The SkullMovies like The Skull
- Key Features:
- Occult, Demon, Gothic horror, Supernatural horror, Obsession, Curse, Possession, Macabre, Based on a true story, Comedy-high, Cult classic
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Occult enthusiasts, Gothic horror aficionados, Cult film followers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread → Terror
The Skull

The Skull [from a short story by Robert Bloch, author of Psycho] is a fearsome, finely acted and moody tale of Gothic horror. The 150 year old skull of the Marquis de Sade has been taken from its grave, bringing terror to those who own it. Demonologist Christopher Maitland [Peter Cushing] is eager to add the piece to his occult collection. Despite the warnings of a friend [Christopher Lee], he's got to have it. And does he ever get it.
The Skull
The police and British security forces call in Professor Van Helsing to help them investigate Satanic ritual which has been occurring in a large country house, and which has been attended by a government minister, an eminent scientist and secret service chief. The owner of the house is a mysterious property tycoon who is found to be behind a sinister plot involving a deadly plague. It is in fact Dracula who, sick of his interminable existence, has decided that he must end it all in the only possible way- by destroying every last potential victim.

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil, he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

One by one the archaeologists who discover the 4,000-year-old tomb of Princess Ananka are brutally murdered. Kharis, high priest in Egypt 40 centuries ago, has been brought to life by the power of the ancient gods and his sole purpose is to destroy those responsible for the desecration of the sacred tomb. But Isobel, wife of one of the explorers, resembles the beautiful princess, forcing the speechless and tormented monster to defy commands and abduct Isobel to an unknown fate.

Christopher Lee stars in this Amicus production of “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” where the names have been changed to Dr. Marlowe and Mr. Blake. Lee as Dr. Marlowe experiments with intravenous drugs that are suppose to release inner inhibitions. So comes forth Mr. Blake (also Lee) who gets more monstrous with each transformation. Peter Cushing plays his friend and colleague, Dr. Utterson.

In the early 20th century a village experienced a series of inexplicable murders. All the victims were young men who had been turned to stone. The perpetrator of these deaths was a being so repulsive that she transformed the onlooker using the power of her deadly stare. Much of the time the creature took the form of a beautiful and seductive woman, but during periods of the full moon she becomes a living horror, vicious and deadly. A professor has come to investigate the deaths, bringing with him his beautiful assistant whose knowledge of the Gorgon is more intimate than anyone would ever realise.

Two Egyptologists, Professor Fuchs and Corbeck, are instrumental in unleashing unmitigated horror by bringing back to England the mummified body of Tara, the Egyptian Queen of Darkness. Fuchs’s daughter becomes involved in a series of macabre and terrifying incidents, powerless against the forces of darkness, directed by Corbeck, that are taking possession of her body and soul to fulfill the ancient prophesy that Queen Tara will be resurrected to continue her reign of unspeakable evil.

Lt. Andre Duvalier awakens on a beach to the sight of a strange woman who leads him to the gothic, towering castle that serves as home to an eerie baron.

Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.

Baron Victor Frankenstein has discovered life's secret and unleashed a blood-curdling chain of events resulting from his creation: a cursed creature with a horrid face — and a tendency to kill.

Down a seedy city street in her neighborhood, young Enola Penny is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees that the front door is slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside. But there in the dark, decrepit auditorium, a show unlike any other unfolds before her eyes. Its host is an eerie human puppet named Peg Poett who will introduce Penny to six tales of the bizarre: A couple traveling in a remote part of the French Pyrenees cross paths with a lustful witch; A paranoid lover faces the wrath of a partner who has been pushed to her limit; The Freudian dreams of an unfaithful husband blur the lines between fantasy and reality; The horrors of the real world are interpreted through the mind of a child; A woman addicted to other people's memories gets her fix through the vitreous fluid of her victims' eyeballs; And a perverse obsession with sweets turns sour for a couple in too deep.

After Jonathan Harker attacks Dracula at his castle, the vampire travels to a nearby city, where he preys on the family of Harker's fiancée. The only one who may be able to protect them is Dr. van Helsing, Harker's friend and fellow-student of vampires, who is determined to destroy Dracula, whatever the cost.

Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.

Five strangers board a train and are joined by a mysterious fortune teller who offers to read their Tarot cards. Five separate stories unfold: An architect returns to his ancestoral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire; a huge plant takes over a house; a musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand.

A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.

Hugo is a brilliant turn-of-the-century scientist, loved and respected by his family and friends, admired by his colleagues. But he is a man quickly becoming obsessed with a curious and frightening question... what is the mysterious apparition found in the photographs of his dying subjects?

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

Verden Fell is shattered after the death of his lovely wife. But, after an unexpected encounter with Lady Rowena Trevanion, Fell soon finds himself married again. Nevertheless, his late wife's spirit seems to hang over the dilapidated abbey that Fell shares with his new bride. Lady Rowena senses that something is amiss and, when she investigates, makes a horrifying discovery -- learning that Fell's dead wife is closer than she ever imagined possible.

When a cynical journalist accepts a wager that he won't survive the night in a haunted castle, it unlocks an odyssey of sexual torment, undead vengeance, and a dark seductress who surrenders the gravest of pleasures.

The Marquis d’Urfé finds refuge in the home of a strange family after becoming lost in a hostile forest while working as an emissary for the King of France.

Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.

An artist grows distant from his new wife as an irrational fear of premature burial consumes him.

Centuries-old vampire Count Dracula travels to Victorian London, where he becomes obsessed with Mina Murray—the fiancée of his solicitor, Jonathan Harker—believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-lost love.

A young girl buys an antique box at a yard sale, unaware that inside the collectible lives a malicious ancient spirit. The girl's father teams with his ex-wife to find a way to end the curse upon their child.

A scientist working with genetics creates a horrifying flying creature that feeds on human blood. Following a gruesome trail of dead bodies, Scotland Yard investigators must scramble to halt its ravenous rampage.

Newlyweds Eric and Jenni Whitlock retire to his desolate mansion, where Eric's first wife Marianne died from a mysterious freak accident. Jenni, who has a history of mental illness, begins to see strange things including a mysterious skull, which may or may not be a product of her imagination.

Four customers purchase (or take) items from Temptations Limited, an antiques shop whose motto is "Offers You Cannot Resist". A nasty fate awaits all of them—particularly those who cheat the shop's Proprietor.

Evil lurks in the gloomy house at Markham Manor where a deranged Sir Edward is the chained prisoner of his brother Julian. When Sir Edward escapes, he embarks on a monstrous killing spree, determined to seek revenge on all those whom he feels have double-crossed him.

In the late 18th century, two newlyweds move into the stately mansion of the Fengriffen family. The young bride is victim of terrifying visions and apparitions, threatening her very sanity. A London psychiatrist comes to her help and uncovers the terrible secret that haunts the estate.

When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging onto a website called feardotcom.

Set during the height of Spanish Inquisition. The beautiful and kind-hearted Maria is arrested as a witch when she inadvertently cries out in horror at the public whipping of a child. As Maria’s husband Antonio tries to save her, Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, determines to punish Maria with torture for the desire she inflames in him. Loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story.

An Italian nobleman seeks help after his paralyzed daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a malevolent ancestress.

Peppino, a diminutive taxidermist with a reputation for sleaziness, meets Valerio, a handsome if artless much younger man fascinated by the trade. Peppino offers him a large salary to come work as his assistant, with the job burgeoning into a budding friendship he mistakes for something more. When Valerio finds a girlfriend, their fledgling romance will be threatened by an insanely jealous third wheel.

While dabbling in Satanism, Count Karstein resurrects Mircalla Karnstein who initiates him into vampirism. As a rash of deaths afflicts the village, Gustav the head of Puritan group leads his men to seek out and destroy the pestilence. One of his twin nieces has become inflicted with the witchcraft but Gustav's zeal and venom has trapped the innocent Maria, threatening her with a tortuous execution, whilst Frieda remains free to continue her orgy of evil.

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

After miners disappear in the Namib Desert, some scientists find their remains and the demonic creature that killed them.

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

By way of an unnatural urge during her Mother's funeral, Susan enters her family's mausoleum, which unleashes an evil presence to lurk inside of her.

When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

Shortly after moving into a dark, brooding mansion, a psychologist and his co-workers are terrorized by a horrible evil being.

Dr. David Marrow invites three distinct individuals to the eerie and isolated Hill House to be subjects for a sleep disorder study. The unfortunate guests discover that Marrow is far more interested in the sinister mansion itself — and they soon see the true nature of its horror.

H.P. Lovecraft anthology is divided into four segments: "The Library" which is the wraparound segment involving Lovecraft's research into the Book of The Dead and his unwitting release of a monster and his writing of the following horror segments "The Drowned", "The Cold", and "Whispers".

A schoolteacher moves into her deceased aunt’s house in a small Californian town, and is harassed by unfriendly locals and a mysterious hearse.

A group of medical students discover the body of the infamous count. Soon, they find themselves in the middle of a bizarre and dangerous conflict when a shadowy figure offers them $30 million for the body so that he may harvest his blood.

Rescued from the guillotine by his devoted dwarf Fritz, the Baron relocates to Carlsbruck, where he continues his gruesome experiments.

Centuries ago, under the sands of ancient Egypt, a Prince was buried and his tomb eternally cursed so that no man would ever again suffer from his evil ways. But hundreds of years later on a greedy search for treasure, a group of archaeologists break the cursed seal of the tomb. Every man vanishes without a trace, leaving behind only a log book, and a deadly warning of the legend of the bloodthirsty Talos.

A couple of master thieves find themselves trapped within a house they intended to rob, only to discover they've inadvertently wandered into the lair of a deranged serial killer.

An archaeological team attempt to unlock the secrets of a lost pyramid only to find themselves hunted by an insidious creature.

Disowned in the past by his father, Kurt Menliff, a cruel and sadistic nobleman, returns to the family castle to reclaim his inheritance.

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

Successful writer and scholar Jonathan Merrick falls under the spell of the irresistible, bewitchingly beautiful Ligeia. She's fighting a fatal illness and she will stop at nothing to defeat death, her one true enemy.

Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

On the fifteenth anniversary of the exorcism that claimed Father Damien Karras' life, Police Lieutenant Kinderman's world is once again shattered when a boy is found decapitated and savagely crucified.

A young man, Peter, returns to Austria in search of his heritage. There he visits the castle of an ancestor, a sadistic Baron who was cursed to a violent death by a witch whom the Baron had burned at the stake. Peter reads aloud the incantation that causes Baron Blood to return and continue his murderous tortures.

The powers of good are pitted against the forces of evil as the Duc de Richelieu wrestles with the charming but deadly Satanist, Mocata, for the soul of his friend. Mocata has the knowledge and the power to summon the forces of darkness and, as the Duc de Richelieu and his friends remain within the protected pentacle, they are subjected to ever-increasing horror until thundering hooves herald the arrival of the Angel of Death.

Anthology film from three European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe: a cruel countess haunted by a ghostly horse, a sadistic young man haunted by his double, and an alcoholic actor haunted by the Devil.

The film tells the story of documentary filmmaker Michael King (Shane Johnson), who doesn’t believe in God or the Devil. Following the sudden death of his wife, Michael decides to make his next film about the search for the existence of the supernatural, making himself the center of the experiment – allowing demonologists, necromancers, and various practitioners of the occult to try the deepest and darkest spells and rituals they can find on him – in the hopes that when they fail, he’ll once and for all have proof that religion, spiritualism, and the paranormal are nothing more than myth. But something does happen. An evil and horrifying force has taken over Michael King. And it will not let him go.

Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girlfriend - in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar and stalks his victim over several days.

In the shadow of Castle Dracula, the Prince of Darkness is revived by blood trickling from the head-wound of an unconscious priest attempting exorcism. And once more fear and terror strikes Transylvania as the undead Prince of Darkness stalks the village of Keineneburg to ensnare victims and satisfy his evil thirst.

A warlock burned at the stake comes back and takes over the body of his great grandson to take his revenge on the descendents of the villages that burned him.

Set in London in the early 1970's, supposedly for teen thrills, Johnny organises a black magic ceremony in a desolate churchyard. The culmination of the ritual, however, is the rejuvenation of Dracula from shrivelled remains. Johnny, Dracula' s disciple, lures victims to the deserted graveyard for his master's pleasure and one of the victims delivered is Jessica Van Helsing. Descended from the Van Helsing line of vampire hunters her grandfather, equipped with all the devices to snare and destroy the Count, confronts his arch enemy in the age-old battle between good and evil.

Townspeople of a small English village begin to die in a series of horrible accidents, and a Scotland Yard inspector arrives to investigate a mysterious local medium who records conversations with the dead.

When a 15th-century prince denounces God after the devastating loss of his wife, he inherits an eternal curse: he becomes Dracula. Condemned to wander the centuries, he defies fate and death itself, guided by a single hope — to be reunited with his lost love.

When an infamous "cursed" Egyptian sarcophagus falls into the hands of unscrupulous huckster Everett Randolph, he becomes obsessed with resurrecting the mummified princess held within it.

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy?

Ahead of her wedding, Kübra is possessed by demons. When an examination reveals more horror, her friend, a psychiatrist, tries to perform an exorcism.

With a torrid past that haunts him, a movie theatre owner is hired to search for the only existing print of a film so notorious that its single screening caused the viewers to become homicidally insane.

Three tales of supernatural horror include a woman plagued by threatening phone calls, a family targeted by vampiric monsters, and a deceased medium who wreaks havoc upon the living.

A burned-out British police detective finally snaps while interrogating a suspected child molester.

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

American professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.

Blackmailing a young couple to assist with his horrific experiments the Baron, desperate for vital medical data, abducts a man from an insane asylum. On route the abductee dies and the Baron and his assistant transplant his brain into a corpse. The creature is tormented by a trapped soul in an alien shell and, after a visit to his wife who violently rejects his monstrous form, the creature wreaks his revenge on the perpetrator of his misery: Baron Frankenstein.

Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican, investigates a young boy's terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.

18th century justice catches up with a pair of grave robbers. With only a few hours to go before his date with the guillotine, Arthur Blake tells his life story to Father Francis Duffy. Before long, Arthur spills the beans on how he got started in the grim corpse peddling business with seasoned ghoul Willie Grimes.

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

Five strangers encounter the mysterious Crypt Keeper while viewing old catacombs in the English countryside. Through a series of terrifying stories, each one learns their fate.

The sequel to Tales from the Crypt. Five strangers trapped in a basement vault converse about their recurring nightmares. Their stories include vampires, bodily dismemberment, east Indian mysticism, an insurance scam, and an artist who kills by painting his victims' deaths.

Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.

Two priests, one in crisis with his faith and the other confronting a turbulent past, must overcome their differences to perform a risky exorcism.

A senior at an Ivy League college, who depends on scholarships and working on the side, gets accepted into the secret society The Skulls. He hopes it betters chances at Harvard but The Skulls is not what he thought and comes at a price.

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.

A deformed tormented girl drowns herself after her lover is framed for murder and guillotined. Baron Frankenstein, experimenting with the transfer of souls, places the boy's soul into her body, bringing Christina back to life. Driven by revenge, she carries out a violent retribution on those responsible for both deaths.

Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.

A young teacher on her way to a position in Transylvania helps a young man escape the shackles his mother has put on him. In so doing she innocently unleashes the horrors of the undead once again on the populace, including those at her school for ladies. Luckily for some, Dr. Van Helsing is already on his way.

A young man and his girlfriend move into the man's old mansion home, where he becomes possessed by a need to control ancient demons.

After a family moves into an old Victorian home, they discover a chest in the attic containing antiques tainted by a malevolent spirit. As the antiques slowly possess each family member, the spirit grows stronger, hellbent on kidnapping the children.

A young pathologist seeks answers to the mysterious death of a friend and soon comes into contact with the same cursed videotape that caused the death of the friend's wife and son, which is haunted by the curse of Sadako, a relentless spirit.

A horror anthology containing three stories: a female college professor is aggressively pursued by one of her students; a prudish brunette determines that her free-spirited blonde sister is evil; and a woman's night turns upside down after she purchases an ancient Zuni fetish doll.

A group of college friends reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.

In the late 19th century, a brutal land baron slaughters a Roma clan, unleashing a curse on his family and village. In the days that follow, the townspeople are plagued by nightmares, the baron's son goes missing, and a boy is found murdered. The locals suspect a wild animal, but a visiting pathologist warns of a more sinister presence lurking in the woods.

When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

A virtuous monk descends to the depths of sin and depravity after Satan sends an unholy temptress to lead him astray.

Charles Dexter Ward, a wealthy scientist, uses an ancient diary and human remains to begin a terrifying and bloody pursuit for immortality.

In Whitewood, Massachusetts, a presumed witch places a curse on the town before she is burned at the stake. 300 years later, a college student arrives and checks into the mysterious Raven's Inn to research the town's history with witchcraft.

A hedonistic man finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons a group of gruesome beings known as the Cenobites. These otherworldly entities open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.

Whilst vacationing in the Carpathian Mountain, two couples stumble across the remains of Count Dracula's castle. The Count's trusted servant kills one of the men, suspending the body over the Count's ashes so that the blood drips from the corpse and saturates the blackened remains. The ritual is completed, the Count revived and his attentions focus on the dead man's wife who is to become his partner; devoted to an existence of depravity and evil.


