HOWLING II ... YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985), aka HOWLING II: STIRBA - WEREWOLF BITCH

Director: Philippe Mora

Writers: Gary Brandner, Robert Sarno

Producer: Steven A. Lane

Cast: Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Reb Brown, Annie McEnroe, Marsha Hunt, Judd Omen, Ferdy Mayne, Jiří Krytinář, Valerie Kaplanová, Petr Skarke, Igor Smrzik, Jimmy Nail, Patrick Field, Ladislav Krečmer, Ivo Niederle, Hana Ludvikova, Jan Kraus, James Crawford, Steven Bronowski, the band Babel (Stephen W. Parsons, Chris Pye, Simon Etchell, Steve Young)

In Los Angeles, California, Ben White (Reb Brown) attends the funeral of his sister, television newscaster Karen White (Hana Ludvikova). There he meets occult investigator Stefan Crosscoe (Christopher Lee), who tries to convince Ben that his dead sister is a werewolf, and that only a ritual Stefan can perform will give her soul peace. When werewolves attack to try claiming Karen’s body, Ben is convinced and, along with Karen’s co-worker Jenny Templeton (Annie McEnroe), joins Stefan on his mission to Transylvania. That is where Stefan hopes to find and destroy 10,000-year-old sorceress and queen of the werewolves Stirba (Sybil Danning).

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

1981’s The Howling was the hit horror film very loosely adapted from the novel by Gary Brandner. Howling II was Brandner’s sequel novel that was also published before the first film adaptation. For the film sequel, Brandner was approached to do the screenplay. In fact, he did several due to ongoing budget cuts and shooting location changes. With each of his screenplay renovations becoming more unwieldy, Brandner finally left the project. The resulting film has even less to do with Gary Brandner’s source novels than the first film. What we are left with is the energetic and unfocused Howling II … Your Sister is a Werewolf.

This is a flick that is hard to defend. It is one of those missed opportunity movies that may never have lived up to that great first film, but, knowing its constant production difficulties and compromises, it is amazing that it was ever finished. It is also a film that no one would ever qualify as good, yet it certainly has its fans (including eccentric louts, like me).

So, just why the hell do I like Howling II … Your Sister is a Werewolf? Of course, we all know that I have bad taste. However, allow me to list the valid merits that I discern in this much-maligned fright flick:

• Fun cast, especially Sybil Danning
• Terrific, synthy, new wave soundtrack
• Sybil Danning
• And… uh… Sybil Danning!

There! Did you just see how many facets there are to appreciate in this cinematic gem? What more justification could I possibly need to turn off my brain and turn on with this salacious and sinister silliness? Did I mention that Sybil Danning is in this? Well, she is, so I am completely validated for fetishizing this funky fright flick.

Okay, I suppose that now you want some highfalutin film analysis of Howling II ... Your Sister is a Werewolf. Geez, you’re really barking up the wrong tree, but here goes…

I guess there is sort of a plot involving werewolves, werewolf attacks, shooting werewolves, and even werewolf orgies. Leading this cult of wanton werewolves is none other than Stirba, as portrayed by Euro film and B-movie goddess Sybil Danning, in a succession of crazed fashion statements just waiting to get torn off to reveal… more Sybil Danning! OWOOOOOO! Danning had appeared in several films starring Christopher Lee, but this crazy flick surely has their most memorable scene together.

Horror heavyweight Christopher Lee lends what little credibility this frantic and fearsome fluff can muster. We see him open the film by reading from some tome that is meant to impart biblical-styled legitimacy and dread about the supernatural shenanigans to come. Even more impressive is when his occult investigator Stefan Crosscoe is slumming at a punk concert while tailing the werewolf Mariana (Marsha Hunt). See the man rockin’ those new wave shades! During the filming of this scene, the punks in the concert audience were getting so out of hand that Lee had to wade through the unruly crowd to escort actress Marsha Hunt to safety. As Dracula, Lee had put the bite on Hunt back in Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972).

Reb Brown was another of Lee’s former castmates. Brown had starred as the superhero Captain America in two television movies. Lee was the chief villain in the second one, Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979). Brown is back in hero mode here alongside Lee’s Stefan Crosscoe. Once Brown’s Ben White gets past his mourning and angry skepticism, he spends the remainder of the film primal screaming while shooting werewolves. I have read that this is a Reb Brown habit in some of his other action movies. He also lends a bit of humor to the proceedings. My favorite line is Brown’s improvised reference to the werewolves as fuzzballs.

Apparently, Brown got on well with director Philippe Mora. He was cast the next year in Mora’s Australian true-crime drama Death of a Soldier (1986). Brown’s performance as a serial-killing soldier stationed in Australia during World War II earned him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

As journalist Jenny Templeton, Annie McEnroe tags along with Stefan and Ben on the werewolf search-and-destroy mission. She rather abruptly becomes Ben’s love interest and then a damsel in distress. It is a shame that her underwritten role never allows McEnroe to bring any of the quirky spunk and vulnerability she had back in the Oliver Stone horror film The Hand (1982).

Director Philippe Mora had already made the genuinely creepy The Beast Within (1982). This time around, once the production finally settled on shooting in what was then the country of Czechoslovakia, the locations provided a lot of production value and atmosphere. No doubt, the ever-dwindling budget dollars also went a lot further in the impoverished country. Further cost-cutting resulted in Mora being surprised in mid-production with a delivery of old ape suits, from either the Planet of the Apes films (1968–73) or the 1974 television series, to be used for his werewolves. Alterations to the faces of the suits, lots of dark night scenes, and some inserted closeups of separately made werewolf heads tried to salvage the disaster. An even more horrendous snafu occurred when the eager-to-please Czech locals assured the director that they could perform a fire stunt and demonstrated it by simply dousing someone in gasoline and setting him ablaze. At that point, Mora insisted that the production shell out for some professional stuntmen.

Despite the obstacles of compromised scripting, budget cuts, foreign-language barriers, and communist surveillance, director Mora managed to give us a good-looking and lively film, even if the story is a bit loopy and characterizations are scant. At times there seems to be a what-the-hell frivolity at play with extraneous bits of goofy humor. We even get a throwaway trick-or-treat scene. Mora would also direct the next film in the series, Howling III: The Marsupials (1987).

The soundtrack, composed by Stephen W. Parsons, is a vital ingredient for my enjoyment of this film. This was Parsons’ first film soundtrack assignment, and it is he that fronts the band Babel in the punk rock club scene. We see them performing the “Howling” theme that will be reworked a few different ways during the film. Best of all, as the closing credits roll, we see Babel performing the complete song in the punk club while there are various snippets of the film characters intercut from preceding scenes seemingly reacting to the shot of Sybil Danning’s Stirba tearing open her dress repeated 17 times. Believe it or not, that same breast-baring bit was originally repeated even more times until Danning complained to the producer. I surely hope that all these years later the magnificent Ms. Danning can appreciate that her repetitious and ravishing reveal perfectly complements what amounts to the greatest music video of all time. MTV, eat your heart out!

It is puzzling why a film as popular and respected as 1981’s The Howling gave way to such a disreputable series of movies. Beginning with Howling II … Your Sister is a Werewolf, each installment would go its own way and must be judged on its own merits. In many ways, this second film suffers the most as it is always compared to its classic predecessor. The only thread it shares is the reference to the Karen White character of the first film. Otherwise, this is an entirely standalone film, as all the others in the series would be. 

This second film was generally dismissed by most yet still revered by those of us looking for a hedonistic horror experience. We get to indulge in that Christopher Lee gravitas and that Sybil Danning radiance resonating with Stephen Parsons' synthy, new wave tuneage. That’s all a cult film needs and all I need to join in this lupine lunacy. OWOOOOOO!

THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959)

Director: Terence Fisher

Writers: Jimmy Sangster adapting Barré Lyndon’s play The Man in Half Moon Street

Producer: Michael Carreras

Cast: Anton Diffring, Hazel Court, Christopher Lee, Arnold Marlé, Delphi Lawrence, Francis de Wolff, (and uncredited cast) Renee Cunliffe, Denis Shaw, John Harrison, Michael Ripper, Marie Burke, Gerda Larsen, Charles Lloyd-Pack, Ronald Adam, Ian Hewitson, Louis Matto, Frederick Rawlings, Barry Shawzin, Lockwood West, Fred Stroud, John Timberlake, Middleton Woods 

In the year 1890, Dr. Georges Bonnet (Anton Diffring) operates a Paris, France medical clinic. He has maintained his youth by receiving a parathyroid gland transplant every ten years. This secret process has allowed Bonnet to reach the age of 104 years, while still appearing to be in his mid-thirties. Bonnet will resort to murder to obtain the needed gland when fresh cadavers are unavailable. His elderly colleague, Dr. Ludwig Weiss (Arnold Marlé), assisted Bonnet in the discovery of this eternal youth technique. For decades Weiss has been secretly performing the periodic transplant operations on Bonnet. A recent stroke has rendered Weiss’ right hand useless for performing surgery. As his ten-year cycle is about to expire, Bonnet resorts to increasingly desperate means to prolong his life. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

In the 1950s Britain’s Hammer Film Productions had achieved international success revisiting the classic horror characters that America’s Universal Pictures had made icons in the ’30s and ’40s. Hammer stressed Gothic romanticism by usually placing their trend-setting films in 19th-century Europe. These movies were a refreshing contrast to the contemporary, sci-fi frights that had become the predominant form of ’50s film horror. 

For The Man Who Could Cheat Death, the established Hammer style remained as they found a new source for adaptation. This film was based on the Barré Lyndon play The Man in Half Moon Street, which had earlier been made into a 1945 American film by Paramount Pictures. Frequent Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster wrote the screenplay and their go-to-guy for Gothic horror, Terence Fisher, directed. 

Mad science movies are usually morality plays about the nasty consequences of man playing God. But beyond the often-evil means employed by the scientist and his or her comeuppance, these films are just as fixated on thrills and chills as other stories about vampires, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, the moral considerations of the mad science involved and its consequences are elaborated upon more than in the usual Frankenstein-styled horror film. 

It must be said that this film has earned its “talky” reputation. It spends plenty of time with its lead character, Dr. Georges Bonnet, having to secretly arrange for his eternal youth maintenance and trying to convince his now-elderly accomplice, Dr. Ludwig Weiss, to continue to assist him. That leads to plenty of drawing room drama and discussion. During these scenes the aforementioned considerations of morality and consequences are expressed. That stuff only registers if delivered by good performances and direction. There is nothing showy here, but director Fisher’s shot variations, actors’ movements within the scene, and nice lighting by Hammer’s ace cinematographer, Jack Asher, keep this interesting. This is the sort of often-unnoticed craft that fine professionals lavish upon a film to make it work. 

German actor Anton Diffring had a long acting career and is probably best known for the many times he portrayed Nazis in films. His striking profile, angular features, blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes were perfect for the image of Aryan arrogance. He is also known to horror fans for appearances in the British films Circus of Horrors (1960) and The Beast Must Die (1974). In 1958 Diffring portrayed Baron Frankenstein in Tales of Frankenstein, an unsold pilot that was co-produced by Hammer Film Productions for a proposed American television series. 

In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Diffring’s Dr. Georges Bonnet is the main character that features in most of the scenes and the one we learn the most about. He has unique hardships in having to relocate and begin a new life every decade to avoid people noticing that he never ages. Bonnet suffers loneliness because he must break off any relationships he has formed. Nevertheless, he remains unsympathetic. This is not a fault in writing or performance; Bonnet is a villain. He may have some feelings, but he is still a cold-blooded bastard. His discovery of eternal youth is used selfishly and he will resort to any means necessary to maintain that life. 

Arnold Marlé’s role of Prof. Ludwig Weiss is the colleague needed to perform Bonnet’s youth-prolonging operation. He is also Bonnet’s dramatic foil that debates the ethics of their medical secret. Through his discussions with Bonnet, we get to know the villain better and are given the moral food for thought about this story’s science. 

Eventually, Bonnet explains why his eternal youth secret cannot be shared with the rest of the world. If humans never die, the world would not have enough food and space to sustain the population explosion. Without death, there would also be a shortage of recently deceased gland donors. These are valid concerns, yet they never justify the selfish Bonnet’s ruthless measures to maintain his secrecy and prolong his life.

In tried-and-true mad science fashion, the potion Bonnet drinks to keep him going at the end of his ten-year cycle takes its toll on his sanity, yet we never feel that all of Bonnet’s murders are just the unfortunate side effect of his experiment. He has committed murders for decades and never shows remorse for his crimes. 

One interesting gimmick that is used to enliven the proceedings a bit is the transformation Bonnet goes through if he is a bit late drinking his glowing green nightcap. This concoction keeps his physical corruption at bay for a short time at the end of his ten-year cycle until he can get a new gland implanted. If someone delays Bonnet’s ten-year toast, he has very dangerous withdrawal symptoms; he gets green-skinned and bug-eyed. (I sure wish that drinking instead of abstaining would prevent my hangovers.) Most peculiar during these spells is that Bonnet either burns or rots the skin of other people he touches. This effect is never explained and is just meant to provide a little monster action, but it is unique. 

With Anton Diffring’s aloof presence as Dr. Georges Bonnet, it must be his confidence, money, and Renaissance man reputation that has him scoring with a succession of beautiful models. Being a successful physician was surely a big enough attraction, but Bonnet is also a talented sculptor. As this is the most lengthy artistic process for capturing the likeness of a nude model, it allows him ample time to “get to know” his subjects. You know, I am starting to really admire that Bonnet fella… 

The ravishing redhead Hazel Court is always a welcome presence in any cast. Georges Bonnet aborted his relationship with Court’s Janine Du Bois when he split Italy at the end of his recent holiday. (Unthinkable! I admire him much less now.) Janine runs into Bonnet again in Paris as he is unveiling the statue of his latest model (Delphi Lawrence). Janine is still stuck on the elusive sculptor/doctor and entices him by agreeing to pose nude for him again. (Okay, now I admire him even more!) This modeling scene supposedly featured the magnificent Hazel Court’s topless nudity shown from the front in European prints. I have seen a still of this online, yet I wonder if those missing shots were ever actually shown. Hopefully that complete print of this film is made available someday. Why should only bad guy Bonnet have all the fun? 

Aside from her beauty, it is actually Hazel Court’s manner that makes us side with her underwritten character. All we know about Janine is that she was in love with Bonnet. She can have her pick of men and has already been seeing another handsome doctor, but she will try renewing a relationship that Bonnet ended without explanation. Almost any other actress in this part would probably only earn our contempt, yet Hazel Court’s charm somehow deflects that intolerance. 

I find Hammer legend Christopher Lee to be the biggest surprise here. At first, it seems like he is in a rather thankless role. Instead of being the monstrous main attraction, he plays a supporting role as Janine’s unappreciated suitor, Dr. Pierre Gerrard. None of Lee’s usual commanding authority or cold arrogance is on display here. Lee plays a subdued and honorable character in love with a woman that immediately passes him over for the guy that ditched her. Janine never tells Gerrard this, but we can see he has a few unspoken concerns. As the story progresses, Lee’s Dr. Gerrard becomes a key player and we learn to really respect yet another underwritten character. 

My description of two characters as underwritten is in no way meant as a criticism. These two parts are there to serve a story that chiefly revolves around the despicable Dr. Georges Bonnet. Embellishing the roles of Janine and Dr. Gerrard would probably only distract from the dramatic through line of the story rather than augment it. Sometimes people are not all that deep, and what complexities they may have are not always revealed in real-life, either. In fact, a fine performer that makes us believe in a simple character is just as impressive as someone trying to pick up an Oscar by spilling his or her dramatic guts all over the place. 

Despite having Hazel Court, Christopher Lee, and many of the other talents that were involved in Hammer’s inaugural Gothic horror classic, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Man Who Could Cheat Death is not a very high profile film from Hammer’s innovative period. While not as atmospheric or intense as many other Hammer horror films, it remains a thoughtful approach to a simple mad science yarn. One’s appreciation for it will depend in large part on Anton Diffring’s performance. Sometimes a villain is just a villain, and that is what Diffring gives us in his Dr. Georges Bonnet. He does not revel in his evil, but he demonstrates that the greatest evil is usually just extreme selfishness.

THE CREEPING FLESH (1973)

Director: Freddie Francis

Writers: Peter Spenceley, Jonathan Rumbold

Producer: Michael P. Redbourn

Cast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Lorna Heilbron, George Benson, Kenneth J. Warren, Jenny Runacre, Duncan Lamont, Robert Swann, Harry Locke, Hedger Wallace, Catherine Finn, David Bailie, Michael Ripper, Maurice Bush, Tony Wright, Marianne Stone, Alexandra Dane, Dan Meaden, Larry Taylor, Martin Carroll, (and uncredited cast) Sue Bond, Josie Grant, Lewis Alexander, Reg Thomason, Fred Wood 

In 1894, Professor Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) returns from his New Guinea expedition to his London, England estate. Hildern has brought back a giant, humanoid skeleton he has excavated that is much older and more advanced than any previously discovered remains of primitive man. As Hildern uses water to start cleaning his find, he notices that flesh begins to grow on one of the skeleton’s fingers. It is Hildern’s belief that the folklore of the New Guinea people describes a day in the future when the skeletons of these ancient beings would be unearthed by natural soil erosion and that their flesh would be regenerated by rain. He also speculates that these beings were the living source of the world’s evil and that a vaccine can be derived from the creeping flesh to inoculate mankind against evil itself. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

Tigon British Films Productions was the company that produced some quirky horror films to compete against the popular product from Britain’s venerable Hammer Films. At first glance, Tigon’s The Creeping Flesh appears to be creeping through the same Gothic horror territory that was Hammer’s usual domain. It is not only set in late 19th-century London, it has past Hammer director Freddie Francis, it stars Hammer legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee along with a bit part for Hammer’s ubiquitous character actor Michael Ripper, and it even employs Hammer’s renowned makeup artist Roy Ashton. 

Tigon’s distinction from the Hammer standard was their attitude. Their films seemed to be channeling some of the modern pessimism that was becoming the norm in horror films. While Hammer films would typically end with evil defeated and order being restored, Tigon’s horror stories would often finish up by annihilating the main characters or leaving them probably permanently traumatized. Tigon’s terrors usually did not end with a note of triumph and relief but with a sense of ongoing dread and despair. That is certainly the case with The Creeping Flesh, which also concludes ambiguously to leave us pondering two interpretations of the eerie tale that we have been told. 

One reason I enjoy some Victorian era horror films so much is that they demonstrate the seamy side of the human condition despite the repressive mores of those times. While the lower class is shown to be rife with illicit behavior, we often see the affluent slumming among them to indulge in their own vices. Members of the refined upper crust are often hypocritical, selfish, and unethical. Their status and ambitions may be more important than honesty and humanity. 

No one can better portray the opposing sides of that British, upper class dynamic than Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Their characters are dealing with madness in different ways. Cushing’s Emmanuel Hildern is an altruistic scientist trying to expand man’s knowledge and, as a result of his latest find, trying to cure the human race of evil. Lee’s cold-blooded James Hildern is trying to research and treat insanity using the inmates of his asylum as human guinea pigs. 

Their characters’ flaws are responsible for the rash actions that trigger a potential pandemic of evil and insanity. As half-brothers, Cushing’s Prof. Emmanuel Hildern and Lee’s Dr. James Hildern have a very strained relationship. James has always resented the status Emmanuel had and the kudos he has received for his research. Now, James has established his own more stable success as an asylum director and seeks to further show up his older sibling by claiming an award for his own line of research. Emmanuel is not only stressed by the financial strain of his estate having been neglected during his expeditions, he also has been concealing the shame of his unfaithful wife (Jenny Runacre) going mad and being committed to his half-brother’s asylum. It is James’ jealous, amoral ambition and Emmanuel’s emotional trauma that drive each man to act rashly, which causes horrific consequences. 

While unscrupulous James Hildern’s only concern is his selfish ego, kindly Emmanuel Hildern has his dutiful daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilbron) to worry about. He fears that there is a chance that his recently deceased wife’s madness could be hereditary. This spurs the good Professor on to administer his anti-evil vaccine too hastily and only results in more madness and violence. Fright flick fans should consider this a happy accident. It gives us a chance to hang out for a while in an East End pub full of buxom wenches ready for fun upstairs when the price is right. This really turns out to be a bloody good time. 

The creepy catalyst for all of the threat in the film is Emmanuel Hildern’s discovery of the remains of a strange being that predates man. As others have pointed out, this is a somewhat Lovecraftian concept that is quite humbling; something else was running the show here on Earth before humans started civilization. Those ancient beings may be restless and awaiting their chance to return and take over again. They may also have played a role in the development of the human species. 

Director Freddie Francis manages to make things appropriately uncanny. He imbues the inhuman skeleton with an actual presence that makes us wary of it. That apprehension is fulfilled as the story builds to another “happy accident” late in the film. Then we are treated to a skull’s-eye-view shot reminiscent of Francis’ work back in 1965 with the Amicus Productions film The Skull. Throughout The Creeping Flesh, Francis uses unusual shot choices, lighting, and film processing effects to portray madness and approaching menace. 

Composer Paul Ferris contributes an unusual score that is perfect for the awe, dread, despair, and madness running rampant in this story. He had also done a very fine score for perhaps Tigon’s most celebrated horror film, Witchfinder General (1968). 

The Creeping Flesh challenges us about whom we should invest with our trust and sympathy. The evil that threatens to infect all of mankind is madness, and that is shown to manifest itself in many different ways in many different characters. We are left to wonder if the madness threatening to destroy mankind is of inhuman origin or has always been living within all of us. Ultimately, we are also left with the unsettling notion that the truly inspired and benevolent minds may just be coping with their own obsessions and, as a result, may not offer us any real solutions. Unfortunately, it also seems that mankind is usually not ready for solutions if they can keep getting short-term gains by making the same mistakes. That seems to be a madness without any cure.

THE SKULL (1965)

Director: Freddie Francis

Writers: Milton Subotsky, based on Robert Bloch’s story “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade”

Producers: Max J. Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky

Cast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark, Peter Woodthorpe, Jill Bennett, April Olrich, Maurice Good, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee, Michael Gough, George Coulouris, Frank Forsyth, Anna Palk, Paul Stockman, George Hilsdon, Jack Silk 

In London, England, author Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) collects strange artifacts used for research in his writings about the occult. Anthony Marco (Peter Wymark), the rather shady procurer of many of Maitland’s curios, presents the writer with the opportunity to own something really special: the skull of the notorious 19th century French author and nobleman the Marquis de Sade. Maitland soon falls under the skull’s frightening influence. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The Skull is not only a change of pace from the anthology horror films that Britain’s Amicus Productions are best known for, it remains a unique tale of possession. The story is simple and the main cast is small. A lot of time is spent in the head game that the skull is playing with Peter Cushing’s character Christopher Maitland. This results in many dialogue-free stretches of surreal and eerie events that confuse and terrify Maitland as he is being brought under the skull’s evil control.

This was the first of the Amicus Productions fright flicks based on the writings of Robert Bloch. Of course, Bloch will always be best known as the writer of the novel Psycho that was adapted into Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film. Bloch would adapt many of his short horror stories for the scripts of three later Amicus anthology films. This time around, one of his tales is the basis for an entire film. Oddly, he did not write the script himself. 

Perhaps the lack of Robert Bloch’s further involvement resulted in a rather troubled production. It seems that the original short story‘s adaptation did not provide enough incidents for a feature-length film. Director Freddie Francis is supposed to have reworked co-producer Milton Subotsky’s script. Then there had been a lot of rearranging of scenes in the editing room as Subotsky was second-guessing just how to put the final narrative together. 

Fortunately, the final product resulted in a stylized descent into possession told almost entirely from the perspective of Christopher Maitland. This is almost a one-man show with the great Peter Cushing. Although he may have an ethical lapse ignoring Marco’s means of providing occult artifacts, Cushing’s Maitland appears to be a decent person, so his fate seems undeservedly tragic and that makes the skull all the more diabolical. 

Joining Cushing is Christopher Lee in a featured role as fellow artifact collector Sir Matthew Phillips. He tries to warn Maitland about the evil threat the skull of the Marquis de Sade poses. The often aloof and commanding Lee seems rather vulnerable here and earns our sympathy while always appearing dignified. 

The Skull is a casting delight for fans of British horror films. Beyond the teaming of Cushing and Lee, there are many other familiar faces from the genre such as Michael Gough, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee, Patrick Wymark, and George Coulouris. Of special notice is Peter Woodthorpe as the seedy landlord Bert Travers. Besides Peter Cushing, he is my favorite performer in the film. He is immediately unlikable and seems almost as disreputable as his sleazy hypnotist Zoltan in The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), another Freddie Francis-directed/Peter Cushing-starring production. 

Director Freddie Francis dealt with horror quite a bit for both Amicus and their rival Hammer Films. He brings a lot of inventive visual style to the intimate terror experienced by Cushing’s character. Francis manages to make the skull as much of a personality as the characters portrayed by the flesh-and-blood actors.

As in “The Man Who Collected Poe,” another of Robert Bloch’s stories featured in the later Amicus anthology film Torture Garden (1967), the message here seems to be a warning about the dangers of collecting mania. Although I am a devil-may-care chap, I am certain that my film fetishism is perfectly harmless. I only acquire evermore movies and memorabilia to rouse my cinema enthusiasm and share it with others. Now, what’s the harm in that? However, I will admit that I would kill to get a print of The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) with the long-missing topless Hazel Court footage.