Wednesday, May 7, 2014

The Four Skulls Of Jonathan Drake


A family is cursed to be buried headless, I guess, in this atmospheric but slow-moving horror film. There's some shrunken heads, a fog enshrouded cemetery, a headless corpse in a casket, several people with their lips sewn shut, a head in a basket, and a bubbling cauldron. There's also a skull removal procedure, a Dutch oven with a shrunken head in it, a crypt cabinet full of skulls, and a crypt equipped with electric illumination. I really have to give props to the crypt designer from the 1800s who thought ahead (Ha! See what I did there?) to install a light switch for the one time in the future when someone needed to check out the skull cabinet in the dark because it was in the script. Can you imagine the light bill after having that thing on for two hundred years? Wow. I don't know an awful lot about the energy efficiency of leaving a light bulb on from the 1800s or the building codes for installing an electric light switch for the undead, but I would have to assume that it would probably be a little more cost effective in the long run to just leave a flashlight in there in case someone needed to inventory the skulls in the crypt skull cabinet. You can get a three-pack of those little plastic hooks for about $2.99, and a cheap flashlight runs about the same. If you're concerned about quality, you could invest in one of those LED flashlights and still make out like a bandit cost-wise. Sure, you'll have to change the batteries a few times in two hundred years, but it's got to be better than hoping someone turns out the light after they're done making sure someone hasn't slipped a new skull in the crypt skull cabinet when no one is looking.

Anyway, there are multiple floating disembodied skulls, some dispassionate bongo playing, an unconvincing rubber knife, and some unfortunate racism from an undead head transplant. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Hey Stabford, I like floating disembodied skulls and undead head transplants. Should I watch this film?", and the answer is, "Probably not."


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