Freddie Francis directs Peter Cushing, Patrick Wymark and Christopher Lee in this thin tale of antique dealers haunted by the Marquis de Sade’s skull.

Any film that has British Horror royalty (Cushing and in a smaller but outstandingly played part Lee) outbidding each other at auction and playing billiards has to be worth a watch. Yet this is a very short story that feels unpleasurably stretched over its run time, sometimes well (the flashbacks to the skull’s first victims in Napoleonic France are saucy fun) but often drearily (a final near wordless 20 minutes where Cushing struggles against possession drags on and then drags some more.) Of its time and with that colourful Amicus handsomeness.

5