlord (Peter Woodthorpe), leading to a death scene that may well have influenced the "stained glass" kill in Suspiria. I certainly thought of Argento's film when it happened, although the latter film embellishes the end result more than the earlier one does. There are several moments throughout the second half of The Skull with suspense and atmosphere, and despite some obvious wires carrying it around, the image of the floating head is striking.

 The (mostly) wordless climactic battle of wills between Maitland and the evil spirits goes on for far too long and becomes bogged down with awkwardly place religious imagery (although the return of one of the statues from the beginning is a nice touch). I get the impression that Francis and screenwriter Milton Subotsky (I, Monster) were trying to whip the audience into a frenzy of terror, but the lasting impression is more of histrionics than fear. I appreciate the ending, but at times it feels that The Skull might have been better as a part of an anthology rather than a feature unto itself. Still, for fans of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, it's worth seeking out as a minor chiller.





*They also released both of the Peter Cushing "Dr. Who" movies, but we won't get into that.

Blogorium Review: From Beyond the Grave

"Now Cap'n," you say, "are you really going to keep telling me the From Beyond the Grave is a good movie when we all know that it's too tame, too comical, too scattershot, and worst of all, not scary?"

And I will continue to say "Yes, I am."

Do I admit that your description of From Beyond the Grave, the Amicus Production's 1973 horror anthology, is reasonably to very accurate? Sure, I'll cop to that. The film is rated PG, keeps most of its violence off-screen, the "Elemental" story is far goofier than I might have led on, the stories aren't all consistently great, and yes, it's not creepy in the way that Tales from the Crypt is. On the other hand, may I refer you to my review of The House That Dripped Blood from this time last year.

These are all elements inherent to most anthology films: not just anthology films from the era (and specifically, most Amicus productions), but of the subgenre in general. I point you in the direction of Creepshow, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Trick 'r Treat, Tales from the Darkside, or Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. You'll find that with some consistency, every criticism lobbed at From Beyond the Grave is fair in each case.

What I love about anthology films is that not every story works, that the tone varies from graphic to goofy, and that sometimes the parts don't add up to the whole. And yet, I come back to them over and over again. It's the cinematic equivalent of a short story digest; if you don't like what's in front of you, the next one isn't far away, so just relax.

From Beyond the Grave is a lot like The House That Dripped Blood, save for a less successful consistency in tone, but the cast is game to make the stories that shouldn't work palatable, and the ones that do carry the weight for everything else.

Like that old review, let's do a breakdown of segments, all held together by a frame story featuring Peter Cushing as the Proprietor of Temptations Limited, an antique shop that sells innocuous seeming items with supernatural repercussions.

1. The Gatecrasher - David Warner plays an antique collector who swindles Cushing out of a mirror, only to discover that it hosts a particularly hungry ghost with a grave deal for his new partner in crime.

2. An Act of Kindness - Ian Bannen plays a ho-hum middle manager looking for more excitement in his life, and finds it when he steals a medal from Temptations, Ltd. and befriends Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasance), a street beggar. When he discovers that Underwood's daughter Emily (Angela Pleasance) dabbles in a bit of witchcraft, he gets more than he bargained for.

3. The Elemental - Ian Carmichael is a well-to-do businessman that switches the price tag on one of Cushing's snuffboxes, only to be warned by a clairvoyant Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) that he's picked up an "elemental," an invisible creature attracted to the pleasures of the flesh, on his shoulder. He ignores her, only to see the elemental's effects firsthand when it attacks his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). Can Madame Orloff successfully cast the creature out of their country home?

4. The Door - Ian Ogilvy buys an ominous looking door from Temptations, Ltd., only to discover that when he shuts and reopens it, his storage cabinet becomes an entrance to a massive blue room, one that may house a man who used the occult to draw victims into his "trap."

It's fair to note that the moral of From Beyond the Grave is "don't rip off Temptations, Limited," as the only character who isn't killed as a result of his visit to the shop lives because he paid in full for his door. Every other person who swindles the Proprietor ends up murdered, although not always in ways you might expect.

As a matter of fact, the second story, involving a stolen medal as a pretense for befriending an old soldier, doesn't head in the direction one would expect at all. Typically, in anthologies, the ironic twist is the plot du jour, and while "An Act of Kindness" does have a twist ending, it's not at all one you're going to see coming, even if you are paying attention.

The ending of "The Elemental" only falters because its grim tone follows the exaggerated Madame Orloff "casting out" sequence, which cannot be taken as anything but laughable. Had it been played like - and this is jumping forward quite a bit - a similar scene in Drag Me to Hell, there's a chance that the "twist" (which you can see coming a mile away) might be easier to accept.

Of the stories, "Gatecrashers" works the most, and benefits from the film's rather tame PG rating. Forced to keep most of the killings off-screen, director Kevin Connor settles on a slightly hallucinatory tone as David Warner sets about killing girls to "feed" the mirror spirit. That we don't see the first kill at all, and are only hinted to what actually happened later makes up for the unbelievable behavior on Warner's part in the middle of the story (would he really not change clothes, or wash the blood off of his hands?). The ending is suitably eerie, even if it's not hard to suss out where the story is heading.

From Beyond the Grave really suffers from the frame story, which never has the impact you hope it will. In part it's because "An Act of Kindness" and "The Elemental" really have nothing to do with what their respective protagonists take from Temptations, Ltd. The other factor (and it's a big one), is that Peter Cushing's kindly looking Proprietor has no sense of menace, of mischief, or really any presence at all until the film's coda, involving a thief that was casing the store all day. Cushing's make-up leaves him appearing older than he did four years later in Star Wars, and there's no real surprise to the "supernatural" - and undercooked - revelation about Temptations, Ltd. at the end of the film. By the time he addresses the audience directly (which isn't really new for Amicus), we're miles ahead of the "twist," so all that's left is the title card to end the film.

So, like most anthologies, From Beyond the Grave has the not-so-good, the pretty-good, and the entertaining-in-doses components. Sometimes it's a little silly, yes. It lacks a persistent tone of dread, unlike Tales from the Crypt or even The House That Dripped Blood, and it's not going to knock any gorehound's socks off. But taken on its own merits, I'd say From Beyond the Grave is as watchable as any anthology I've seen, and better than quite a few in the last twenty years or so.