The Skull (1965)

Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is an archaeologist who specializes in writing about occult and supernatural subjects, what brought humans to believe in these things. He's got a contact, a sleazy guy named Marco, who brings him stuff, and Maitland typically doesn't ask how Marco got them.

Now Marco's brought him a book that tells the life of the Marquis de Sade, and the next night, he's back with the purported skull of the Marquis. I can't see why an archaeologist with an specialization in occult needs the skull of a sadist, but whatever. Maitland balks at the price, and when he describes the situation to his friend (Christopher Lee), learns the skull was stolen from him. But his friend doesn't want it back, and advises Maitland to leave it be.

Maitland does not leave it be, and things go downhill for everyone from there. Except the skull, I guess.

Most of the killings are off-screen. We see the aftermath, at a distance, but that's about it. They seem fairly tame given the Marquis' reputation for delighting in causing pain, but maybe it's business before pleasure. The movie seems more focused on mood. Confusion and paranoia. Camera shots from behind the skull's face, looking out through its eyes. Maitland growing secretive, lying to his wife and slipping away to buy the skull, or just sit and stare at it through the glass walls of the case.

There's a dream sequence halfway through that I couldn't parse the meaning of. A couple of silent cops, a huge empty courtroom with a judge who silently makes Maitland play Russian Roulette, a hallway filling with gas and walls that close in. It's an interesting sequence, but it fits oddly among the floating skulls and crashing windows, curtains billowing ominously.

The ending felt too long, like they had reached a perfectly good stopping point, where Maitland resists the skull's compulsion and instead slams the knife through its eye socket. But it's like they decided, no, that's too neat, it wouldn't end that easily. Maybe they're right; I've never read the story the movie's based on, but Cushing seemed to sell it as such a struggle to resist the first time that it felt like a triumph. Only for the movie to flip it on its head and have everything turn out horribly in the next five minutes anyway.