"Written, produced and directed to scare the daylights out of you!" I'm not sure that this horror movie about a family curse, Amazonian magic, a zombie, shrunken heads and floating skull will scare the life out of most viewers but it is a lot of hokum fun. I can remember watching this on my little black and white portable bedroom TV back in the 1980's and really enjoyed it, I have just watched it again courtesy of the wonderful Talking Pictures TV (UK) and once again I liked it. For 1959 this was quite gruesome, one of the standout scenes has a witch doctor go through the process of shrinking a decapitated head, it is pretty graphic (had it been shot in colour then it would certainly be a very early gore/splatter movie). At a funeral service a grieving man asks to see his dead brother, when the coffin is opened the corpse has no head! The attack scenes are quite nasty too though the obvious rubber "blade" does undermine them. Unusual for a film of this age this was rated 18 by Talking Pictures. Low budget B movie but there is plenty going on, it ticks all the horror boxes and at 70 minutes is perfect in length.
