5. The Skull (1965)
The Skull is a good old Amicus film production featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as well as Patrick Magee and Patrick Wymark. It is based on a short story by Robert Bloch - "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade". It is a mid 1960s British horror film which partially exists to show how powerful the legend of de Sade's evilness and corruption is. A phrenologist - Pierre - digs up the recently deceased corpse of the Marquis de Sade and removes his skull for analysis. He dies before the day is out in a horrible way off screen. In the present day, Christopher Maitland is offered de Sade's skull by an unscrupulous wheeler dealer type called Marco. Maitland is a a writer in everything esoteric but he knows that the skull belonged to his good friend Sir Matthew Phillips. Phillips wants no part of the skull as he narrowly escaped a nasty fate due to the skull. He warns Maitland against it. Marco is found dead at his lodgings in mysterious circumstances. Maitland takes the skull and ends up going mad and finally dying. One of Amicus's classier productions, The Skull really benefits from an excellent script written by Bloch and Milton Subotsky (one of the film's producers). The actors are fantastic - Peter Cushing in particular excels as Maitland. It is a stylish and intelligent film and if given any kind of decent money, it would be interesting to see how it would have turned out and the influence it may have had. But once again, the Best of British. In real life, de Sade's body was dug up and the cranium was removed for phrenologists to have a good gander at. It disappeared shortly after and its whereabouts have never been ascertained.