MovieChat Forums > The Skull (1965) Discussion > Too much filler, but an interesting them...

Too much filler, but an interesting theme

posted 4 years ago by Wuchak (8157)
6 replies | jump to latest

This is worth checking out for fans of British horror featuring Cushing and/or Lee, but it places with the least of their works. There's just way too much filler. The runtime could've been cut in half and it would've been a compelling mini-movie. As it is, it's just too drawn out for the material to sustain interest.

However, the theme is interesting: Can articles have evil spirits attached to them?

During the days of the early Church, articles that Paul touched, like handkerchiefs and aprons, "were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them" (Acts 19:11-12). It was the same thing with Peter's shadow. These things had the anointing of God on them and thus physically or mentally ill people exposed to them were healed and demons fled! A good example from the Old Testament would be Elisha's bones noted in 2 Kings 13. These various items were blessed as conduits of God's power. Could the inverse also be true? Could certain items be cursed with a demonic non-anointing? If the former is true with the kingdom of light, isn't it possible that the reverse is also true with the kingdom of darkness in some cases, particular items like idols?

[–] christomacin (4535) 2 years ago

Amicus screenwriter Milton Subotsky was notorious for turning in scripts that were too short to support a feature length film, necessitating the filler found in this and several other Amicus movies. The Amicus movie The Psychopath (also directed by Francis) didn't even include the murder set-pieces in the movie. They had to be added later to fill out the run time.

[–] Wuchak (8157) 2 years ago

I didn't know that, thanks.

[–] christomacin (4535) 2 years ago

This information was on the bonus features on the Blu-Rays of some of these Amicus films I watched for Halloween

[–] Wuchak (8157) 2 years ago

Yeah, I was on a low-budget 60s-70's horror kick last month, mostly Hammer or AIP, but one of them was Amicus.

[–] christomacin (4535) 2 years ago

Amicus was a pale shadow of Hammer, even at their best. The Skull is one of the few Amicus films that is fairly good, but not perfect, by any means. Individual episodes of their anthology films are pretty good, but there is no one great Amicus film start to finish.

[–] Wuchak (8157) 2 years ago

Yeah, Hammer Films are renowned for good reason.

If you can roll with the puppet dinosaurs, I think Amicus' "The Land That Time Forgot" works quite well. German Captain Von Schoenvorts has an interesting conversation with the English female, a biologist, over the German conduct in the Great War. Lisa observes that Von Schoenvorts is a sophisticated, respectable man, which sparks her to inquire of his brutal war actions. The Captain's contention is that Lisa is naïve considering that "life is founded upon killing and destruction" and "the sea is teeming with living things that prey upon one another to survive."

She goes on to argue: "That ship you torpedoed contained nothing but innocent passengers! Women and children!" He responds: "And a hold full of arms and ammunition that would've have been used to kill women and children in MY country."

This is some pretty heavy stuff and well executed.