I didn't have much of a reaction to The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake either way. It's not a bad film... there's just nothing extraordinary (or really even terribly interesting) about it. It's got a decent atmosphere about it, and generates most of its chills from examining the concept of head-shrinking. So I might be able to shrink a head now, if I wanted to. But there isn't too much here to get excited about.
It starts off with the titular Jonathan Drake, waking from a nightmare with three skulls floating around... he's had feelings of doom his whole life, but that feeling is getting stronger by the day. Jonathan is an expert in the occult, and instinctively knows that his family is in some kind of trouble. He goes to visit his brother Kenneth after receiving a strange letter (I think?), but by the time he can get there, his brother is dead! The doctor says it's a heart attack (there is a history of it in the family), but we are hip to the true cause of death. A creepy dude with his lips sewn together snuck into the house and poked him in the neck with some poisonous thing. (This guy is even more creepy by virtue of being a white man painted brown, playing a Jivaro Indian.) He was getting ready to cut off Kenneth's head, when he was scared off by approaching footsteps.
Jonathan arrives during the funeral and demands to have the casket opened to see his brother's body... when they open the casket, his head is missing! This is the same thing that happened to their grandfather and father, so he had reason to be curious, I guess. It turns out that many, many years ago, Grandpa Drake wiped out all but one of the entire Jivaro Indian tribe in South America. The one guy that got away happened to be the witch doctor, who promptly put a curse on all male Drake offspring from that point on. And honestly? That seems like a pretty reasonable excuse for putting a curse on someone. The curse itself involves them dying mysteriously, then getting decapitated and having their heads shrunk... although in the film, it plays out more like plain old revenge than a curse. Will Jonathan fall victim to the same fate? Or, with the help of his niece Alison and a skeptical police inspector, will he get to the bottom of it all? Tune in to find out!
The biggest problem with The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is that it is more or less presented as a mystery, but there is no mystery to it at all. We (the audience) are privy to what is going on entirely - from the method of the murders to how they shrink their heads. A big chunk of the film revolves around Drake and his compadres trying to figure out what is happening, but when we already know, it takes a great deal of the fun out of it. Plus, when we do get some sort of a reveal, it's done in the most boring way possible - one character just telling another.
Because of that, there isn't a lot of flow to the narrative and no real surprises. You kind of know where the story is going well before it gets there. But it's a pretty short movie, so at least it never gets super boring.
It's got some pretty charming elements of old-tymey horror to it too. You get some great old-style dialogue - "Some of our strongest cultures are based on the taking of heads" and (speaking about a dead body) "What could have happened to him? The way the pupils of his eyes are dilated something must have terrified him." The evil Jivaro henchman leaves little skulls as fingerprints. At the scene of the crime, they find a sandal made of human skin. (This just made me laugh - what could be a less intimidating piece of clothing to make out of human skin? Flip-flops? An ascot?)
Some of the special effects are pretty solid - particularly as it involves the head shrinking. I've seen *way* worse fake decapitated heads in movies made 50 years after this one. Some of the other effects are a bit corny, but it's that kind of stuff that makes it enjoyable, you know?
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is the kind of movie I was thinking of when I was writing about The Sadist a couple of days ago... it's definitely a horror movie, but it's got kind of a cheesy feel too it, what with the moustauche-twirlingly evil villain and some cheesy effects. There is nothing here that is legitimately disturbing in any way, other than the basic concept of head shrinking.
It's not a terrible way to spend a little over an hour. Overall there just isn't much to get excited about, but it passes the time well. If your parents didn't like horror movies, it may be a good one to watch with them.
I would sadly, be hesitant to recommend this film.
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