MartinHafer The film begins with a man being killed by a goofy looking South American Indian. And, after his death, the man's head disappears from the coffin! Well, it turns out that this sort of death and beheading is the norm for this family and when folks turn 60, they have this as their fate. How and why is this family cursed and who is behind all this? Okay...first you need to admit that this movie is NOT Shakespeare or a film you'll see in the Criterion Collection! No, it's a slightly cheesy horror film that is entertaining...and a tad silly. Now this is NOT a criticism--just a fact that the film is entertaining on a basic level. Sure, if you think about it, zombies and head shrinking are a bit silly--but this film manages to make it work. The writing, for what it is, is pretty good and the villain is quite nice. Overall, a good time to be had...provided you know what you are in for and aren't expecting more.By the way, as you watch the knife fights late in the film, watch the blade--it's obviously rubber and you can actually see it wiggling!

Scott LeBrun Jonathan Drake (Eduard Franz) and his brother Kenneth (Paul Cavanagh) are the latest in the line of Drake men and as such must suffer the curse placed upon the men of their family for ages. This curse dates back for centuries and involves heads being severed and shrunken. This is an effective touch in the screenplay by Orville H. Hampton, which is fairly strong and violent stuff for 1959. Capable B movie director Edward L. Cahn, whose credits include the sci-fi thriller "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" that served as a basis for "Alien", is at the helm of this decent programmer. It's nothing special, but not bad, either. As one can see, it's not without its creepy elements, although it's awfully talky for much of its running time. It's clearly not too concerned about functioning as a mystery, as our villain is revealed much sooner than we expect, and it becomes a matter of waiting for our protagonists to get caught up to speed. It benefits from a pretty strong cast. Franz, usually a supporting actor or bit player in features (such as the classic "The Thing from Another World") is wholly believable in a lead role. Grant Richards co-stars as the intrepid police detective Jeff Rowan, who goes through the biggest character arc in the story, as a hard headed man who believes in rational and sane explanations who's forced to acknowledge some truly unreal things. Valerie French is Franz's worried daughter, Paul Wexler the most memorable character in the film as the Jivaro Indian henchman who's had his lips sewn shut, and Henry Daniell is lots of fun as the intense archaeologist Dr. Emil Zurich. A short running time (71 minutes) ensures that the story go on no longer than it needs to, while a thunderous score by Paul Dunlap plays in the background. Those shrunken heads, designed by Charles Gemora, are really quite convincing; in general, the special effects, what little there are, are well done. In the end, this little film does have some potency going for it as well as some entertaining climactic action and revelations. Fans of the B movies of the era should find this a reasonable diversion. Six out of 10.

GL84 When the death of his brother puts him next in line to succumb to a strange curse that leaves the men in his family strangely decapitated shortly after death, a man races to find the source of the events and put a stop to them before he becomes next.Not that bad of an effort, as this one happened to be quite enjoyable despite it's utterly brief running time. That brevity is really the only true flaw here since it moves along a lot quicker than it really should as it brings up the fact that there's really not a lot offered about the curse or what's going on with the different figures that are trying to enact the curse. That said, there's some fun stuff to be had here with the Gothic atmosphere of the shrunken heads and flesh-stripped skulls, the hulking henchman who has his mouth sewn shut is eerily creepy and the sprawling estates this takes place in are all pretty much standard for a Gothic horror effort, and those are the most fun in here. There's a decent enough plot twist that keeps things moving along and it's definitely got some pretty entertaining brawls thrown into the mix, but otherwise it's just a short, mostly decent Gothic horror entry.Today's Rating-Unrated/PG: Violence.

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!