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In
the last wave of Midnite Movies DVD releases,
before Sony acquired MGM, was this pairing of
lesser known and little seen late '50s fright
flicks. Neither is a classic but together they
make an almost irresistible double feature for
fans of mildly cheesy black &
white horror pictures.
The better of the two is the
Side B feature, The
Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. The film
opens with a Shakespearean quote ("The
evil that men do lives after them") as
we see professor of the occult Jonathan Drake
(Eduard Franz) sitting in his study. He is in
the grip of a powerful, terrifying hallucination
of three floating human skulls and seems on the
verge of a heart attack. His daughter Alison (Valerie
French) finds him there and is very concerned
for his health. Drake brushes her fears aside
and seems to be regaining his reason until Alison
mentions a message from her Uncle Kenneth. It
seems the older man wrote to tell about having
recently seen a tsantsas, or shrunken head.
This news startles Jonathan and he immediately
makes plans to go to his older brother's home
even though the trip will take at least two days.
But the night Kenneth receives Jonathan's wire
announcing his imminent arrival, Kenneth is attacked
in his bedroom by a fearsome, dark-skinned man
whose lips are sewn together. The grim man paralyzes
his victim by sticking him in the neck with a
poisoned wooden needle. Before he can remove the
stricken Kenneth's head, a servant interrupts
him.
Showing a great deal of common
sense, Alison calls ahead of her father and asks
the local police to check up on her uncle Ken.
Lt. Jeff Rowan (Grant Richards) shows up at his
house only to learn that Mr. Drake has died the
previous night! Drake's personal physician Dr.
Bradford (Howard Wendall) is on hand, as well
as archeologist Dr. Emil Zurich (The
Body Snatcher's Henry Daniell). Bradford
explains that his patient has died of natural
causes and reveals that heart trouble runs in
the family. It seems that almost all the Drake
men die of heart failure at around the age of
60. Lt. Rowan questions everyone, learning that
Dr. Zurich had called to visit Kenneth Drake at
his request to give some information about a shrunken
head found outside the house. Zurich is an expert
on the Indian tribes of South America. Rowan is
perplexed by the death, but as there's no evidence
of any crime he lets it drop.
We then are shown Dr. Zurich's
home life, which consists of lounging about his
basement in a robe, boiling strange fluids over
a fire pit and shrinking heads! And not just any
heads, either. Zurich has a deep hatred of the
Drake family and his only servant is the tightlipped
fellow with the knife and needle, Zutai (Paul
Wexler). Frustrated that his assassin failed to
bring home the prize, he sends him out again.
As soon as Drake's body is placed in state the
Indian darts in and nabs that noggin. Jonathan
arrives just in time for the funeral, and when
his brother's head is discovered to be missing,
he nearly collapses. That night he unburdens himself
to Alison, telling her the family secret. It seems
that the girl's great-great grandfather retaliated
against a tribe of Jivaro Indians in the Amazon
jungle after they killed one of his agents. He
wiped out the entire village save the witchdoctor,
who escaped and placed a curse on the family that
all male descendants would die at 60 and lose
their heads. Since then the two male Drakes that
have reached that advanced age have mysteriously
died and their heads disappeared —
only to have the fleshless skulls turn up in the
sealed family crypt. No one knows how this is
done but since Kenneth's head has disappeared
his brother is waiting for a third skull to materialize
in the vault. Alison runs to Lt. Rowan and clues
him in to this odd story, which neither of them
believe. However, when they visit the vault together
they spot Zutai in the area and the cop takes
a shot at him. Checking the crypt afterwards,
they find that there are now three skulls in place.
Hmmm.
Soon enough Zutai is back to
stalking and sneaks in on a sleeping Jonathan
to poke him with the poisoned needle. But the
Indian's luck continues to suck and he is once
again interrupted by the same servant as before!
Sometimes a killer can't catch a break. This time
the suspicious cop spots a telltale drop on the
pillow, has it analyzed (amazingly fast, I might
add) and finds that its curare. Quickly an antidote
is administered and Jonathan's life is saved.
Rowan had begun to worry that the Drake curse
might be real but this changes his mind. Finally
putting two and two together, he and Dr. Bradford
decide to talk to Dr. Zurich but, stupidly, do
it separately. This results in another shrunken
head for the Doc's basement collection and a final
showdown that answers all our questions... except
for one. How in the world could these folks not
know Zurich was the bad guy? He's played by Henry
Daniell for goodness sake! The man fairly drips
with evil. I can't imagine him ordering a cup
of coffee in a way that wouldn't be sinister,
much less babbling about shrunken heads. In this
film he couldn't have looked more nefarious if
he wore a bloody smock in public and casually
flicked bits of brain goo off his gloves while
speaking with the police. Of course, these are
the kinds of thing you either love or hate about
movies of this vintage. It's a delicate balancing
act these films try, and The
Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake works hard
to pull you in before it slaps you around with
silly elements. It gets major points by laying
out the accurate sounding method of shrinking
heads and slipping in a nice creep factor involving
why Zutai's lips are sewn shut. Although we are
privy to the whodunit aspect early on the film
still has the cops carefully follow clues, keeping
a veneer of believability that makes things fun.
When Rowan has the police lab man dust the three
skulls in the crypt turning up small skulls etched
into the fingerprints its a eerie site that is
handled well. Its easy to point out the film's
silly flaws, such as the stagebound look of the
outdoor sets, the crypt with electric lighting,
that Jonathan Drake only seems to be about two
days younger than his brother, or that Zutai's
knife suddenly goes all rubbery in the climatic
struggle. But the film overcomes these small details
to be one of the rough gems of the period's scare
pictures. It's far from a classic and its never
going to win over a negative crowd but to a receptive
audience it is 70 minutes of pure cheesy fun.
The 'A' side of this disc contains
Voodoo
Island, which is best known (if at all)
as one of many programmers made by Boris Karloff
in the 1950s. It's not one of King Karloff's best
moments.
Howard Carlton (Owen Cunningham)
is a very wealthy man who has finally decided
to look into developing a Pacific island he purchased
some time ago. Supposedly uninhabited, the island
has a bad reputation with the natives in the area
and it is said that no one who goes there ever
returns. Unconcerned about superstition plus seeing
gold on them thar shores, Carlton sent a team
of land surveyors to look over the place with
an eye to building a hotel and resort in this
tropical paradise. But the only member of the
group to return was Mitchell (Glenn Dixon) who
washed up on another island in a small boat. Alive
but in a catatonic, zombie-like state Mitchell
can offer no information on what happened. Carlton
calls in Phillip Knight (Karloff), a professional
skeptic and debunker of supernatural claims, asking
him to visit the island to discover what happened
to the surveyors. Knight openly doubts Carlton's
tale with not even Mitchell’s odd state convincing
him this isn't an elaborate Voodoo publicity stunt.
He agrees to go but insists on complete autonomy
and the right to publish his findings his own
way. Carlton agrees and allows Knight to take
a small group with him sending his right hand
man Finch (Murvyn Vye) along to smooth any money
problems. Also making the journey is Carlton's
head architect Clair Winter (Jean Engstrom), Knight’s
assistant Sarah Adams (Beverly Tyler) and Mitchell
is taken along just because Knight wants him to
go. En route by plane the group begins to experience
strange things such as malfunctioning radios and
disappearing storms. These phenomenon are topped
by the strange death of Mitchell just as they
are about to board a boat to the dreaded isle.
Once on the island the intrepid crew slashes their
way into the jungle looking for the previous team's
trail but find only tree markers and abandoned
surveying equipment. The group fight off pesky
insects and pad out the film with some grade C
romance between the very attractive Miss Adams
and the macho boozehound boat captain Mr. Gunn
(Rhodes Reason). Luckily for those of us who know
the argue/fight/bond/kiss routine of such subplots
we finally get to business when the fetching Miss
Winter goes skinny-dipping alone in a lake. Craning
our necks for a glimpse of skin instead we're
given a carnivorous (and apparently inflatable)
plant that attacks and kills the lady, depositing
her corpse on the shore. Soon after this, another
type of plant resembling a creepy, pulsing suction
cup lampreys itself onto Adams' right breast!
The men quickly free her and just as I began to
think all the plant life had a taste for human
females the island's natives take everyone prisoner.
The native chief explains they have lived in this
taboo place for years and wish to be left alone.
After witnessing another of his companions die
unexplainably after seeing his likeness on a voodoo
doll Knight agrees, and the rest of the party
are allowed to go home. The End.
Voodoo
Island is a bore,
pure and simple. A dull story, pedestrian acting,
silly dialog and a complete lack of explanation
for anything that occurs puts this on the list
of the worst Karloff movies I've ever seen. I
can't blame poor Boris too much —
he tries hard to sell his lines, but he's asked
to spout some very stupid things. Humorously,
some of his most memorable lines are when he is
trying to convince the group not to return to
their boat and leave. His incredible argument
for staying in the obviously deadly jungle is
hysterical and actually had me laughing out loud.
If the film had maintained this level of nuttiness
I think we'd have had a cheese classic. But unfortunately
this scene, the inflatable plant monster attacks
and the silly romance are the only things that
inject any life into this thing. I thought things
were going to improve when character actor Elisha
Cook Jr. showed up as the money-hungry owner of
a nearby island, but even his efforts can't raise
much interest. The bad script just can't be overcome.
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