Voodoo Island/The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (Midnite Movies Double Feature) Reviews

Mostly interesting for the presence of Boris Karloff and Elisha Cook,Jr. Boris is the hero in this movie, looking fairly robust; he plays a professional skeptic/debunker investigating a mysterious island set for development. Not too many movies where he was the good guy. Usually he was the villain or an anti-hero at best.

The villains in this movie are the carnivorous plants and a callous, encroaching civilization. Though the guys defending themselves may have been a little quick with the 'trigger' finger their motives are sincere and they are not unsympathetic.

This would have been a decent 2nd half of a double feature at the drive-in.

Yup, it's low budget (script contrivances ahoy!). It's never actually scary. I doubt it provided any shudders back in '59 either, but it is often grotesque; the offbeat fantasy/horror aspects were unique for the day and still play pretty fresh even today.

The twist toward the end of the movie is cool. At 70 minutes, it moves along at a brisk pace, wasting no time. You'll probably only recognize character actor Henry Daniell, who starred in a ton of genre work during '40's - '60's. Valerie French was one of the leads in the currently still unreleased on dvd THE 27TH DAY.

Midnite Movies was made for movies like this, forgotten, but solid b-movies made to fill out the latter half of a double bill.