Scarecrow-88 "…the head of a decapitated white man on the body of a jungle Indian"Oh, boy, is this one a stinker. Eddie Cahn's film career was all over the place. This accompanies Voodoo Woman on the Stench Scale…it stinks up the nostrils. My heart breaks for such a talented actor as Henry Daniell (The Body Snatcher) who winds up as a "ghost" who shrinks the heads of 60-year-old Drake male descendants, associated with a curse 200 years old dating back to a head shrinker tribe. Jonathan Drake (Eduard Franz) is the only current male after his brother was killed, the head taken by Daniell and his Indian "head hunter", Zutai (Paul Wexler, his mouth "stringed shut" just like the shrunken heads accumulated from the head flesh of the Drake victims). A detective (Grant Richards) is on the case, investigating the decapitation/desecration of Jonathan's brother's corpse…he also is looking for those trying to kill Jonathan, as well. The plot, including the revelation of what Daniell's Dr. Zurich is, must be seen to be believed. It has a cult following, which doesn't really surprise me considering the bonkers, outré plot, which includes a lengthy sequence showing Zurich and Zutai's face-peeling, head-shrinking process, including boiling the decapitated head in a steaming bowl over an open fire! Daniell, with that rich, intellectual voice and aristocratic presence, quite sinister when alone with those he plans to kill, manages to almost escape this debacle with his dignity, but the end, when his identity is revealed, is rather embarrassing. As for the plot: introduced is Daniell, an authority on tribal customs and beliefs, is behind the killing of the Drakes, shrinking their faces after they are peeled from the skulls, then planting the skulls in the Drake mausoleum as if a trophy case of mockery. In doing all this (including pricking the necks of the Drakes with the most flexible needle I've ever seen (the ending has Zutai going at Richards with the needle and it bending, a flimsy prop that fails to be convincing at all)), Zurich continues to live eternal. Valerie French is Jonathan's curvy daughter trying to determine who would want to hurt her family and why. Howard Wendell tragically learns of who the culprits are behind the Drake murder and Jonathan's attack, as Zurich and Zutai surprise him while he questions the methods of head shrinking, a victim because he helped their latest victim recover from the poison needle. The diabolical nature of the plot and the cringe-inducing racism behind the villains make this quite a time-capsule curio. It has its fans, but I'm just not one of them. The scene that takes the cake: Daniell in tribal headdress invoking this nightmare that produces skulls that freak Jonathan out as he sleeps. And the fingerprints on the skulls when Richards brings in a forensics expert to dust is right up there with Jonathan's nightmare.

zardoz-13 Director Edward L. Cahn's horror chiller "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake" qualifies as creepy, atmospheric hokum about an ancient Jivaro Indian curse put on an American family about 180 years ago. I'll admit that the only way I could watch this hypnotic nail-biter as a child was from behind my father's easy chair across the living room from the television set back in the early 1960s. The sight of levitating skulls, a spooky Indian stalking his victims, a severed head in a boiling cauldron of water, shrunken skulls, decapitated heads in refrigerators, and a headless corpse in a coffin rattled me. I remember that this movie made my blood run cold, and the intensity it exerted over me as I found myself drawn to watching it repeatedly never seemed to abate.Now, forty years have passed since I've seen this nightmarish nonsense, and I'm grateful MGM Home Video has preserved it for posterity in a double-bill DVD with another Cahn film "Voodoo Island" with Boris Karloff. Of course, "The Four Skulls" doesn't give me goose bumps anymore, but I can appreciate the dread it once instilled in me. Moreover, as a testament to Cahn's authority as a horror movie maestro, it is worth mentioning that Cahn helmed another fright flick that gave me the jitters, the outer space saga "It! The Terror from Beyond Space," one of the films that inspired Ridley Scott's "Alien." The difference between "It!" and "The Four Skulls" is the latter occurred in contemporary setting and just about everything in "The Four Skulls" appeared down-to-earth and believable."The Four Skulls" unfolds in the eponymous protagonist's study. Cahn highlights a line from William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" that serves as the film's theme: "The evil of that men do lives after them." The hero, Jonathan Drake, a 60-year old professor of Occult sciences, writhes in the clutches of an hallucination as unseen forces snuff out the only candle in the room and three (obviously superimposed heads) float into view. Drake's daughter Alison (Valerie French of "Jubal") lights another candle and tries to comfort her father who is clasping a shrunken Indian head. Just as Jonathan recovers from one fright, he experiences another. Alison has tried to contact him about his brother Ken who has tried to contact her father. Jonathan (Eduard Franz of "The Burning Hills") sits up attentively when Alison says Ken "said he'd seen somebody named Tsantsas." Jonathan shows Alison what a "tsantsas." He explains the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador call a "tsantsas" a shrunken head. Alison dismisses the relevance of this information in regard to Ken. "He doesn't know anything about your work or your experiments." Jonathan wires Ken he will arrive shortly by plane, and Ken instructs his butler Rogers to prepare a guest room. Meanwhile, a Jivaro Indian, Zutai (Paul Wexler of "Suddenly"), whose mouth has been sewn shut and who wears a white pajama-like outfit, sneaks into Ken's study with a basket in one hand and stiletto in the other. He pricks Ken's neck with the curare-dipped stiletto. The Indian is kneeling over Ken in the process of cutting off Ken's head when Rogers (Lumsden Hare of "The Gorilla Man") interrupts him. Zutai beats it out the back door. Dangling in the doorway is the object Ken saw just before Zutai attacked him—a tsantsas! The next day, police lieutenant Jeff Rowan (Grant Richards of "Isle of Destiny") appears at Kenneth Drake's residence in response to Alison's call. At the same time that Rowan shows up, Drake's body is being loaded into a hearse. Ken's personal physician, Dr. Bradford (Howard Wendell of "The Big Heat") assures Rowan that no foul play was involved in Ken's sudden death. He hands Rowan the death certificate and explains Ken died from "coronary occlusion." He adds an autopsy would be a irrelevant. "There is a history of cardiovascular failure in the Drake family, probably a congenital weakness, something in the heredity." Bradford elaborates: "For the last three generations every male member of the Drake family has died in the same way. And at almost the same age, sixty." When Rowan wonders if the shrunken head played any part in Ken's death, a gentlemen seated in the study—Dr. Zurich—attracts his attention. "That's a little preposterous, isn't it lieutenant?" Earlier, Zurich (Henry Daniell of "The Sea Hawk") refused to shake Rowan's hands. He echoes Jonathan's comments about the tsantsas when he pontificates that tsantsas is "The Jivaro Indian name for shrunken heads." He adds that Rogers summoned him because as Zurich states, "I am considered something of an authority on the Indian culture." When Jonathan arrives at Ken's house, he demands the undertaker open the casket. Everybody is shocked when they discover Ken's head has been removed. Lt. Rowan launches an investigation and Jonathan has to spill the beans to Alison about the family curse in the Drake vault in Ken's backyard. "The curse began with Captain Wilfred Drake who had a trading station on the upper Amazon. When the Jivaro Indians kidnapped his Swiss agent, Captain Wilfred led an expedition into the jungle to try and save him." Jonathan explains that the Captain found the Swiss agent's headless corpse in the village and massacred everybody except for a witch doctor who escaped into the jungle. "He's the one who's put the curse on every Drake male descendant." Not long afterward, Zutai steals into Kenneth's house and paralyzes Jonathan with the curare poison, but Rogers surprises him again. Lt. Rowan behaves like "Dirty Harry" and on a hunch investigates Dr. Zurich's house and finds some interesting things, namely Dr. Bradford's head in a fridge. Rowan later learns that Dr. Zurich is 180 years old. Zurich desperately wants to kill Jonathan and acquire his head intact to shrink it. He kidnaps Alison and things really begin to snap, crackle, and pop in this entertaining claptrap. Daniell stands out as the evil Dr. Zurich. "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake" is a hootenanny!

Michael_Elliott Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, The (1959) ** (out of 4) The Drake family has a curse on it because after the male members die their heads are removed. Before MGM released this on DVD it was pretty hard to see the film and it had a very good reputation from the few who remembered seeing it back in the day. Flash forward to my viewing and I was left very disappointed. The film has a terrific ending but everything leading up to this point is rather dull and boring. The performances are also rather annoying but this is probably due more to the screenplay. The one nice bonus was seeing Henry Daniell from The Body Snatcher fame.

Mike-764 Jonathan Drake, and daughter Alison, visits his brother Kenneth because he is becoming more unnerved due to a family curse. Kenneth is killed before his brother's arrival by a mysterious Indian. When Drake and Alison arrive, the funeral is in progress and later discover that Kenneth Drake's head is missing. Enter police detective Lt. Rowan, who soon discovers that the males of the Drake family have died suddenly at the age of 60 and were decapitated. An associate of the Drake family, Dr. Zurich, is the man responsible for the killings and is quick to kill Jonathan Drake before Rowan and Alison try to stop him, but must combat the supernatural of the killings even when they learn that Zurich is actually dead! Decent horror schlock from the 50's with good acting, directing, and atmosphere, but nothing really standout from similar films of the same era. My big problem is that the reason Zurich wants revenge on the Drake family is never fully explained. A good ending for the film helps the enjoyment. Rating, 7.