***Spoilers*** Very disjointed and confusing Blackspolitation horror movie with very few real scares but loads of unintentional laughs in it. The movie has to do with a quartet of relatives of the what looks like 100 plus year old lady of the house on Skull Mountain Pauline Christophe played by Mary J. Todd McKenzie in her both first and last film appearance who are called over to hear the reading of the will that Pauline left them before she passed away.
The big joke or was it a mistake on the film makers part is that the will is never read! This made all the tension in the movie in who's to get what among Pauline last living relatives never fully realized or exploited. We do get to see a great, the by far best scene in the film, voodoo snake dance choreographed by the houses wild eyed butler Thomas, Jean Durand, with about two dozen voodoo worshipers that if you think about it has really nothing at all to do with the films already confusing storyline! Which has to do with who gets what in the will that's to be read by Payline's personal attorney Mr. Ledaux, Leroy Johnson, who's after his initial appearances in the movie just seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth!
The big hero in the movie happened to be the black or better yet white sheep in the Christophe family anthropology professor Andrew Cunningham,Victor French, who's been studying voodoo for years and has some idea of what's really going on in the movie. Cunningham is also looking for his roots in that he's not really sure who is his in that his birth records and whom his parents are have somehow been lost in the shuffle! This all has Cunningham not really knowing if he's either black or white or even,in the slight slant in his eyes, Oriental for that matter!
***SPOILERS*** About the biggest surprise in the film has to do with Butler Thomas who's trying to take over the house on Skull Mountain and become the big man in the local voodoo cult that both he and the house chambermaid Louette, Ela Woods,founded! For some strange reason Thomas ends up sacrificing Louette in a wild voodoo snake charming ceremony and with that tries to resurrect the dead Pauline, a voodoo practitioner herself, back to life to consolidate his power! As it turned out there's only room for one voodoo leader on Skull Mountain which an grossly overconfident Thomas was to find out the hard way with Pauline finally putting an end to his deranged and crazed plans!
The big joke or was it a mistake on the film makers part is that the will is never read! This made all the tension in the movie in who's to get what among Pauline last living relatives never fully realized or exploited. We do get to see a great, the by far best scene in the film, voodoo snake dance choreographed by the houses wild eyed butler Thomas, Jean Durand, with about two dozen voodoo worshipers that if you think about it has really nothing at all to do with the films already confusing storyline! Which has to do with who gets what in the will that's to be read by Payline's personal attorney Mr. Ledaux, Leroy Johnson, who's after his initial appearances in the movie just seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth!
The big hero in the movie happened to be the black or better yet white sheep in the Christophe family anthropology professor Andrew Cunningham,Victor French, who's been studying voodoo for years and has some idea of what's really going on in the movie. Cunningham is also looking for his roots in that he's not really sure who is his in that his birth records and whom his parents are have somehow been lost in the shuffle! This all has Cunningham not really knowing if he's either black or white or even,in the slight slant in his eyes, Oriental for that matter!
***SPOILERS*** About the biggest surprise in the film has to do with Butler Thomas who's trying to take over the house on Skull Mountain and become the big man in the local voodoo cult that both he and the house chambermaid Louette, Ela Woods,founded! For some strange reason Thomas ends up sacrificing Louette in a wild voodoo snake charming ceremony and with that tries to resurrect the dead Pauline, a voodoo practitioner herself, back to life to consolidate his power! As it turned out there's only room for one voodoo leader on Skull Mountain which an grossly overconfident Thomas was to find out the hard way with Pauline finally putting an end to his deranged and crazed plans!