Professor Jonathan Drake Eduard Franz contemplates a shrunken head and envisions a unsettling trio of floating skulls, a vivid omen that unsettles him as he prepares to reach out to his family. He asks his daughter Alison Drake Valerie French to dispatch a telegram to his 60-year-old brother Kenneth Drake Paul Cavanagh, telling him that Jonathan will visit on Thursday. The suspense tightens as the clock ticks toward the arrival, weaving a sense of fate around the Drake lineage.
Before Jonathan can arrive, Kenneth spots a shrunken head outside his window, and a tall figure with long hair and lips sewn closed—Zutai Paul Wexler—stabs him with a bamboo stiletto, barely breaking the skin. Kenneth dies in a sudden, chilling moment, and Zutai’s grim success is only momentarily interrupted when the beheading attempt goes awry. The confrontation drags the attention of the authorities into the frame: Police Lt. Jeff Rowan Grant Richards is called to the scene, where he meets Dr. George Bradford Howard Wendell, Kenneth’s physician, and Dr. Emil Zurich Henry Daniell, an archaeologist and friend of Kenneth’s. Bradford, after a careful examination, attributes the death to cardiovascular disease, noting a troubling family pattern: three Drake men have died at age 60 from heart trouble. Jeff wonders if there could be a link to the ominous shrunken head, but Bradford remains doubtful. Zurich, meanwhile, treats the head as a trophy, proudly calling it a “particularly fine specimen.”
Back at Kenneth’s, Jonathan learns of his brother’s death and insists that the closed coffin be opened. Inside, there is no head—Zutai has taken it to Zurich, who uses it as a dark instrument, shrinking the head and declaring that it is “payment for the evils of your ancestors.” He pronounces a grim warning: once he has Jonathan’s head, “the curse will be finished.”
At the family crypt, Jonathan explains to Alison the bleak history: all Drake men are entombed there except Captain Wilfred Drake, who in 1873 led an Ecuadorian expedition and faced the Jivaro. A brutal cycle followed—Wilfred’s retaliation against the tribe, a witch doctor named Zutai cursing the Drakes, and the crypt housing headless bodies that die in their 60s. The crypt’s locked closet contains two skulls, and neither Jonathan nor Alison understand how they came to be there.
Zurich sends Zutai to deposit the third skull, Kenneth’s, in the crypt, stoking the fear that the curse is real. Yet Lt. Rowan remains skeptical of anything supernatural, while Alison grows more certain as Jeff and she uncover a hidden, eerie logic behind the skulls. The two discover the third skull in the crypt, and Zutai attacks Jonathan again, though the assault is thwarted when Jeff’s intervention interrupts him. Bradford then declares Jonathan dead, but a crime-lab analysis by Lee Coulter [Frank Gerstle] reveals a crucial detail: curare is present in Jonathan’s blood, a clue that prompts Jeff to seek an antidote. The antidote revives Jonathan, who experiences another vision of four skulls rather than three.
Lee’s examination of the skulls uncovers identical fingerprints, each bearing a tiny skull motif. Alison resolves the mystery by turning to a book about “The Cult of Headless Men,” a group that achieved immortality by branding their fingertips with skulls and, intriguingly, did not require food or oxygen; their lips were sewn closed to keep the breath of life in a ritualized secrecy. Jeff presses Zurich for more answers, but Zurich’s evasive answers only deepen the intrigue as he reveals nothing definitive about the supernatural underpinnings.
Zurich then abducts Alison, displaying Bradford’s now-shrunken head and taunting Jonathan with the claim that Jonathan is next. Jonathan, armed and resolute, heads to Zurich’s laboratory, where the truth begins to unravel: Zurich is described as a creature with a “white” head atop a “brown” Jivaro body. In a desperate attempt to free himself from the curse, Jonathan contemplates killing himself in order to escape his skull and end the curse once and for all.
In the climactic confrontation, Jeff bursts in as Zutai lunges, hurling Zutai into an open flame and causing a fatal explosion. With Zutai gone, Jonathan seizes Zutai’s curare-laden stiletto and urges Jeff to strike Zurich. Jeff complies, and Zurich dies, his body turning to dust as a fourth skull remains intact, signaling that the curse has been broken at last. The case closes on a moment of quiet relief and renewed life for the surviving Drakes and their allies, with the last skull preserved as a grim, lingering reminder of the peril that once shadowed the family.
