Thursday, October 20, 2016

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, The Art of Headhunting

In today's technology age, we have lost so many valuable skills.  Head shrinking is just one of those lost necessities.  Sure, we can send nude pictures of ourselves to Asia, instantly....but we no longer have the ability to decapitate old friends, shrink their heads, and display those trophies on our bookshelves. Perhaps a revival of 1959's "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake" will help us recapture that art.
Jonathan Drake (Eduard Franz) has a problem. Generations ago, Amazonian Indians cursed his family.  Every male heir would die at the age of 60. Not just die, paralyzed by curare poison and then decapitated. But wait, there's more! The skulls would be sent back to the family and the remnants of their heads would be shrunken trophies.  Uh oh...Drake's brother dies as the film opens, and this fate plays out.  Double uh oh...Drake is about to turn 60.  Enter the weird archaeologist, Dr. Emil Zurich (Henry Daniell), who just happens to be the world's most renown expert on shrinking heads.
As Drake quakes in fear, his beautiful daughter, Alison (Valerie French) teams up with Detective Rowan (Grant Richards) to get to the bottom of the theft of the brother's head.  As an ultra weird Amazonian Indian (Paul Wexler) stalks Jonathan, Det. Rowan makes some startling discoveries about the family curse and Dr. Zurich. We are treated to some graphic scenes in which Dr. Zurich takes us through the process of creating shrunken heads....is he related to the curse?
Will Jonathan succumb to a centuries old curse?  Will the fair Alison be in peril as she attempts to solve the mystery of the stolen corpse heads, and save her dad? What is Dr. Zurich's relationship to the curse, and is he working with immortal Amazonians?  Directed by Edward L. Cahn, this is a neat mystery/thriller which will have you wincing. There'll be plenty of decapitations and head-shrink-ology in this one.  Available on YouTube, don't lose your head over "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake."

1 comment:

  1. "...but we no longer have the ability to decapitate old friends, shrink their heads, and display those trophies on our bookshelves."

    Speak for yourself! O:)

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