THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE 1959
Let’s take a delightfully campy, tongue-in-cheek stroll through two of the kookiest crypt-crawlers the 1950s ever coughed up: The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958). Both are proof that sometimes the best chills come with a wink, a nudge, a pair of sandals made from 200-year-old skin from a walking dead tribal witch doctor, and a severed head in a box.
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959), is a treasure brought to you by one of my favorite directors of the campy, the schlocky, and glorious B fare: Edward L. Cahn (Creature with the Atom Brain 1955, The She-Creature 1956, Invasion of the Saucer Men 1957, The Zombies of Mora Tau 1957, Invisible Invaders 1959 and my particular favorite It!, the Terror from Beyond Space 1958). The film stars Eduard Franz, Valerie French, Henry Daniell, Grant Richards, and Paul Wexler. It’s the macabre family tradition-every Drake man who hits sixty gets a complimentary disappearing head and a reserved spot in the crypt’s exclusive skull collection, all courtesy of a vengeful Jivaro shaman with a grudge that just won’t quit. A curse and a zombie with lips sewn shut (played by Paul Wexler, who looks like he had a run-in with an unoiled sewing machine).
Anthropologist Jonathan Drake (Eduard Franz, a man who’s seen one shrunken head too many) is next on the chopping block. After his brother’s head goes missing, in this family, losing your head isn’t just a figure of speech- it’s practically a rite of passage. Jonathan and his plucky daughter Alison (Valerie French) team up with a skeptical cop (Grant Richards) to unravel the mystery. The culprit? Dr. Emil Zurich (the wooden-faced Henry Daniell, as sinister ever), who’s been keeping himself alive by swapping heads and dabbling in immortality, with the help of Zutai, the world’s surliest and most persistent zombie, who makes vocalizations like Curly Howard of the Three Stooges when he’s hit with a bullet.
Key moments include Zutai’s stealthy rose-trellis climbs, heads turning up in crypts, and a police investigation where the only thing more suspicious than the deaths is the décor. The film’s atmosphere is pure Halloween fun: theremin music, foggy crypts, and enough skulls to make Hamlet jealous. In the end, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is less a whodunit and more a head-spinning carousel of curses, shrunken noggins, and stitched-lip zombies, all whirling around a family tree that’s overdue for some serious vengeful pruning.
Like a fever dream conjured by Edgar Allan Poe after a late-night binge on jungle adventure comics, the film barrels toward its climax with the subtlety of a headhunter at a flea market rummaging for skulls where immortality is just a stitch away, and the only thing more dangerous than the villain’s voodoo is the risk of losing your head before the credits roll.
THE THING THAT COULDN’T DIE 1958
Directed by Will Cowan and starring William Reynolds, Carolyn Kearney, Robin Hughes, and Andra Martin. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a psychic ranch girl, a box of evil, and a 16th-century Satanist’s head walked into a California dude ranch, wonder no more. The Thing That Couldn’t Die answers the question nobody asked: “How long can you keep a head in a centuries-old, sealed wooden crate before things get weird?”
Jessica (Carolyn Kearney), who can find water with a stick and has trouble with her psychic powers, unearths a centuries-old box on her aunt’s ranch. Instead of Spanish doubloons, out pops the still-living head of Gideon Drew (Robin Hughes, a low-budget Svengali with hypnotic eyebrows). Yes, Robin Hughes is the actor who plays the Devil, credited as The Howling Man, in the Twilight Zone‘s “The Howling Man,” Season 2, Episode 5, which aired in 1960. He portrays the mysterious prisoner held by monks, who is revealed through a memorable transformation scene as Satan himself.
Back to the head – Drew’s head that is, separated from his body by Sir Francis Drake, proceeds to telepathically possess ranch guests and staff, who dutifully tote him around.
Highlights include the head’s uncanny ability to hypnotize with a glare, a parade of characters getting possessed faster than you can say “hilarious head in a box horror,” and a climax where the villain’s head is finally reunited with his body, only to be foiled by a fleur-de-lis amulet and a hero who apparently read the script’s last page. The ending is so abrupt you’ll wonder if the editor just got bored and left for lunch, but not before giving us the immortal lesson: The thing that wouldn’t die… actually could, and did, with a little help from some Catholic jewelry.
Both films are like haunted house rides at a county fair- creaky, a little rickety, but full of charm and the kind of scares that are best enjoyed with a bowl of popcorn and a group of wisecracking friends. Whether you’re dodging shrunken heads or ducking a telepathic noggin, these B-movie gems prove that in the world of 1950s horror, the only thing more dangerous than a curse is the set decorator’s imagination!
THE BRAINIAC 1962
Abel Salazar’s turn in The Brainiac/el Baron del Terror 1962 proves that vengeance never looked so delightfully bizarre: a comically monstrous baron (Salazar) returning from the Inquisition’s flames, armed with a forked tongue for brain-sucking and an impeccably grim sense of revenge, proves that in Mexican Gothic horror, even a centuries-old curse can come with a wink and a forked tongue firmly in cheek of campy charm. The Brainiac is so hilariously low-budget and campy and yet somehow grotesquely startling that it’s become an essential part of the movie’s charisma. The monster’s absurd yet iconic presence is somewhere between charmingly ridiculous and endearingly terrifying.
One of my favorite childhood memories of those late-night forays into midnight movies was that split-second jolt I’d get when the Brainiac would lurch onto the screen, clumsily galumphing forward with his lobster-claw hands like a creature sailing in on the tail of a comet streaking across the night sky (which it does!), as if the fiend’s arrival was timed with cosmic mischief and a snap, crackle, suck of ozone!
The Brainiac 1962 evokes an outlandish, almost comical image of hands that look like gastric proton pumps. Quivering squid-fingered suction cup pincers and a big rubber head with bulging empty black eyes, a monstrous sculpted face resembling a cross between an anteater, a fly, and the devil himself, his nose a twisted proboscis like some mosquito spawned from a sci-fi fever dream, jutting out with unnerving prominence. All pointy eared — It isn’t just alien; it’s a bizarre muppet hybrid, both nasty and mesmerizing, like something that crawled out of the shadows of a forgotten puppet show on an alternate dimension’s late-night TV, forever caught between nightmare and carnival and topped off with tufts of wild ratty black hari somewhere between a moody Gothic brooding prince and a 70s garage band’s reject wig.
I was utterly captivated by that fiendish creature, his grotesquely long, flicking tongue, and the surreal image of him delicately, graphically I might add, spooning out brains from a gleaming silver serving dish. It’s one of those rare horror films that, even after all these years, still manages to tickle my sense of wonder and nostalgia. Watching it now is like sinking my spoon into a large bowl of classic horror comfort food, with just the right pinch of camp to keep things deliciously entertaining.
Abel Salazar’s The Brainiac (original Mexican title El Barón del Terror, 1962), directed by Chano Urueta, waltzes across the screen with the campy confidence of a film convinced of its own peculiar greatness. The opening tableau whisks us to Inquisition-era Mexico, where Baron Vitelius d’Estera (Abel Salazar himself, producer and ham in chief), after being subject to a myriad of tortures, is condemned for necromancy and sentenced to fiery doom. But this isn’t your average execution—Vitelius, smoke curling around his theatrical brow, curses the judges and prophesies vengeance when a comet next passes by. Flash forward (tornado-slide style) three centuries to the swinging 1960s, where that very comet ignites the Mexican night sky and drops off our newly reincarnated, vengeance-driven warlock.
In The Brainiac, the lead astronomer is Professor Saturnino Millán, portrayed by Luis Aragón. He is the knowledgeable head of the observatory team vigilantly watching for the comet heralding Baron Vitelius d’Estera’s return from his centuries-old execution, foretold to awaken dark events linked to the Baron’s curse. Their vigilance serves as an early warning symbolizing scientific reason trying to grapple with the transcendental supernatural evil.
Working closely alongside him is Licenciado Francisco Coria, played by Carlos Nieto, who assists with the celestial observations and helps interpret the ominous signs. He is a practical presence at the observatory and is romantically involved with Victoria Contreras, played by Rosa María Gallardo. Victoria Contreras is a direct descendant of Álvaro de Contreras, one of the Inquisitors who condemned Baron Vitelius d’Estera to death, making her a target of the Baron’s vengeful wrath that spans centuries.
Victoria adds a much-needed splash of humanity to this bunch of stargazers, grounding the cosmic freak show with real feelings, because even when you’re chasing a brain-sucking fiend, personal drama insists on sticking around to watch the show.
Professor Millán, his earnest assistant Francisco, and Francisco’s worried fiancée Victoria find themselves reluctantly tangled in Baron Vitelius d’Estera’s sinister web when their scientific watch for the ominous comet unknowingly signals the moment the fiendish Baron bursts back into life, turning their peaceful lives into a showdown between cosmic curiosity and brain-sucking Gothic chaos.
After the fireball crashes near their observatory, the Baron arrives in human guise shortly after the comet lands, encountering the young couple Francisco and Victoria. During this meeting, he impresses them by casually mentioning his skill in astronomy and science, masking his sinister plans. The couple then invites him to visit their mentor, Professor Millán, unwittingly opening the door for Vitelius into the elite scene and beginning his hunt for the descendants of the Inquisitors who condemned him centuries ago. This encounter, pivotal to linking the Baron’s ancient curse with the modern-day victims, sets the stage for the Baron’s eerie blend of charm and menace, allowing him to infiltrate their circle and organize deadly gatherings where his vengeance begins to take physical form.
Someone’s got to keep an eye on the sky, and this observatory trio occupies a crucial narrative space: their anticipation of the comet sets the supernatural clock ticking. The relationship between these characters and Abel Salazar’s Vitelius d’Estera is indirectly adversarial; their scientific search for answers digs a deeper burr hole in the skull, between cold, hard reason and the Baron’s occult madness, linking the celestial to the sinister while Vitelius’ resurrected menace and theatrical villainy sweeps through the city like a Gothic plague.
Baron Vitelius d’Estera assumes the identity and the attire of a contemporary, aristocratic figure, essentially posing as a sophisticated gentleman whose activities revolve around social gatherings, elegant parties, and private visits to the homes of his victims, and his own lavish space, where he infiltrates society and enacts his revenge.
The film delights in the Baron’s transformations, the most gloriously absurd to behold, setting the stage for Vitelius to hunt down the descendants of his accusers.
Enter the modern cast of those descended from the inquistion—dashing Rubén Rojo as Rolando/Marcos Miranda, elegant Rosa María Gallardo as Victoria Contreras and a gallery of other descendant social class blissfully unaware that their glamorous parties are about to become unwitting stages for the infernal marionette’s grisly cerebral sampling.
With each graymatter tonic break—that is, Vitelius ducking away from these dinner parties to snack on brain pâté kept in a silver dish—the Baron picks off his prey, using both his sorcerous mesmerism (to paralyze while he transforms with his delightfully wretched prosthetics.
Detective Inspector/Comandante (David Silva) shuffles after the Baron in a procedural subplot, providing the only semblance of resistance as Mexico City grows increasingly short of its intelligentsia.
Director Chano Urueta’s camera, ably wielded by José Ortiz Ramos, slathers each set with shadows, oversized castle décor, and eerily artificial lighting that only enhances the otherworldly flavor of parody. There’s a gleeful love of the macabre here—the kind that invites laughter as much as (accidental) chills. As a kid, it definitely evokes more cringes out of me when the Baron transforms and suck the brains out of people’s skulls.
Cast and crew gleefully camp it up: Salazar relishes both his sophisticated tailored suits and his menacing rubber-masked marauding; the entire cast seems to be having a blast, Ariadne Welter appears in the role of a bar girl credited as Chica asesinada en restaurant. Like everyone, their earnestness is as endearing as the baron’s tongue is improbable.
Critical voices of the 1960s, when they paid attention, veered between mild bemusement and outright ridicule; the film’s trash masterpiece status was cemented over drive-in and late-night viewings, even as cinema journals found themselves marveling at the monster’s odd sensuality and the script’s bravura disregard for logic.
I’d like to champion—and perhaps even canonize—The Brainiac for its lysergic surrealism, affectionately lauding its unforgettable scenes: the Baron’s hypnotic command over decadent socialites, noirish femmes haunting shadowed streets, a bowl of brains presented with the elegance of a fine pâté, and, of course, the eerily mesmerizing sequences of vampiric brain-sucking horror.
The Brainiac earns its cult favorite status through gloriously absurd moments that blend horror with infectious charm, delighting in deliciously chaotic and monstrous theatrics. If The Brainiac is a horror film, it is one with a deliriously raised eyebrow, triumphantly out of step with the ripening sophistication of 1960s genre films. While Hammer Studios bathed Dracula in Technicolor blood and The Innocents plumbed new psychological depths, Urueta and Salazar embraced the loopy extremes in this particular monster movie with its rubber-faced fiend, Gothic melodrama, and a Baron consumed not only by vengeance, but by a hearty appetite for gray matter and cinematic immortality alike.
The delight is infectious: the more seriously it’s taken, the more outrageously it charms, making it the rare cult favorite where even a damnéd aristocrat, warlock necromancer, and sorcery, can demand a spot at the cocktail party—brains on the menu, of course.