Skulls R Us

Before we leave the low budget realm of 1950's film making (it will be back! ) and the career of Edward L. Cahn let's take a look at the last HORROR film he ever made (this of course includes his last film, a version of Beauty and The Beast which is really a fantasy...). It's called The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake and it's a winner!


The Drake Family is under the curse of an ancient Ecuadorian tribe. In the 1800's Capt. Drake had a certain native village slaughtered. Since then every male in the Drake Family has died mysteriously on his 60th birthday and had his head cut off and stolen! Jonathan (Eduard Franz, later in Cahn's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) is the last of the line. After it's revealed at a funeral that his recently deceased brother has no head, a police lieutenent (Grant Richards, who usually played villians in director Cahn's films) investigates. He gets some help from Drake's daughter, Alison (Valerie French, who was in many TV shows in the '60's including The Prisoner episode "Living In Harmony") but soon we learn it is all the evil plot of Dr. Emil Zurich (Henry Daniell, former Dr. Moriarty to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in the '40's), a specialist in shrunken heads. And he ought to know about heads. He's actually a tribal Indian with a white man's head sewn on his body!

But the real nightmare fuel here is Zurich's servant Zutai (Paul Wexler) a menacing long haired native who's mouth is sewn shut! He kind of looks like Frank Zappa combined with Todd Rundgren!

That's frightening!!

Oddly enough actor Wexler had a played a comic butler role in "The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters" a few years before......

Anyway it's Zutai who does all the dirty work. He paralayzes his victims with a long poison needle then severs the head with a bamboo knife! Naturally this ritual is kept off screen and mostly just talked about but Cahn really builds up the atmosphere with the weird scenario of chopped off heads, skulls and voodoo dolls. Rather gruesome even in 1960. It moves at a nice clip and is never boring!

Got to love the shunken head!

"Four Skulls" was written by Orville Hampton who wrote many of the films Cahn directed, plus westerns, crazy stuff like "Riot On The Sunset Strip" and TV shows like "Perry Mason" and "Hawaii 5-0". Even "The Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour" (Hey! A guy has to eat, ya know!). His last work was on "Fantasy Island" in 1983 although he lived till 1997.

Of course Alfred Hitchcock made a fairly gruesome and eerie black and white film that very same year called PSYCHO!

Don't overlook this little masterpiece. See it with someone you love (or someone who loves good low budget horror movies!!!).

Thanks for reading!

RIP Claude Chabrol....