THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE has been perennially – and some would say unjustly -- panned by horror film historians, critics, and reviewers alike. Often passed off as “laughable” and “odd”, when viewed under more favorable scrutiny, it lives up to its potential as a quaint mystery/horror film. Consequently, it deserves to be located a little farther up the street from poverty row than most people care to put it. In truth, there can be no denying that it suffers from a familiar curse called “low-budget”, but it does offer the casual viewer an interesting premise, competent acting, and a few really creepy scenes. Some of them could even be called downright gruesome.
Released on Friday the 13th in November 1959 by United Artists on a double-bill with INVISIBLE INVADERS, THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE and its running mate were both directed by Eddie Cahn. In his career, Edward L. Cahn (b. Brooklyn, NY, 12 February 1899 – d. Hollywood, CA, 25 August 1963) directed over 200 films, from short subjects to westerns, to teen-exploitation and B-movies. He is best known for his work on the Our Gang comedies. One biographer goes so far as to say that an Edward L. Cahn Film Festival would be like going to “an orgy of guilty pleasures”.
Vogue Pictures was an ink spot on the map of Hollywood. When compared to low-budget leviathans such as AIP, Vogue was little more than a minnow. Notwithstanding, producer Robert E. Kent and director Eddie Cahn teamed up for a handful of horror films under the Vogue Pictures title card and established roots -- shallow as they were -- in the epic landscape that was Tinsel town.
| Eduard Franz as Jonathan Drake. |
At the time, Cahn was well known as the fastest working director in Hollywood. Now largely forgotten, he completed films even faster than Roger Corman, who has become something of a legend in his own right for his hyper-speed production schedules. The pipe-chewing Eddie Cahn was a disciplined task master behind the camera and worked very strictly off the script. This allowed him to keep things moving much quicker than if he would have allowed unrehearsed dialogue from the actors.
No exact data is available, but the production budget for FOUR SKULLS was probably in the range of $75,000. According to information regarding salaries in low-budget movies of the times, lead actors such as Eduard Franz and Henry Daniell probably earned in the range of $2,000 - $3,000, while lesser characters such as Grant Richards and Valerie French probably received around $1,000. Bit and character actors such as Lumsden Hare and Paul Wexler most likely got less than $1,000. Director Eddie Cahn probably received $5,000 - $10,000 and more certainly towards the lower end of the scale than the higher end. The rest was for film stock, sets, props, publicity and other production costs.
With a screenplay by Orville H. Hampton (THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, ROCKETSHIP X-M), the film looks to have been shot entirely on a sound stage. While this was probably decided on to contain shooting costs, it makes the overall “feel” of the picture very reminiscent to that of one of Cahn’s earlier Vogue Pictures, IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (with special effects by Paul Blaisdell).
There is hardly a long shot in the film. As a result, this can give the viewer the faint, uneasy perception of claustrophobia. While not exactly a bad thing to strive for in a horror thriller, these types of stylistic subtleties occasionally seen in low-budget pot boilers are usually accidental and rarely by design (or perhaps to avoid using wide-angle shots on the small sound stage).
There was no shortage of props designed to induce gooseflesh in audiences of the 1950’s. There are the eerie skulls shot in double exposure seen floating in the opening scene of the film. We see an exotic (for the times) South American Indian creeping about in sandals made from human skin, sent to do his master’s bidding to deliver a deadly prick on his victim’s skin from the tip of a knife dipped in curare. And, during the police investigation, when fingerprints are lifted in the Drake family crypt, we discover that the images of skulls have been left where the usual prints should be.
Industry-respected prop master Max Frankel supplied a number of items for art director William Glasgow and set decorator Morris Hoffman. According to the press book, among these were: “An Atucan poisoned blow-gun, a bamboo machete, and a book on Tsantsas [shrunken heads], the weird mystic rites of head shrinking.” He also had to “equip a complete police crime detection laboratory and a library of Ecuadorian, Mayan, and Aztecan history and culture for use by the actors.”
Everything does seem to have the look that is appropriately “mystical” and horrifying, except for the bamboo “machete”. It suffers from one of the most recognizable (and scene spoiling) cheap effects in movies, the wobbly rubber knife.
Out of his trademark gorilla suit for almost five years, Charles Gemora was hired as make-up man. Gemora (b. Manila, Philippines, 15 August 1903, d. Hollywood, CA, 19 August 1961) is most famous for appearing in numerous movies dressed in a gorilla suit of his own design. He studied the gorillas living at the San Diego Zoo and came up with some very realistic appliances and a costume that turned him into a virtual ape man. He plied his trade at Universal, then Paramount. When menacing gorillas fell out of style, he turned his talents to make-up and effects for science fiction movies. He died of a heart attack while working on the fantasy film JACK THE GIANT KILLER (Charlie's daughter, Diana, played a bit part in this film).
| Charlie makes up Lady Constance/The Witch (Anna Lee) for Jack the Giant Killer (1962). He died while making the film. |
In FOUR SKULLS, Gemora supplied the realistic looking shrunken heads which added the needed verisimilitude to the picture. Television travelogues such as Lowell Thomas’ High Adventure were extremely popular in the 1950’s, and the exotic theme and locale of unusual South American tribal customs gave Four Skulls a unique character for a film that could have otherwise been pedestrian from start to finish. Another eerie touch, actually quite easy to achieve, was at the film’s climax, when Dr. Zurich is killed by cutting off his “white head from his brown body”. This was accomplished by Gemora using a dark make-up cream on Henry Daniell’s torso while leaving his natural light skin color from the neck up. A little work with a make-up pencil for stitch marks and the illusion was complete.
| Paul Wexler as Zutai, ready to get a head. |
Perhaps the biggest (and creepiest) surprise in the film is the scene in which we see Dr. Zurich make a shrunken head out of Dr. Bradford. From the boiling water, to the hot sand, to the stitching up of the lips and eyes, the process, while abbreviated on screen, is, according to historical sources, very close to authentic.
Even though the evil Dr. Zurich meets his demise at the end of the film, The Four Skulls of Jonathan was far from finished scaring audiences (or attempting to, anyway). After its theatrical run in 1959, it was syndicated for television on 15 May 1963 by United Artists Associates. Along with KING KONG, CAT PEOPLE, and THE MAN FROM PLANET X, it was one of the 58 feature films package sold as Science Fiction-Horror Monster Features.
| Pressbook. |
Reviews have been largely unkind to THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE. However, some of the comments in these selfsame reviews leave one wondering if the reviewer had even seen the movie in the first place! For example, John Stanley, in his CREATURE FEATURES MOVIE GUIDE (Creatures At Large, 1981), calls FOUR SKULLS a “familiar beware-the-family-curse”, with a “good cast, but a lousy plot.” He goes on to state that it is a “tale of a 2000-year-old walking zombie.”
In Michael Weldon’s seminal THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM (Ballantine Books, 1983) he calls FOUR SKULLS a “classic ghoulish cheapie.” However, Dr. Zurich is mistakenly identified as Drake, a 200-year-old man with the body of a witch doctor.
| From the "Horror Monsters" card set. |
And, in Jeff Rovin’s THE FABULOUS FANTASY FILMS (A. S. Barnes & Co., Inc., 1977), it is Paul Wexler who is named as the head head-shrinker instead of Henry Daniell. The inaccuracy is further compounded by stating: “the dire proceedings come to an end when scientist Edward (sic) Franz intercedes. Zombie Wexler, his age catching up with him, disintegrates.” Jeff Rovin does manage to muster up a little support for the film by saying that it has “many moments of grating terror.”
THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE has fought off obscurity over the years by surfacing occasionally on videotape (and on Blu-ray in 2017), mostly of the bootleg variety. It was finally released on MGM’s Midnite Movies line of DVD’s as a double feature with Boris Karloff’s VOODOO ISLAND. While purists would argue that it would be more fitting to have it appear on disc along with its original co-feature, INVISIBLE INVADERS, at least we don’t have to wait weeks or months for it to show up again on TV like we did back in the days of Chiller Theatre!
NOTE: This two-part article was originally published in MAD SCIENTIST magazine #30 as "Curse of the Shrunken Heads! The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.