ESSAY: Who's S-S-Scared?: The Scooby Doo Gialli

The second issue of the Fang of Joy fanzine is hot of the presses (indeed, actual presses [of a sort] were involved this time!). Included within it, among fine pieces from Jose Cruz, Simon Wright, Brad Hogue, one Richard Glenn Schmidt, and many others, is a zine-exclusive essay by yours truly on a particular sub-subgenre of Italian horror-thrillers that I've christened The Scooby-Doo Gialli. Check out the first few paragraphs below and then watch a trailer I've prepared in order to get your further pumped up for your forthcoming purchase. (Is this the first time anyone has bothered to make a trailer for an essay? Is my pat on the back traveling through the post to me as we speak?):

"On Saturday morning, September 13th, 1969, American CBS stations aired “What a Night for a Knight,” the first episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The series would run for 25 episodes, concluding on Halloween of 1970. Each adventure more or less invariably found the meddling teens and gluttonous Great Dane of Mystery Incorporated breaking down in some remote American township and catching wind of a supernatural baddie haunting the area. After much spooking, munching, chasing, and sleuthing, the gang would discover that the supernatural villain of the week was no such thing: it was, instead, always a human in an elaborate costume, scheming towards some money-making human end.

Then, in the early-to-mid-1970s, several Italian and Spanish giallo horror-thrillers—with titles like The Red Queen Kills 7 Times, The Etruscan Kills Again, and Murder Mansion—employed a similar structure on the silver screen, incorporating faux-supernatural menaces into their convoluted plots as cover for nefarious inheritance schemes and psychosexual serial murder. Sure, you’d be hard pressed to spot a van full of adolescent gumshoes anywhere in these films, but the preponderance of red-haired leading ladies and sandy-maned, ascot-wearing pretty boys is certainly suspicious.

Was it merely a coincidence that these faux-supernatural gialli began cropping up immediately after Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! concluded its run on television?

Well, probably..."

Read more by purchasing Fang of Joy Issue #2 for a low, one-time payment of $6.

Shepperton Screams (Part XII): From Beyond the Grave (1974) dir. Ken Connor

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

GR: Having plundered the collected works of American frighteners Robert Bloch and Entertaining Comics to varying degrees of success, Amicus turned to the short stories of one of their fellow countrymen, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, to supply the sundry beasts and bloody bits for their next portmanteau feature, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974). Chetwynd-Hayes was a literary brother to Bloch in many ways, mainly in the manner in which he utilized stock genre tropes and seasoned them with black humor, though Chetwynd-Hayes lacked some of the sharpness in prose that Bloch demonstrated with his snap endings and biting dialogue, be it however laden with bad puns. Chetwynd-Hayes’ fiction was a bit jollier in comparison, but his stories were an ideal fit for Shepperton Studios, always eager as they were to leaven their grisly subjects with little winks and pokes at the audience.

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is especially notable for its expert art direction and inventive design. The film is filled with neat little camera transitions, a delicious color palette, and sumptuous sets. The screen becomes awash in hues of blue when the supernatural is present, showing us ghostly vistas of fog and skeletal trees as well as decadently decorated parlors of Gothic furniture festooned with dust and cobwebs. Even the most innocuous of decisions—letting a blood drop fall from a ceiling to fill the camera lens with red—add a significant amount of visual wit to the proceedings. The overall technical skill of FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is somewhat surprising when you take into account that this was director Kevin Connor’s very first film at the helm. Having worked previously as an editor and sound editor on a handful of features, it’s evident that Connor brought his expertise and that of cinematographer Alan Hume (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, STAR WARS: EPISODE VI – RETURN OF THE JEDI), art director Bert Davey (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, SUPERMAN III, ALIENS) and set decorator Simon Wakefield (BATMAN BEGINS, CASINO ROYALE, MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND) to the project to give us a very pretty-looking picture.

Sadly, the style seems to outweigh the substance here. As wonderfully macabre as all the knick knacks are, the stories themselves are not quite as memorable as one would hope. Whereas Bloch had his share of ingenious little plots—you could easily name them off as “That one with the head-eating cat” or “The one where those body parts came back to life” and have someone instantly recognize which one you’re talking about—Chetwynd-Hayes’ offerings run a little on the dry side and, had it not been for the engaging and fun tech work, might be completely forgettable. There’s at least one entry here that stands firmly on its own two legs as a singular horror fable while the others fall on the wayside. Two of them are practically interchangeable! But we’ll get to that in the bit.

The film’s wraparound segment involves a curiosity shop called Temptations Ltd. owned by the Proprietor (Peter Cushing), a quiet little man whose shop is packed to the brim with grim antiquities that would make any genre fan’s heart skip a beat. This uniting framework is used once more to promote the moral justice of the Amicus universe, though here the punishments seem quite disproportionate to the crimes of our characters. Instead of the murderers and sadists that we’ve seen before, the victims of otherworldly justice in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE are basically just a bunch of folks who are trying to skimp on paying the Proprietor the proper price for his artifacts. Whether it’s switching tags on the items or boorishly haggling for a lower rate, these folks find out that even if you’re nothing but a cheat in Amicusland, you’re screwed. It’s even wryly remarked that the film’s final customer, a young lad low on funds, still has to go through the hellish wringer before Cushing sees that he did in fact pay him the total and correct amount for his purchase. No one’s safe!

Speaking of which, I suggest that you step away from that iron maiden you’re eyeing there to give us your side of the story before ol’ man Cushing kicks us out for loitering.

NT: For me, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is the dark horse among the Amicus anthologies.

When we began preparing for these dialogues, I was surprised to realize that FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE existed. I’d previously seen every one of Amicus’s anthologies, and yet somehow this one had managed to elude my memory. Of course I fondly reminisced about the one in which Peter Cushing ran a curiosity shop, but, I thought, wasn’t that in THE VAULT OF HORROR? It was only while watching FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE—the production company’s (sorta) penultimate portmanteau—for the second time that faint recollections of the individual episodes began to flicker across my consciousness like the blue flame of a spooky séance candle. In my experience, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE began to resemble an Amicus-patented Vengeful Corpse: dead and long forgotten in my ignorance, the film was resurrected by a second viewing and crept its way inexorably into my den, eager as it was to unleash its delectable morbidity upon me once again.

In truth, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE might be my favorite Amicus film we’ve done thus far (though TORTURE GARDEN runs a close second). Why, then, had I almost completely forgotten about the film and all of the small, ghoulish treasures contained within? It’s difficult to say.

It’s not the fault of director Kevin Connor (MOTEL HELL) or the assembled cast and crew. As you’ve duly pointed out, this is an attractive film full of technical flourishes that set it apart from the usually quite static (if still attractive and appropriately atmospheric) Amicus visual style. The acting is on par with what we’re accustomed to in these bite-sized sketches of wicked souls, and we even a get few new welcome faces added to the roster who put in distinctive performances of their own (Donald and Angela Pleasence, David Warner). The score is effective, the sets are impeccable, and the production’s (most likely) miniscule budget was wrung dry. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE feels invigorated by its fresh but experienced creative talent behind the camera, unlike our last entry, THE VAULT OF HORROR, which gave the impression that Amicus was exhausted with (or perhaps had exhausted) the anthology format.

You’ve pointed towards the writing as a possible culprit for the film’s unmemorable status, but I’m not sure that I can agree. These four segments feel no more featherweight than any other segment we’ve seen in an Amicus portmanteau and— as you also note—they certainly express a similarly wry wit interspersing the bloodshed. The film’s longer than average running time might lead us call them quieter, more slow-burning tales in comparison to what we’re used to from Bloch and EC Comics by-way-of Milton Subotsky. Yet, I can’t think of a finale in the Amicus oeuvre more explosive than the one we witness in the final tale, “The Door.” Hell, even “The Elemental” jumps farther over the top than we’re accustomed to with its climactic living room windstorm. All four tales are recognizably Amicus material, and (I’d argue) they’re stronger than the majority of their peers.

So what is it about these tales, then, that prevents them from sticking? My best guess relates back to your remark about how two of these tales are essentially interchangeable (I’m guessing you’re referring to the first and the fourth). FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE presents a coherence that’s foreign to us anthology connoisseurs. Rather than being disparate tales plucked at random from an author’s collected works and crammed (however clumsily) into the confines of a frame narrative (looking at you, HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), these four tales are all of a piece. Each focuses around witchcraft, the occult, and the ancient supernatural evil that lurks in the cracks of the world (and within the cracks of various mundane antiques). These tales work together, revising each other’s basic themes and story content. This grouping of tales isn’t designed to be as attention-grabbing as we might expect (we’re not barreling swiftly from a story about a head-munching cat to a story about a murderous piano, after all), and thus they do tend to blend together in our minds. This is made especially apparent when, as you’ve said, two of the episodes only significantly differ in the identity of the haunted object and in the story’s final outcome. Even the film’s curious anthology format (which finds the film moving sequentially in time from the events of the frame narrative to the events of each tale without utilizing the conceits of flashbacks or visions of potential futures) encourages us to view the film as a cohesive unit, as a single chronological story rather than subdivided bits of horror fantasy. When we think of Amicus anthologies, we think of their wild variety of horror elements, their abandonment of consistent tone, and their tendency towards a disregard for internal coherence. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE possesses none of these attributes, and I can only imagine this is what left it underrated in my estimation until now.

Now, I’m going to go gaze into the beyond (courtesy of this nifty haunted mirror) while you give your further thoughts on these specific curiosities.

GR: As a matter of fact, I do agree with you in regards to the high amount of sturm und dang on display in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, as it truly is the most ferocious Amicus picture we’ve yet seen when it comes to scenery-destroying action. So why then, as you admit, does it leave such a foggy impression in the mind? Let’s see if we can find out.

“The Gate Crasher” is the first of our crackly tales, telling of the young Edward Charlton (David Warner) who purchases a gilded, antique mirror from Cushing’s store to enliven the atmosphere of his flat. It’s a great conversation starter, as it so proves when his friends are inspired by the spooky looking-glass to hold a séance. Afterward Edward is haunted by a Rasputin-like figure from the mirror-world who demands that Edward feed him blood. Because what else do ghosts do? Connor and company certainly start with their best foot forward here, as “The Gate Crasher” is the vignette in which they really let loose with those little flourishes I mentioned earlier. The séance scene is particularly notable, the blue flame of the candle dancing high like an angered wraith as the camera pans around the little table to each of the participants’ leery faces. When Warner is transported to the mirror-world in a dream, the primary color scheme and close camera angles recall the memorable, off-the-cuff night terror that Cushing himself suffered in the “Waxworks” episode of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970).

Even at its abbreviated length, “The Gate Crasher” comes close to feeling a little overlong, the narrative supported solely on our protagonist’s seemingly endless supply of plasma to his new, reflective friend. The bit with Warner knifing a prostitute is a cute little wink pointing towards his future turn as Jack the Ripper in TIME AFTER TIME (1979), though it is curious how, in his hypnotized state, Warner doesn’t bother cleaning up the sticky mess in his apartment yet makes it a point to dress in his pajamas before going to bed! The story becomes an intriguing parable of a man descending into the pit of addiction, as we see Charlton’s once handsome lodgings go to shambles and his healthy pallor transformed into a waxy, sickly countenance. The Face, as it is credited, is like a demonic monkey on Charlton’s back that constantly demands more hits of the juice it loves so much; as it so tellingly intones to him at one point, “You must feed me.” Charlton eventually becomes lost himself, a restless specter ready to plague the next foolish mortal to fall under the mirror’s hold. And if that’s too self-consciously high falutin’ for you, check out that bit when the Face, finally released from his prison, orders Charlton to take his own life with the instructions of “Grip my shoulders. Now thrust forward.” That naughty monkey!

The following story, “An Act of Kindness,” is probably the film’s high mark for a number of reasons. For one, it probably has the strongest sense of character and purpose of the lot, not to mention being the one that is perhaps the most cleverly and tightly plotted. I don’t say this merely because “An Act of Kindness” has a twist ending but because for the whole of its running time you are never entirely sure where it’s going to end up. It has a canny unpredictability that’s gripping to watch. Ian Bannen portrays Christopher Lowe, a by-all-means average man who tries to become just a little more than that in the eyes of a streetside ragman, Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasence). He does this by obtaining an honorary military medal from Temptations Ltd. and Pleasance duly offers Bannen his home and heart, not to mention the hospitality of his daughter Emily (Angela Pleasence). Not only are the Underwoods remarkably kind, they also know just how to alleviate Bannen of his nasty wife and apathetic child with a little brand of their own magic.

Or is that really the case? “An Act of Kindness” is a sneaky little number, and its general atmosphere (barring the wickedly cruel finale) seems like an anomaly compared to the wild and woolly haints and ghouls that inhabit the other stories. The second vignette derives its chills from more quietly shuddersome moments, like when the veiled and white-faced Emily stalks over Diana Dors as she sleeps, a gleaming knife in her hand. Angela Pleasence is wonderful here, even outshining her father a bit as the waifish girl whose toothy smile can inspire warmth and cold-blooded terror equally. “An Act of Kindness” feels more substantial for its tragic arc of events as well; when we see Bannen, we see the insignificant worker ant who only wishes to have some kind of importance to his fellow humans, so much so that he’s willing to lie about who he really is. He sees his own life as having so little merit that he must build up an alternate, more heroic personality just to receive some kind of warmth. He’s not trying to scam Cushing out of one of his antiquities just for the sake of material possession like the others. He needs the medal to become important. It’s this that makes his ultimate fate seem harsh. He was merely a stooge, a means to an end. Just as he was in life.

“The Elemental” makes it evident from its opening prologue that this segment is going to be the oft-dreaded (but generally not too terrible) “funny” one. Think “Golf Story” from DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) or “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” from CREEPSHOW (1982). Cushing indulges in a little humor himself when he tells customer Reginald Warren (Ian Carmichael) upon making his purchase “I hope you enjoy snuffing it.” Because Warren has bought a snuff box, you see. Apparently the little case is bedeviled, as Warren finds out when he is pestered by a spiritualist named Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton, channeling Aunt Bedelia) on the train ride home. The woman claims that Warren has an elemental perched on his shoulder, a mischievous demon that proceeds to make his life a living hell. Fairly stumped by his supernatural quandary, Warren calls on Orloff to help him exterminate the pest.

Most of this story’s humor stems from Leighton’s fruity turn as the cat-lady-as-exorcist Orloff. Her wavering, eccentric tone is matched by her brassy expletives such as when she commands the elemental to “Get out, ya bastard!” Leighton has quite a few lines that tickle the ribs due to the earnestness with which she delivers them, like when she describes the demon feeding off its victims’ energy (“Sucking up the fluids like a babe at his mother’s breast”) or the evil’s magnetism to Warren’s wife Susan (“She’ll attract them like flies to a dung heap!”). A disquieting moment occurs in the middle of the program when Warren’s familiar coyishly tickles Susan in bed only to start strangling her. The scene is rather unsettling in its own small way, though the sight of Nyree Dawn Porter struggling with her invisible attacker and her race to the bathroom as she retches at the poltergeist’s awful stench will certainly provoke some laughter. The exorcism finale is a pretty crackerjack set piece, as Orloff bellows her commands as pillows burst in an eruption of goose-feathers and a ghostly wind nearly tears the house right out of the ground. Its played-for-cereal ending is just a tad ludicrous though, as we see the now-possessed Porter strike down her hubby with a poker (déjà vu…) only to break down the front door with superhero flair as she exits into the night. “The Elemental” has such an odd mixture of terror and triviality that the moments when it plays for laughs feel more and more off-kilter and weird the more you think about them. This is perhaps epitomized no more succinctly than in another “context is everything” chestnut that Orloff offers on par with the Face’s orders from “The Gate Crasher”: “His main objective is to get inside you.”

Our final selection for the evening is pretty much simplicity personified in both title and content. It’s a weird fairy tale called “The Door” in which happy couple William and Rosemary Seaton (Ian Ogilvy and Lesley Ann-Down) acquire an ornate, Gothic stone door from Cushing’s shop to use it as the entryway to a pantry (!) in their home. When Rosemary fancifully imagines the door opening to a more dramatic space, William discovers that it does just that, as his meagre shelves are replaced with a sapphire-hued parlor of the previous century. Not only that, but it is the room of the dreaded Sir Michael Sinclair (Jack Watson), a depraved aristocrat who spent his sordid life immersing himself in the study of evil. And you can bet your ascot that Sir Michael is not resting easily now that the portal to his realm has been opened.

You were correct in your guesstimation that my earlier comment about the interchangeable stories was referring to “The Gate Crasher” and “The Door,” seeing as how they both deal with two different kinds of gateways that grant access to vampiric men of the past who terrorize the modern worlds of their young protagonists. They act as interesting companion pieces though, as the former shows our hero giving in to the power of darkness where the character from the latter tale hacks it to pieces with a battle axe. As pale as it might be as a reworking of the Bluebeard tale, “The Door” certainly grabs one’s attention with more adept technical skill and bombast. Light and darkness are used to good effect when William reads Sinclair’s journal, the implications of his sacrilegious acts made by the dancing shadow of a crucifix on the wall, and Sinclair’s own entrance is quite creepy as we initially see him only as a raggedly-breathing shadow before he is revealed for the bewigged bogey that he is. Once in the light, Sinclair becomes a regular cackling villain when he sweeps the fainted Rosemary off her feet, snickering to William as the lad tries to stop him “Two souls are better than one!” Enthusiasts of performers such as Tod Slaughter will surely get a kick out of that. And the segment ends on a real blood-and-thunder note as William lays waste to the evil door, the carvings oozing plasma and causing Sinclair to collapse like a heap of sticks. I especially liked how William’s blows on the door’s hinges apparently caused Sinclair’s spine to break in two! A small amount of cleverness and a rarely-seen happy ending make “The Door” stand out, but amongst its fellows it may seem like it’s retreading ground we’ve literally just seen. But, to be fair, typing all my thoughts out has actually made this story rise in my estimation. What’s up with that? Maybe I just have a thing for bloodsuckers in curly period wigs.

Okay, I think somebody better bash my head with a poker before I babble on any more than I have. Even this little sprite on my shoulder is pissed off at me now.

NT: If only that little gremlin had stopped you sooner: For the most part, you’ve summed up my exact feelings about each of these witchy tales. I could stare long and hard into the blue candle flame and try to drudge up some further interpretations from the beyond, but why bother? Amicus anthology tales are slight by design. All I shall offer are a few stray observations about these tales before moving on to place the final nail in this flick’s coffin.

I find “The Gate Crasher” to be a rather wonderful witch’s brew of horror subgenres. Part psycho-slasher (David Warner’s murder of prostitutes brings us into seedier territory than we’re used to); part ghost story (a séance and a haunted mirror, even if this mirror doesn’t give the ones from THE BOOGEYMAN (1980) or OCULUS (2014) much competition); part LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) master/slave dynamic (yes, to Warner the ghost mirror commands, “Feed me!”); and part Lovercraftian tale of cosmic coercion (we learn that the mirror leads to a shadowy beyond of immortality and ultimate power, and that those who occupy this nether realm “are Legion.” The implication may be Satanic, but the details seem to point towards a horror far grander). I think the problematic homosexual undertones you’ve picked up on are on point: sure, the mirror man tries out the blood of women, but it’s ultimately the blood of Warner and his effeminate, cat-toting downstairs neighbor that return him to a corporeal state. Warner himself seems to be dealing with similar feelings of sexual confusion (recall, he’s unwilling to get all pointed and thrusty with his presumed galpal, Pamela). We can only hope that one day the masses become a little more understanding of other people’s lifestyles, enabling Warner and his extra-dimensional pals to come out of the ghost mirror.

“An Act of Kindness” is certainly the film’s best tale, for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. The segment captures in its characterization of Christopher Lowe (Ian Bannen) a depth, subtlety, and pathos rarely angled for in these roughly twenty minute long Amicus short films. But, yes, every scene is enlivened by the waifish, ghostly presence of Angela Pleasence. Her filmography is sparse, but those who have witnessed her in films like this and Jose Ramon Larraz’s SYMPTOMS (1974) aren’t soon to forget her. Her unsettling, improvised, nearly tuneless rendition of a creepy lullaby (which includes the charming and reassuring line, “eaten by worms in the cold wet earth”) while doing absent-minded chores around the house is going to rear up in one of my nightmares someday, I just know it.

When considered among to the other (quote unquote) funny episodes of prior Amicus anthologies (I’m thinking “Voodoo” from DR. TERROR or “Bargain in Death” from VAULT OF HORROR),  “The Elemental” is assuredly a cut or two above. I believe I chuckled a few times, thanks to the insuppressible Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton), so that’s something. For me, the ultimate success of this segment rests upon its POLTERGEIST-y climax, all sound, fury, and living room windstorms. The image of a possessed Susan (Nyree Dawn Porter) bursting out through the front door like She-Hulk in the final shot will never cease to strike a spark of amusement in me. Or perhaps that’s just the elemental perched on my shoulder pulling at my cheeks?

And despite its niggling impression of “been-there-done-that-literally-half-an-hour-ago,” I quite love “The Door.” Allow me to count the reasons: 1.) the absurdity of a grandiose antique door being installed on the hinges of a stationary pantry, 2.) said stationary pantry (who has ever even heard of such a superfluous thing?) doubling as a time travel portal, 3.) the sheer brutality of the drawn out final conflict in which the door and its demon get the butt of an ax handed to them, and 4.) the revised ending in which one of our victims is allowed to escape through good behavior, producing the cleverest sting in the tail we’ve had yet.

Again, if you average them out, I’d have no hesitation placing FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE near the very top of the Amicus canon. It’s lively, creative, provocative, well-acted, well-shot: a real devil of an anthology. I still wonder, then, why it so quickly faded from my memory. If I were to disregard the influence of its supremely unmemorable title, I might hazard that part of the reason is portmanteau fatigue. When I first viewed the Amicus anthologies several years ago, I tackled them all in short succession. By the time I arrived at this, their seventh anthology, I suppose I’d had enough of anthologies altogether. During our Shepperton Screams series, I’ve again made short order of them due to our schedule, and, believe me, I’ve felt the effects of this bombardment. I think there’s only so much anthologizing a poor elemental soul can take. Let’s agree to move on to redder pastures, shall we? Let’s see that if it’s at this late point in Amicus’s brief life that the screaming truly starts…

Next week: And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)

Shepperton Screams (Part V): Torture Garden (1967) dir. Freddie Francis

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's second horror anthology, TORTURE GARDEN (1967). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

NT: If I may be so bold: this week's film, TORTURE GARDEN (1967), is the first perfect Amicus horror film. I don't mean to imply that the film is a flawless vehicle for classic English cinematic frights (it's close, but it's not); rather, I'm saying that Amicus's fifth horror outing is the first to achieve the delicate balance of humor and terror, of gore and smirks, and of self-awareness and pulpy earnestness that would come to typify the best of Amicus's work as a production company. And though it's not as frequently lauded as its descendants, I'd eagerly rank TORTURE GARDEN among those best. Diverse yet thematically unified, cheeky and decidedly wicked, this is the horror anthology par excellence.

Director Freddie Francis and screenwriter Robert Bloch return yet again to Amicus's fold, and each throws down his finest effort to date. This is a well-crafted piece, swift and deliberate in execution, making cuts so fine they're difficult to feel until the blood starts running. And with a cast featuring Peter Cushing, Jack Palance, and Burgess Meredith (in full-bore Penguin mode), the film has the palpable grandeur of a prestige project, which Amicus hadn't managed to pull of since THE SKULL (1965) and which helps the film look and feel expensive (even if it wasn't).

TORTURE GARDEN also rests on one hell of a wraparound segment. Amicus would go on to pull off weirder and more memorable set-ups for the anthology conceit in THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970), ASYLUM (1972), and THE MONSTER CLUB (1980), but TORTURE GARDEN's carnival show/neural time travel act is my favorite. I adore its bizarre, disjointed blending of religious mythologies (why, pray tell, is the Christian devil aided by a Greek goddess?) and its defiant glorification of low entertainment (Satan spends his days on Earth as a carnival barker). Burgess Meredith as the flamboyant, fake mustache-weraing, eyeliner-smudged Dr. Diabolo is a marvel to behold, and his admission that his act is solely for kicks-- though it risks him losing out on a few meaty souls-- creates for Amicus the freewheeling, blue (or perhaps red) collared master of ceremonies that it deserves.

In our discussion of Amicus's prior anthology, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1964), we (or, more specifically, I) griped about that film's tendency towards feeling like an arbitrary assortment of stock horror elements. TORTURE GARDEN appears to operate in a similarly desultory fashion-- we have stories about a head-devouring witch cat, a cabal of glitzy Hollywood cyborgs, a jealous sentient piano, and Edgar Allan Poe's reanimated and overworked ashes-- yet the film possesses a thematic integrity binding its multifarious parts together. DR. TERROR had normal, likable folks running afoul of random supernatural nastiness, and thus its series of droll comeuppances held an air of gloominess about them; TORTURE GARDEN, in contrast, fills its ranks with deplorable (if perhaps perversely charming) rogues, making their imagined fates all the sweeter while binding the varied tales together through a shared sense of Evil Ambitions being foiled. There is even (by Satan's tongue) a whiff of satire in the blasted thing. I'd like to speak about each of the tales with specifics, but for the moment I'll turn it over to you for your general impressions. Were you as wooed as I by Atropos's dazzling threads?

GR: Here, here! They say that practice makes perfect, and Amicus proves that for a studio that people might have taken for granted as a low-rent Hammer (then and now) they were more than capable—and successful in the case of TORTURE GARDEN (1967)—in creating their own patented formula that no one else could claim. The film is the first to perfectly embody that macabre mix of biting black humor and ghoulish horror that had been the legacy of the genre anthology since the time of radio programs like LIGHTS OUT and INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES. It’s interesting to note that, on the whole, all of the studio’s solo efforts thus far (THE SKULL, THE PSYCHOPATH, and THE DEADLY BEES) strove for a feeling of genuine and respectable suspense while bypassing any winking humor whatsoever, the kind of films that their contemporaries were making. That free-wheeling giddiness that we see crop up in so many of Amicus’ portmanteau films is sadly absent in their single-story films, at least intentionally. It’s that essential spark that brings the creepy clockworks of TORTURE GARDEN to vivid life.

And TORTURE GARDEN lets us know right from the start that it’s here to show us a good time. What better visual representative do you need for that theme than the tantalizing cry of the carnival barker, here the irrepressible Burgess Meredith as Dr. Diabolo, to lure you in to the dark den of entertainments on hand? If Cushing’s reserved Dr. Schreck (one can’t help but wonder if him and Diabolo have a practice together) was too mild for your tastes, than Meredith’s portrayal is sure to satisfy your sugar tooth because he’s wickedly sweet as the clotheshorse doctor, relishing in every grave warning and enticement and looking like an old dandy the whole time. Diabolo’s secreted spookhouse room seems like it would be more fitting of the DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS title—definitely more appropriate than a deck of cards anyway—but the central gimmick Bloch uses here to weave the characters’ potential futures is an ingenious one, as you’ve mentioned. Here we see the “multiple threads” idea we discussed in regards to DR. TERROR brought to literal life, beautifully and simply illustrating how the characters are all hanging at the edge of a moral precipice where all it takes is a quick snip of the steel shears to send them screaming down into the pit.

That also brings to my mind the somewhat unconventional nature of Diabolo’s storytelling session. We find out shortly after the first tale concludes that what the characters are seeing are only prospective fortunes and will only occur if they continue pursuing their latent, dark desires. So Diabolo becomes, in spite of his devilishness, almost a guardian angel of sorts, warning the humans away from the wicked path. He’s essentially saving their souls, very unlike Satan to do based on the popular conceptions we’ve seen of him. So Diabolo’s funhouse basically becomes one of those “hell houses” that Christian groups run around Halloween to show their guests how poor life decisions can ultimately lead to fire and brimstone. I think the Bloch estate is overdue some royalty checks!

I think one of the main reasons that the tales in TORTURE GARDEN seem so much more unified and whole is because they were culled from established, published sources, short stories that had seen their premiere in magazines that Bloch adapted himself. These yarns had already been once around the block (bloch?), so to speak, so they have a level of sophistication that Subotsky’s rough, off-the-cuff pastiches from DR. TERROR don’t possess. This is the first time that Amicus has presented us with an anthology that boasts stories that have a real fullness to them, some more than others. And with that, I think this is a good spot to turn it back over to you so that we may discuss all those sinful little threads in more detail.

NT: And what prickly threads they are.

Amicus slops on its first genuine bucket of gore in the anthology's initial segment, "Enoch," which concerns the peculiar dietary habits of a witch's long-entombed feline familiar. We learn that this beautiful tortoiseshell kitty cat, Balthazar, eats human heads, and thus the segment's climax finds a decapitated (decatitated?) corpse proudly displayed on screen. A handful of years after BLOOD FEAST (1963) broke certain grisly barriers of acceptable screen depictions of cartoony violence, Amicus follows suit, in spirit if not in extremity: we see that it's going to be a goofy, gory road for the production company from here on.

Therefore, "Enoch" stands as a fine introduction to Amicus's new and improved aesthetic and tonal limits, as it revels in its own devilish conceits and the cheaply thrilling visual efforts used to sell them. It is, obviously, not easy to convince your audience to fear a pretty kitty, even if he's of the mind-controlling and brain-eating variety, and so the filmmakers don't bother. Rather, they wring the concept for every last drop of bloody fun, falling back on over-the-top extreme zooms, close-ups on whiskers, and auditory cat howl psychic blasts to heighten the aura of cinematic sensationalism that pervades the piece. The always irascible Michael Bryant (see: THE STONE TAPE [1972]) is great here as the ruthless nephew who can only utter a short "Damn" under his breath when his cruel game of Medicine Keep-Away results in the death of his unbeloved uncle, and he performs well otherwise considering he's acting against a cat in most scenes. In a way, we can read this segment as a parable about the sacrifices of cat ownership. We enter into a psychic agreement with our felines stating that they'll give us gold coins of companionship and entertainment, but in return we have to clean up their sanguinary messes. This parable also underlines a concept learned by every cat owner sooner or later: your cat actually owns you, and he's not afraid to bite your head off if you displease him.

The film's second segment, "Terror Over Hollywood," is the film's weakest on the level of narrative (the circumstances that lead to our anti-heroine discovering the robot conspiracy are so ludicrous as to be distracting: Hollywood hoods assassinating a top motion picture star-- or was it his double!?), but the film's satire is exquisite. It imagines a world not unlike our own, in which celebrities sacrifice their organic physical forms to stay at the top of their youth-obsessed business for longer (if not forever). It's easy to see the cyborg bodies of the segment's characters as akin to the plastic surgery-addled bodies of our seemingly ageless celebrities. The episode underlines the crushing pathos of the sort of desperation that would lead one to become, as the film puts it, "a living doll" that eschews love and a normal bodily existence for a perpetually successful career. It's telling that the segment's ending, in which our aspiring starlet Carla (Beverly Adams) actually succeeds in her goal of achieving stardom by being converted into a cyborg, is unambiguously coded as horrific. Pity those actors who refuse to accept the twilight of a career.

Between the final two segments, "Mr. Steinway" and "The Man Who Collected Poe," it's a real toss-up as to which emerges as my favorite of the entire anthology. Do I favor mean-spirited animate grand pianos or a fidgety Jack Palance as an obsessed collector of literary ephemera? Don't make me choose.

The appeal of "Mr. Steinway" is obvious. Euterpe, the gorgeous Music Goddess-possessed piano belonging to musician Leo Winston (John Standing, of THE PSYCHOPATH [1966]), is the film's most audacious (and best) supernatural creation. An evil, envious piano that pushes its owner's lover out of a window while it humorously plays Chopin's "Funeral March"?: be still my heart. Beyond the joy derived from observing this delightful absurdity in action, the episode also acts as an exaggeration of the perennial conflict between a person's love for another human being and the passion that person holds for an activity or object. When Dorothy (Barbara Ewing) enters Leo's life as a romantic partner, she is almost immediately perturbed by the amount of time he spends playing music with Euterpe when compared to the amount of time he devotes to her. (Granted, she is the sort of person who gifts framed pictures of herself to others, so a certain self-centered quality is to be expected.) Dorothy then tries her best to possess Leo by extricating him from the pull of his possession, but of course his piano possession is possessed and possessive of Leo, too, and not willing to give him up without a fight. It's all very clever when you spell it out. The message here: don't stand between your lover and his passion/possession.

Lastly, "The Man Who Collected Poe" returns us to the perversity of the impulse to collect and the rivalries such a hobby breeds, as previously highlighted by Bloch in THE SKULL (1965). There's much to adore here, too: the antiquarian convention, Peter Cushing acting drunk, the manuscripts for "House of the Worm" and "Arthur Gordon Pym 2," and the notion of Poe's reanimated corpse entombed in an almost "Amontillado"-esque fashion and forced to write for all eternity. As delectable as all of these elements are, none hold a Gothic candle flame to Jack Palance's performance, which ranks among the best I've ever seen from the incomparable actor. He plays collector Ronald Wyatt as a nervous, sweating, constantly squirming fiend with a pained grin perpetually etched onto his skull. He does more with his performance to diagnose collecting as a sort of mania than Bloch's script does, and imbues the segment with a frenetic energy not felt elsewhere in the film, which serves to ramp the film up nicely to a skin-blistering conclusion.

Would you rank these tales similarly?

GR: “Enoch” just may be the messiest vignette from the Amicus fold, at least the one that comes immediately to my mind, but it keeps from delving into H.G. Lewis-level intestinal juggling by merely suggesting the horrible thing that has just taken place with a little flash of garish stage blood. The entire story is actually rather restrained when you think about it; we are dealing with a demonic feline whose main diet consists of human craniums. It’s hard to imagine a contemporary film taking this very silly idea quite as seriously as Bloch, Francis, and company manage to. This could be said of the other tales as well, particularly “Mr. Steinway.” It’s this strong conviction to the material and to the idea of making the events genuinely frightening and unsettling that makes TORTURE GARDEN such a treat. Meredith may be a bright-eyed pygmy in the wraparound segment, but the stories within the film have none of his self-winking style and are all the more strong for it. Mind you, Meredith is a pure delight as Diabolo, but I think the creative team chose wisely to eschew any in-jokes and tongue-in-cheek mannerisms when spinning these wondrous threads for us.

I like too how “Enoch” utilizes the old “black sheep nephew” trope. It reminded me of “The Cemetery” segment from NIGHT GALLERY (1969), though Michael Bryant is decidedly icier than Malcom McDowell’s fruity deviant. His terror is keenly realized when facing down the glowing eyes of Balthazar, who must win an award for cuddliest-looking monster to ever crawl out of a coffin. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought that I “remembered” that Balthazar was given a menacing voice that he used to communicate telepathically with Bryant.

As we saw that was definitely not the case, and despite what I said about TORTURE GARDEN thankfully not doing anything self-deprecating, I mean, how freaking adorable would it be to see that fluffy little guy sitting in an armchair and mentally intoning “I am Balthazar, devourer of worlds and destroyer of socks.”? I did find myself laughing out loud when Bryant turns from having just skewered the hobo to see Balthazar toss the gold coins at his feet as a reward for his services. Say what you will about witch’s familiars, but they do have an intrinsic knowledge of the token system.

Away from the rural squalor of dark witchcraft we’re whisked away to the glitzy world of film and fame with the next tale, “Terror Over Hollywood.” You’re correct in saying that this one suffers from not being quite thought out enough (why do the robotized actor and producer order food knowing full well they can’t eat it when they could have just not gotten anything without arousing Clara’s suspicion?), but the main purpose here seems to be satirizing the superficiality of the Hollywood scene (I love the completely unnecessary but entirely welcome addition of the entertainers encased inside a Christmas snow globe at the glamorous restaurant and the overall jazzy, noirish Tinsel Town feel that is all Bloch).

To be honest I don’t think that theme was explored quite as much as it could have been to really sell the idea that the people who become these soulless automatons were already that way to begin with; now they just have the benefit of an eternal, mechanized body. Perhaps if our wicked little starlet was given an intimate peek into the surgical process and, in spite of turning away at its gruesomeness, welcomed it with open arms, the horror of her insatiable hunger would ring all the clearer. That is essentially what occurs at the tale’s climax, but this jars with Diabolo’s exhibition in which the characters are exposed to futures that are meant to be terrible to them. Clara’s wish is horrifically realized in her tale, like that of the other characters, but she is still allowed an existence in which she lives out her greatest dream.

Also: “Mike Charles!”

Man, can John Standing ever catch a break at Amicus? He just got done trying to wrestle himself free from his crippled mother’s grasp and the den of the deadly dolls in THE PSYCHOPATH (1966), and now he has to contend with a demanding agent (Ursula Howells, the wolf-wife from DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS [1964]), a needy girlfriend (Barbara Ewing), and a great grand piano that is possessed with the soul of his deceased mother (playing herself). One idea that struck me during “Mr. Steinway” was that, despite this being Ewing’s story, the real victim at the center here is Standing as concert pianist Leo Standing. He’s being in pulled in all directions by these powerful female figures in his life (four if you count his dead mother and the piano as two exclusive entities). The piano is even personified as a goddess, Euterpe to be exact, the heavenly mistress of music. And there he is yet again, left alone in a dark room to contemplate the horrible things that have just transpired and what his life has now become like he was at the conclusion of THE PSYCHOPATH. And I loved the climax of this tale as well. I chucked at the sight (and sound) of the piano trapping Ewing in the room as it played its mournful dirge, but I was actually quite impressed with how truly menacing Francis managed to make the scene with those leering shots of those bone-white keys. Like that vengeful instrument, Francis attacks the scene head-on and keeps pushing until a falling scream seems like the only natural reaction.

And who can’t relate to “The Man Who Collected Poe” on one level or another? The desire to catalog and categorize every facet of a treasured figure’s life is the passion of the rabid collector, to the point that one becomes like Cushing’s antiquarian, practically living a replica of his idol’s life, even having articles of his clothing displayed proudly in his old house. And of course Poe specifically has that mystique already surrounding him given the tortured quality of his life and the grim nature of his famous works, so he’s an ample choice for speculation (and speculative fiction). There are some slightly silly moments from this segment that are used in service of the story; I like especially how Cushing basically tells Palance “My grandfather was a body snatcher AND a warlock.” As if his staggering collection wasn’t impressive enough!

I actually didn’t quite warm to Palance’s performance as much as you did. It’s true that he’s got a nice, barely contained frenzy and slight insidiousness that’s always bubbling under the surface, but my main problem was that I could see him thinking the entire time, like a dancer focusing too hard on his next move. Some actors assume their roles so easily that every little inflection and gesture seems like a natural, liquid movement. Palance has done that elsewhere, but not here. I feel like he was too brusque for the English crowd. It sounded like he was trying to affect a British accent (I honestly couldn’t tell if he was supposed to unless there was a detail I missed), but he just ends up sounding whispery. But he really does perform admirably, even if I’m not completely sold on the end result. The finale with Palance confronting the shuttered Poe in the hatch of skeletal remains is gold though. Old Edgar has become his own Valdemar, eking out a pitiful excuse of an existence under the whim of an obsessed keeper. His evil cackle that rings out as the roaring flames of Hell rise up to consume Palance is the perfect note of sardonic doom to tie this bundle of chillers up.

I will say too that the ending of our wraparound proves amusing in its own right. We get to see the ever reliable Michael Ripper (last seen in these parts as the gruff but lovable barkeep from THE DEADLY BEES [1967]) use Atropos’ handy shears to run Diabolo through, to the horror of the other carnival-goers. Only after they’ve left do we find out this was a final push for the guests to turn to lives of do-gooding, as Ripper was merely a stooge acting out a part for Diabolo. When he said that he was going to go back outside to get ready for the next performance, my reaction was “Umm, how about get arrested?” Did our frightened guests on their new journey on the path of morality forget to report the brutal stabbing that just took place to the nearest bobby? So much for leading the upstanding life. But Meredith brings the diabolical cheer back up when he turns to the camera with black horns and stache to ask us if we would pass his little test. It’s a nice little “Hee hee!” moment that gets us right back on the track to giddy horror.

NT: In conclusion, I'll respectfully disagree with one of your above comments. Or, more like "respectfully complicate." You argue that the success of TORTURE GARDEN's individual segments rests upon the seriousness with which they treat their often ludicrous concepts. I think this is partially true. I agree that what the film doesn't do is present these segments and their silly sentient pianos and telepathic cats as objects of farce, ridiculing the very notion of cinematic horror. And that's certainly for the best: I'm sure we're all well aware of the spotty track record out-and-out horror-comedies have had over the decades. But what doesn't totally jibe with me is the idea that these segments, unlike Diabolo's wraparounds, aren't on some level winking or grinning in our direction. As evidenced by several moments we've pointed out (Euterpe's funeral dirge, Balthazar's coin tossing, Cushing's drunk confessions), there's a certain self-awareness running underneath each of the film's four segments, infecting them with a droll, self-deprecating humor that allows us to accept the cheeky absurdities while reveling in their earnest presentations. As it goes, we laugh at the film not as much as we laugh with it. And this style of lighthearted self-awareness will only be amplified in our next go-around, when things go (at least partially) meta in a house that bleeds...

Next week: THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1971)

Shepperton Screams (Part II): The Skull (1965) dir. Freddie Francis

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's first standalone horror film, THE SKULL (1965). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

GR: So here we are a year on from Amicus' premiere with DR. TERROR and already things are looking fairly more polished. The company's sophomore effort, THE SKULL (1965), gets the gourd rolling right from the start when we fade in on that lovely studio-constructed graveyard set. The wind wails, the spades heave the ebony dirt hither and yon, and the moldy remains in the cracked casket are revealed to us in all their rotted gory. Erm, glory. This is quite the change of pace from when Freddie Francis took the reins for Amicus' first romp. It's incredibly stylized and darkly moody while simultaneously popping from the screen with retro-hot colors. As you mentioned in your own review, this is at odds with the stately and earth-hued Gothic architecture from Hammer and more in line with the vibrant hues of the Italians.

All of this perfectly sets the tone for the creepy opening where we see one of the eager gravediggers sever the corpse's head and take it home to give it an acid dip in his bathtub (without the use of any gloves!). We also get an all-too-brief glimpse into the world of grim antiquarians, including our hero Peter Cushing and his friendly rival Christopher Lee, who gamely bid to acquire all manner of horrible artifacts including a nice set of stone demons that would look great as a centerpiece on my dining room table. I kinda wish that this aspect of the story might have been explored just a little bit more, with some loving detail given to all the leafy-paged grimoires and hoary torture devices that adorned Cushing's home, in the same way that Polanski captured a similar world in THE NINTH GATE (1999). But enough about the movie that THE SKULL isn't. 

Speaking of antiquarians though, I was mildly surprised to see an addition that Subotsky had made to the story that was absent from Bloch's original yarn. The fact that Maitland, Cushing's character, has a devoted and loving wife is a subtle but fairly subversive--in its own way--change to the general depiction for this type of character. Just think of the collectors and historians from the stories of Lovecraft and James; romantic interests were about as common as happy endings in those tales. A marriage was all the more rare, if one ever existed at all. Not only that but, unless I missed it, I don't think we see Mrs. Maitland comment in any way on her husband's unorthodox interests.  

You would think that Subotsky would make her the "voice of reason" that the audience could find a line of sympathy with (maybe by making her say something like "I just don't understand how you enjoy all of these ghastly things" or something equally cliche), but she's loving and understanding all the way through. She stays up late worrying about where he's been and escorts odious guests like Marco into her home with nary a question. I don't mean to point this out as a way of saying "Good! That's how them wimmens should be treating their husbands!" but just to voice my surprise that, in the world of this story, Mrs. Maitland is willing to accept her husband and his proclivities because she cares for him that much. Even though he has a withered Hand of Glory hanging in his library, he's still her partner. 

Did you notice anything similar in watching all the skullduggery on hand?

NT: THE SKULL feels like the sort of film that would have been produced at the height of a production company's success, when those talents and bankrollers involved felt both skilled and financially solvent enough to experiment with the established genre formulas of the era, striving towards a new approach to horror storytelling. This is the type of film that Hammer wouldn't have made until 1972. Yet THE SKULL was only Amicus's fifth film production overall, and released a scant six months after their first horror outing, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965), arrived on British screens. As you've noted, the narrative and aesthetic transformations that take place between DR. TERROR and this film are remarkable, all the more so considering that THE SKULL is led by the same creative team of director Freddie Francis and screenwriter Milton Subotsky. Credit can of course be given to cinematographer John Wilcox (whose inspired shots place an unusual-for-the-time emphasis on visual storytelling and cause the film to resemble a hallucinatory, expressionistic silent for extended periods) and Robert Bloch (whose story, "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade" (1945), Subotsky adapted for the screenplay), but it's clear that Francis and Subotsky worked to correct many of the flaws present in their first collaboration. Consequently, THE SKULL is assured, focused, and deliberate, unfurling its skull-centric horrors possessed with the confidence that we'll follow along with its surreal, ever-so-slightly perverse thrills. I'm glad you agree with the point I made in my earlier review of the film that THE SKULL feels far more continental than proper English: it's the nightmare Mario Bava would have after watching a Hammer marathon.

Having read Bloch's story in preparation for this viewing of the film, I also noticed a smattering of peculiar adaptational choices Subotsky made in his script. For instance, in its major plot points the script hews closely to the source text, but it diverges significantly in its characterization of Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing). As you point out, Maitland (in text and film) is derived from a long tradition of occult antiquarians, of which M. R. James's perpetually nerdy, library-dwelling bachelors are perhaps the finest examples. Bloch's story takes pains to demonstrate the perversity of such an occupation and lifestyle by drawing attention to the skin-crawling wrongness of finding it "nice" to possess a book bound in a woman's skin, as Maitland himself does. This is an interesting emphasis, as Bloch uses it to draw some faint parallels between the explicit sadism of the Marquis de Sade and Maitland's latent but unexpressed sociopathy. In the film, Subotsky revises Maitland into a character who is merely possessed by the titular skull's demonically persuasive forces, and thus we lose this sense of his own quiet, independent derangement.

And yet when combined with the fact that the cinematic Maitland also possesses a wife, this alteration on Subotsky's part proves more interesting, though I'd argue it's less subversive than you claim. True, Mrs. Maitland's seemingly blind acceptance of her husband's bizarre and time-consuming hobby (does Maitland even have a job?) is a refreshing alternative to the "nagging shrew" wife stereotype we're gifted in most other horror films. But the fact that Mrs. Maitland is by and large a non-presence in the film is revealing as to her function as a moral fixture rather than as an autonomous character. I think what is made apparent by their little shared screen time is that Maitland and his wife lead separate lives, and that their marriage (for whatever it's worth) is a union of holy chastity (as evidenced by their separate bedrooms, of course). If we want to get all psychoanalytical (and why wouldn't we when dealing with a film featuring a floating skull as its primary antagonist?), it's not difficult to see the skull's urging of Maitland to skewer his wife with a pointy phallic knife as an expression of his sexual desires turned sadistic due to constant frustration, and-- similarly-- it's easy to read the fact of a crucifix repelling the possessed Maitland as a symbol of the conservative affirmation of the denial and shaming of sexual impulse. Add to this that Maitland is then fatally punished for his desires at the film's conclusion (despite his obvious renouncement of them), and we've got a moral message akin to "keep your private thoughts (and private parts) to yourself." And what, pray tell, is subversive about that?

GR: I think Amicus took a pretty daring bet by choosing as the source of their second genre effort a fairly obscure short story that was originally printed in WEIRD TALES by Robert Bloch, who at the time of this adaptation was still riding on the success of PSYCHO and all the similar killer thrillers that it spawned in its wake. Bloch's tale is straightforward in its design, as is the film. There aren't too many deviations to speak of (barring the ones we've mentioned), and the only way that Bloch's story differs in tone is that it is unabashed in its lurid horrors and purple-hued prose whereas THE SKULL retains that proper British attitude while indulging in small but delicious dips into the surreal. The wildest episode from Bloch's story is the dream sequence. In the film it's beautifully realized as something like an episode from an absurdist play with two dark-suited men collecting Maitland from his house without explanation only to take him to a silent room where a grave judge forces him to play a round of Russian roulette. It's a fantastic sequence; Cushing's sweaty-lipped terror is palpable as the click of an empty round brings a breath of relieved air to the tension.

Bloch, though, goes full-force with the overwrought pulpiness. In the story Maitland is nabbed not by two detectives but a duo of masked fiends who bind him in chains and sear his body with hot pokers and stinging whips. It's positively kinky, more in line with the fascinations of the historical Marquis than anything we see onscreen. To add to the naughtiness, Maitland is then stuffed into an iron maiden, the body of the Marquis lowering down upon him as the lid closes. To briefly quote Bloch:

"And then, as the body gripped his body in blackness, as the head touched his head, as Maitland's lips pressed against the place where lips should be, he knew the ultimate horror.

The face that was not a face was the skull of the Marquis de Sade!

And the weight of charnel corruption stifled Maitland, and he went down into darkness again with the obscene memory pursuing him into oblivion." 

This seems interesting in light of the relationship you outlined in the film between Maitland, his wife, and the skull. Is the long-dead Marquis tempting the collector to give in to something other than the powers of darkness by killing his wife with the long blade of Gilles de Rais's knife? If one were determined to do so, there's probably a homosexual reading to be interpreted in the boy's world of antique collectors and delicious torture on display, as stereotypical as those hallmarks may be. This is especially notable in Bloch's story, as you note, as the latent (or are they repressed?) desires of Maitland seem to be awakened in his mind after the "delicate" skull of the Marquis is introduced into his life.

I did catch the fact that the Maitlands have their own bedrooms in the movie. There might be a fun backstory there; did the missus not take kindly to her husband reading flesh-bound books while she knitted? But more than likely it's just a signifier of their conservative union as you said. It's not unfair to say that Maitland's wife is kind of a non-entity here, serving more as a symbol of pure, white-linen virginity in the face of the skull's taboo-smashing depravity. I was admittedly just pretty surprised that she was implemented into the story without the express purpose of having her scream like Adrienne Barbeau.

And as daring as the bet was that Amicus made with choosing this story and as ably as they pull it off, I feel like THE SKULL starts to show its padding towards the end. I love the fact that it goes without any real dialogue whatsoever in its final moments, but I think it doesn't quite know what to with itself after a certain point. Maitland goes into the library, the skull slooowly floats out of the case, he saunters into his wife's room, he's repelled, he goes back into the library, he stabs the skull, he goes into his room, there's some screaming... Grant you, a stalking sequence from a slasher film can be described in much the same way, but seeing a man become "hypnotized" by a skull and fighting his dark urges isn't quite as compelling or suspenseful, as game as Cushing is. Some imaginitive decisions in the film's latter third could have probably pushed this one into being a definitive favorite.

NT: Maitland's primary color-drenched nightmare is (in my mind) the peak expression of the film's nigh expressionistic style. Through alternating long shots and extreme close ups, the sequence skillfully captures the mute terror of an incomprehensible fever dream with a perverse but inscrutable logic of its own. Francis and Wilcox find a more successful use of silence and visual suspense in this sequence than they do in the protracted finale (which I'd agree loses some of its tense charm as the minutes role on, although its hazy, somnambulatory mood and pacing don't feel totally inappropriate either).

Yet as much as I adore Maitland's dream sequence as presented in the film, its Kafkaesque thrills feel incongruous with those strands of thematic interest that surround it. It's as if Cushing took a midnight walk into the final episode of THE PRISONER. That's all well and good, but as you've pointed out and quoted, it comes nowhere near the unseemly Sadean ickiness of Bloch's version. The skeletal corpse-kissing and sadistic sexual torture that the story's Maitland endures in this dream seem like they would have been fruitful (and seedy) concepts for the film to explore, serving to underline the psycho-sexual dilemma that Maitland is working through at the climax. As I noted in my earlier essay on the film, why make the skull the Marquis de Sade's if you're unwilling to play around with the whips? What could have been a provocative slice of sexualized mid-'60s cinematic sadism, something on the order of the truly subversive BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965), falls instead into the usual traps of blaming it all on demonic influence and and tying the package up with a neat bow of unambiguous morality. In style, form, and content, THE SKULL feels like more of an obvious success than its immediate predecessor in the Amicus stable of horrors, but there's no denying that it fails to aim for the (ahem) jugular.

GR: Yes, if THE SKULL were willing to play more directly in the scintillating specifics of the Marquis' doctrine, this film would feel all the more subversive and unique. As it stands, you could substitute any name for the (former) owner of the skull and things would remain just about the same. Perhaps this is why Subotsky's take only goes by the title of THE SKULL as opposed to Bloch's full title. They didn't even bother to reword it into a slightly more cinematic name, like THE SKULL OF THE MARQUIS or something, as if the anonymity would be better for marketing. Just THE SKULL. So maybe it belongs to Aleister Crowley or maybe it's Little Orphan Annie. It doesn't matter. The fleshless gourd still hungers for blood and death either way. (Okay, maybe not.)

The first two horrific offerings from Amicus expose us to sundry supernatural horrors that come crawling forth from the abyss, washing them in popping colors that bring a little light to the darkness they are depicting; I love especially in this film the blue skull-o-vision that Francis employs and how a head injury that Lee suffers in the final third looks like a flash of paint from a comic book artist's palette. But with their next feature, we'll see the company dabbling in the calculations of a diseased mind, where methodic murder is the order of the day. And look at that, they got old Bob Bloch to come back to do what he does best: examining heads.

Next week: THE PSYCHOPATH (1966)