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The Four Skulls Of Jonathan Drake
[MGM]
1959; b&w
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Starring: Eduard Franz, Valerie French, Grant Richards & Henry Daniell
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The Four Skulls Of Jonathan Drake is another underrated and reasonably obscure horror flick from the late '50s that, with a bit of modernization to the script and bit of CGI here and there, could easily be remade and achieve a fair level of success today. (Or at least good DVD sales and rentals.) The story revolves around the male heirs of the Drake family and the curse that's befallen three of them over the past 180 years. Apparently the Drake who started all this hoo-ha was a ship's captain / explorer type who ran afoul of an Amazon Indian tribe and slaughtered everyone in their native village; except a witch doctor. (Who escaped and, obviously, initiated the curse.) As luck would have it, the village was home to a tribe of headhunters and said curse involves male Drake descendants dying at age 60. Then, somewhere between death and burial, the men are "relieved" of their heads and buried. And the heads? They're prepared in some sort of ritual manner resulting in the skull being removed, in tact, and shrunk down to the size of a softball. At which point each Drake skull mysteriously materializes in a cabinet in the family mausoleum. At the very beginning of the film one of the two living Drake males tries to get an urgent message to his brother about impending events but, before the brother (Jonathan Drake) can do anything, he finds himself in mourning for his sibling. Once Jonathan confirms - in front of a room full of mourners - that the corpse is headless, everything begins to get crazy. The main force behind all this evil voodoo is the ultra-creepy doctor Zurich, whose surprising amount of useful knowledge about amazon head-taking practices arouses the suspicions of the cop assigned to the case. As creepy as he is, his lips-shown-shut immortal servant Zutai, whose weapon of choice is a Curare-tipped bamboo blade, is even creepier. (Seriously, this is exactly the type of character I'd see in horror movies on TV as a kid and have nightmares about for months.) The rest of the movie follows Zurich's attempts to get Drake's head, and Drake's attempts to stop Zurich and break the curse without interference by the police. Speaking of the police… the cop, by now, has learned about Zurich's true role in all this and is hot on his trail. When he corners the doctor, he ends up tangling with Zutai and, lo and behold, finds a way to kill off an immortal being. Then he goes after Zurich, leading up to a final confrontation in front of the Drake mausoleum. Despite the cheap special effects - like the rubber bladed knife wobbling and bouncing whenever it hits something - and low budget, The Four Skulls is more promising than you might think.
—the Kommandant
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