| Author | Message | ||
     John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.203.130.146 |
I've been trying to keep my film reviewing posts down to a minimum, but this 1965 Amicus movie arrived through the post the other day. It's years since I saw it, panned and scanned, on late night BBC, so needless to say the widescreen 2.35:1 print was the first time I had seen it 'properly'. As Phil Hardys's Aurum Encyclopaedia says - it's a 'seriously flawed' film but it's nevertheless amongst Amicus' best work. The first 40 minutes are marvellous, including the historical flashbacks, but what really makes it special is the interplay between Peter Cushing as the obsessive collector (with a gorgeously designed study that any collector would love to have) and Patrick Wymark as the seedy dealer who finds him books bound in human skin and eventually the skull of the Marquis de Sade. Of course it's sad that what Freddie Francis once said in an interview about Subotsky only having written about 45 minutes of script is probably true as the pretty much dialogueless rest of the movie, while being interesting and a bit weird, can't compete with the character interplay that's gone before. And you can't believe Subotsky's subsequent claim that the last half an hour of the film was made up of 'bits and pieces of what had been shot randomly that we pieced together to make a whole new ending'. Definitely still worth it for those of us who grew up relying on BBC2 to get us through the Summer holidays | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.195 |
John, I watched The Skull again last year, and thought it held up pretty well! I have fond memories of it ever since sebeing scared by it on telly way back when I was a youngster (must've been early seventies). Peter Cushing is great in it, as you said. He could make even the most formulaic or silly film enjoyable - The Blood Beast Terror is another example. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.195 |
"Sebeing"? I think I meant "being" but who knows... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
Not seen this for years - possibly the last time would have been that very same p&s version - I'll look it up. Region 1 or 2? | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.203.130.146 |
Region 1. OK transfer. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I have extremely fond memories of this film - I even wrote a homage to it a couple of years ago. Peter Cushing was my childhood hero. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
I liked Cushing but he could often come across as a bit intense and invulnerable. Maybe if he'd got pissed before filming it might have helped. I'm reminded of Genesis of the Daleks; The guy playing Davros would spend months preparing, covering his head in bags to feel all claustrophobic, being grouchy with fellow actors, learning everybody's lines, while Tom Baker would learn his script while walking up the corridor to the set. Both would be brilliant and right all at once. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
See - even as a kid this film felt padded and lost me at the halfway mark. I knew! | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Oh please! Don't give my skull a big head. (albie rocks in his armchair...somehow his face remains still in mid air...) Urgh. Imagine that. You see someone who turns and walks away but his face remains where it is, leering at you. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.232.26 |
"The Whisperer in Darkness"  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
I used to know Akeley when I was a student at Miskatonic Uni. He was an old hippy. Always out of his face. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
It's been done? I knew that. It was a test. Yes, that's it. A test. They passed, Lovecraft. Do you hear me? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Ok then, the face moves but the body remains where it is. Hah. You won't find that in your whispery darkness. How about the clothes stay where they are? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
See 'The Faces at Pine Dunes' by Ramsey Campbell. You'll never get there first with these ideas. (Go on, prove me wrong.) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.248.217 |
The clothes move but the body stays where it is. Oh no, of course: every episode of Benny Hill. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
BUT! WHAT! WHEN! I ASK YOU! The clothes move but the body is made of faces. Or the clothes are faces and the legs flap away into the sky. The skeletal structure glows black through the flesh and the face stays where it is, with the body and the clothes. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.232.26 |
The bedclothes stay where they are? Ah, no - "Oh Whistle an I'll come to you"  | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Everything stays where it. There. That's NEVER been done. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.248.217 |
>>>The clothes move but the body is made of faces. In The Hills, The Cities. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.248.217 |
>>>Everything stays where it. There. That's NEVER been done. New Labour 1997-2008. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>"The Whisperer in Darkness" Do you mean that scene at the very end? That is similar, but not the same. My idea has more dynamism to it. That is merely...a severing of parts. Mine says so much more. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
>>>The clothes move but the body is made of faces. In The Hills, The Cities. he bodies were made of thousands of bodies in that weren't they? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
The body moves but the clothes are made of faces. That was Ed Gein just after Christmas. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
The body is moving but the face is made of cloth. That's M.R. James, of course. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.104.55.243 |
'>>>The clothes move but the body is made of faces. In The Hills, The Cities. the bodies were made of thousands of bodies in that weren't they?' yeah, but they had no clothes | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.250.24 |
What's that one where the body stays still, but the bowels move...? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Any film by Wes Craven. That's what happens in production. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.232.26 |
lol, although I confess to liking THEY . . . | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
The entire thing moves but the trouser zip. Which when undone and spied through shows the world made from penises, balls and pubes. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.232.26 |
Giger!  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
The trouser zip moves but the genitals behind it remain inert and dormant. The Rolling Stones! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.137.224 |
Wipe those fingers off! | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Suppose your weird mate broke his arm, and when you go to see him hospital his cast has been signed by lots of weird names and...sigils. You later decipher them -after getting the girl- and find them to be the names of demons. Then what? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Suppose your weird mate's arm broke your weird mate. His entire body is cast in plaster, with the arm scribbling obscene messages across it and making wank movements. Then the hospital turns into a giant ant. My mam starts to laugh. Edie Brickel and the New Bohemians explode into a cloud of Spangles. A large pert bottom lowers itself from the sky. Kittens begin to breakdance. Sparrows give birth to donkeys wearing human masks - the donkeys start digging holes in the road whilst wearing man-jackets. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
I'd buy it for the breakdancing kittens. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
You know, there used to be entire magazines dedicated to that kind of fiction. Ah slipstream, where have you gone? Actually, I'm not sure I need to know the answer to that question. |