Professor Maitland (Peter Cushing) has a real obsession with black magic; so much so that he surrounds himself with cult objects and pieces of extreme rarity.
But he is not the only one: like him, Sir Phillips (Cristopher Lee) also has quite a collection of relics and antiquities used in obscure magical rites...
Maitland has recourse to a trusted supplier named Marco (Patrick Wymark), who one day presents him with a strange, eerie and mysterious object: the skull of a French marquis who lived in the 19th century...
The object seems to give off an evil influence, so much so that Maitland is -prophetically- averse to it....
Behind Sir Phillips' insistent pressure, however, he ends up counting among his antiquities the sinister skull: a decision, this one, that will lead to a rather nefarious outcome-as well as for the two collectors-the fate of the supplier himself...
Small gem from Amicus, a British (Great Britain) production company very active in the 1960-1970s in Horror productions.
They often bear the directing signature of Freddie Francis (who will still achieve his best results in directing some Omnibuses such as The Garden of Torture or The Five Keys to Terror) and a top-notch cast consisting of the likes of Peter Cushing, Cristopher Lee and Vincent Price...
Amicus, to wit, competed for its space in the horror field with Hammer and AIP and, in fact, although it did not run a high number of notable films, it left its indelible signature on a few films of successful narrative impact...
Of course, as with other similar productions of the period, the highlight is the screenplay-qua derived from Robert Block's short story of the same name-perhaps inspired by the actual discovery (dated 1927) of Mitchell-Hedges' "crystal skull"...
Inspired production, as in the average Amicus production of the period, not memorable, but enjoyable and effectively entertaining, thanks to excellent performances by Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee...
Review by undying1
