"Brain-driven as we are, it seems that the only people who understand the true perfidy of the human brain are the makers of B-flicks..."

Think of your favorite really bad horror flicks and usually they'll feature some sort of "brain" theme, whether it's scooping out brains, plopping brains in, or letting brains do their thing without that pesky body slowing them down.  Thus, a survey of schlock horror just has to have brains, so much so that any sane person ends up running from the screening room, screaming...

By J. KNIGHT

It's as simple as this: The brain cannot be trusted.

The brain is supposed to guide us with reason and intellect. Take a look around—how much evidence can you find that this job is being performed at all, much less performed well?

So, forget the intellect. The brain is also the seat of emotions, and is it from the emotional division that most human behavior originates. The emotions are divided into two departments with vastly disparate levels of funding. There is the department in charge of disbursing love and charity, whose budget was apparently cut to next-to-nothing about a hundred thousand years ago, and then there's the well-heeled department that offers up greed, envy, hatred, territoriality, mendacity, manipulation, lust, pettiness, vengefulness, self-aggrandizement, pride, perversity and vices to fit every conceivable situation.

Any nerve cell that wants to advance up the corporate hierarchy of the brain knows that it's better to be in the lush offices of "vice" than consigned to the cobwebbed cubicles of "charity." And those poor slobs in "logic" don't have a clue.

Brains lie to everyone, particularly to their owners. They tell you that you look great when you're carrying a few extra pounds, that the plaid shirt goes well with the striped pants, that you can easily handle another couple of drinks before driving home, that the sexy guy with the tattoos and the Harley and the criminal record will make a better husband than that boring accountant, that you don't need sunscreen, that lots of people smoke their whole lives without developing lung cancer, that you're more likely to be "thrown clear" in a car wreck if you don't buckle up, that you can trust the government to take care of you, that you are the center of the universe. Lies, all, except for those that your brain tells you. (Personally, I looked terrific in striped bell-bottoms back in 1970.)

The brain is greedy. Think of it as the SUV-driver of the body. The brain makes up one-fiftieth of your body weight, but it consumes one-fifth of the body's oxygen. This outrageous use of resources is perfectly all right, however, because the brain "deserves" the extra oxygen. It also gets its own bony armor, the skull, to protect it and it gets top spot in the body among every organ other than hair. Why is the brain on the top of the body instead of stuck somewhere deep within like the colon? It loves sitting up high, and that's reason enough for the brain.

The brain is selfish. It tells you to cover your head in a hailstorm. Why? To save the brain! To hell with the rest of the body!

The brain is an insecure hypocrite. It claims to trust in science and the power of the intellect to solve the world's problems. And yet, it derides the smartest brains, the nerds and geeks, and foists swishies and wedgies on any body harboring a brain that works better than the average, that "makes us look dumb."

Brain-driven as we are, it seems that the only people who understand the true perfidy of the human brain are the makers of B-flicks.

Let us go then, you and I, when brains are stretched out against the sky like exhumed corpses on a table, and let's find the best Brain Movies ever made.

In this installment, we'll weed out the pretenders to this hallowed genre-within-a-genre.

They Saved Hitler's Brain is a brain movie in title only. An honest title would have been They Saved Hitler's Head or, more honestly still, A Steaming Pile of Crap. The liner notes on the Rhino DVD state it eloquently: "Director David Bradley (Julius Caesar), award-winning cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons), and film star Carlos Rivas (True Grit) have made a film only Ed Wood could be proud of."

Back in 1963, for reasons one can only guess at, a fellow named Carl Edwards produced a film called Madmen of Mandoras (AKA The Amazing Mr. H) about a group of Nazis who keep Hitler's head alive inside a jar from which it plots world destruction. Five years later he shot additional footage to pad the film out for feature release. The result was They Saved Hitler's Brain.

Others have commented insightfully on the porno-esque aspect of the grafted-on footage and its stars; the lame attempt to match automobiles with footage of a fiery car crash stolen from Thunder Road (1958) and failing in the areas of car model, number of doors and color (and whether it's day or night); the way characters seem to behave randomly, more like the game pieces in electric football moving about by vibration rather than volition; the ludicrousness of the plot (ruling the world by killing everyone in it, which rather misses the point of being the boss of everybody, doesn't it?); and the general un-watchability of the whole mess. If you feel compelled to know more, check out Crystal Guillory's "The Hitler Movie With No Brains."

Of course, conquering and/or destroying the world is exactly what you'd expect of Hitler's brain, but our second brain-movie-wannabe demonstrates how losing one's head can turn a sweetheart into a snarling maniac...like marriage, but even more so.

1962's The Brain That Wouldn't Die was originally, and more accurately, titled The Head That Wouldn't Die. From its catchphrase, "It's madness, not science!" to the mutant in the closet, The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a B-fan's delight.

What would you do if you were a brilliant brain surgeon whose careless driving resulted in your fiancé's decapitation? Well, of course—you'd keep her head alive on a lab tray. That's what Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers, billed as Herb Evers) does with his fiancé, Jan, while he scours the city's seamy underbelly looking for a bodacious replacement torso.

But we all know how being stuck at home all day makes a girl peevish, and in this case Jan (Virgina Leith) has to suffer the abuse of Dr. Bill's assistant, the misshapen Kurt (Leslie Daniels) whose job it is to walk periodically behind the table that holds Jan's head to dazzle us with the film's special effect. (Yes, there is exactly one special effect, not counting all the spurting blood.) Luckily, Jan finds a friend in the unseen Thing in the closet with whom she develops a telepathic link, and gore ensues.

Personally I think that a lot of grief could have been spared all around if they'd just distracted Jan with a TV set, but then again, daytime television is its own form of torture. Who knows what devilment Jan might have cooked up if she'd formed a mental bond with Judge Judy.

Despite it's many good points...talking decapitated head, hookers, mutants...The Brain That Wouldn't Die isn't really a brain movie. It's a decapitated head movie. Out of the running.

In the 1950s and 60s, atomic power was magical. Oh, there was that annoyance that nobody knew what to do with that pesky radioactive waste, but the government and scientists would find a solution in good time. (Forty years later, they're still working on it. So far the answer seems to be "Nevada.") Anything good, bad or mediocre was enhanced by making it "atomic," and brains were no exception.

First up we have 1955's Creature With The Atom Brain, written by Curt Siodmak, the David Koepp of his day, apparently, when it came to low-budget sci-fi flicks. The film is a personal favorite, despite, or perhaps because, of the inscrutability of the term "atom brain." What is an "atom brain," anyway? One composed of—dare I suggest it?—atoms? As opposed to the rest of the matter in the universe, I mean.

Creature with the Atom Brain is directed by the prolific Edward L. Cahn who had already helmed more than seventy films and who went on to direct, among fifty-or-so others, The She-Creature, Zombies Of Mora Tau, Invasion Of The Saucer Men, and It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

Creature With The Atom Brain stars Richard Denning (Creature From The Black Lagoon, Target Earth) as a pathologist who isn't afraid to bruise his knuckles in the fight against atom-powered zombies. It's a case of good science gone bad: Dr. Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gay) accepted funding from an American gangster who has turned Steigg's zombies, intended to perform work too dangerous for living humans, into instruments of revenge and eventual (of course) world dominion.

Exactly how a ponderous corpse with the IQ of a carrot could stand up to a single GI with a flame-thrower, I'm not sure, and we never get to that point in the gangster's plans. But the zombies do manage to perplex the police and menace a small community before they're brought down.

Along with the schlock, Creature with the Atom Brain provides a few genuinely creepy and poignant moments thanks largely to S. John Launer's character of Captain Dave Harris. (Advice to little girls: Keep Captain Dave away from your Barbies!)

And yet, do we see a brain, "atom" or otherwise, in Creature with the Atom Brain? Alas, no. It is another impostor, a zombie movie masquerading as a brain flick.

Then there are the flicks that feature brains in supporting roles as mere pawns transplanted from one skull to another. (I am flatly ruling out films that transplant entire heads! Where's the challenge in that? Transplanting heads, to a mad scientist, is like changing shirts, only they do it more often.)

For example, the 1963 thriller The Atomic Brain (AKA Monstrosity) is about brain transplants (atomic brain transplants) of a cross-species nature. Dog brain into man body. Cat brain into woman body. Woman brain into cat body...wait a minute! Isn't there a slight volume problem with that last one?

Anyway, Crystal Guillory also treated this one in depth, sparing me the ordeal. Check it out in the Archives.

The year 1972 brought us The Godfather, Deliverance, Sleuth...and Al Adamson and Samuel Sherman's Brain Of Blood (AKA Brain Damage and The Brain). When a Middle Eastern ruler dies, his brain is flown to the United States where it's going to be transplanted in a new, healthy body. However, when the doctor in charge of the transplant employs a demented, deformed assistant named "Gor," can there be any doubt where the ex-potentate's brain is going to wind up?

Some brains are merely manipulated. The Brain Eaters (AKA The Brain Snatchers, Keepers of the Earth, The Keepers), from 1958, is actually an unofficial adaptation of Robert Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters. Invaders from inside the earth take over inhabitants of a small town by attaching themselves to people's necks and controlling their brains.

If we include The Brain Eaters as a bona fide brain movie, we'd have to throw in all such mind-control flicks, from It Came From Outer Space (1953) to Invaders From Mars (1953 and 1986) and, well, The Puppet Masters (1994). Which I am not doing. 

Similarly, it isn't sufficient for the monster to eat brains, as in El Barón del Terror (1962), AKA The Brainiac, or we'd be tossing in every brain-eating zombie movie and, for that matter, 1997's Starship Troopers...although Starship Troopers with its splendidly glorpy "brain bugs" comes within spitting (or sucking) distance.

Whew! That's a lot of non-contenders. Next time, I'll deal in depth with the finalists, the crème de la crème of Brain Movies. Who will win the coveted Cerebellum Award for Best Brain Movie of All Time? Stay tuned for Part Two of "Brains! Brains! Brains!"

(J. Knight lives and writes in Los Angeles, CA. He's written comic books, cartoons and live action television and has worked for most of the major studios. He has a long- standing love for Fifties B-films, particularly those featuring brains, mad scientists and nature gone berserk. His supernatural thriller Risen will be published by Kensignton Books in January 2004 and may be sampled at his Website.)

And we will stay tuned!   After eliminating all these "sorta" brain movies, what can possibly be on this list of contenders?  We'll just have to wait until next month's issue!  Old Renfield will be "racking" his "brains" until then.

 Article copyright © J. Knight 

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