The Madmen of Mandoras (1963) User Reviews (25)

Reviewing this film on it's own merits

[JoeB131 · 4/10 · 20 November 2010]

About half the reviewers here make mention of the 1970's footage added into the film when it was re-released under the title "They Saved Hitler's Brain." This just added to the cheesiness of the whole exercise.

To recap, the plot of this film is that a few surviving Nazis have managed to save Hitler's head in a big jar, while keeping it alive with a machine. Now, it's not really clear why they do this, the only words Hitler in a Jar says is "Mach Schnell". (Roughly translated, "Hurry Up!" My father, a German immigrant, was very fond of that one.) One has to wonder if Hitler in a Jar ever got a date from Jan in the Pan from "The Brain that wouldn't die". They'd have made a cute couple.

The film is C movie quality, and the scenes with Hitler in a jar are just ludicrous. The actor who played Hitler just mugs for the camera ridiculously in a way that would embarrass even Mel Brooks. (It appears he never worked again.)

Also, the Nazi plot makes little or no sense. They are going to release this "G-Gas" stuff into the air that will kill everyone, probably most of the animals as well. And they kidnap the professor who has the antidote. So, uh, why? Why not just kill him? Were they going to release this gas and they didn't have the antidote?

The perfect third feature at an all-night theater - with spoiler

[jhailey · 2/10 · 17 August 2010]

In 1964, several of us missed the last city bus out of downtown L.A. back to our West-side dorm, so we found an all-night theater and paid 75 cents to sit in an uncomfortable, unpadded wooden seat. "Gypsy" was the first film, in Technicolor. A Jeffrey Hunter vehicle was next; I think it was "Key Witness" in black and white, filmed on the streets of L.A. The three of us were the only people in the theater awake for the first two films because we couldn't figure out how get anywhere near comfortable. Then, onto the screen came "The Madmen of Mandoras." By now -- probably 4 a.m., I'd figured out how to sleep in the seat, but the denizens of downtown L.A., for whom this was the cheapest bed available, woke up and got into the movie. (Spoiler alert.) By the time the flames engulfed Hitler's head, which was in some sort of electrified vat of sustaining clear fluid, there were cheers. I'm sure plenty of World War II vets were in the audience, glad to know that Hitler had finally melted. (Oh, no, I gave away the ending.) The moment that "The End" appeared on screen, the beadles were at the back of the theater, banging on seats with bats to wake any remaining sleepers and to roust us out of the theater. The program was timed to the minute to end just as the first rays of the sun brought another day to L.A. "All night" and not a minute more. It was a perfect triple bill: an almost-first-run Hollywood A film, a forgettable B picture, and "Madmen of Mandoras," too awful to be a camp, cult classic, but memorable nonetheless.

Hitler's head in a jar riding in the back of a car is funny

[cwhaskell · 4/10 · 4 January 2012]

I'm not sure what this picture was meant to be, but I'm going to give the director/writer/etc credit and say they meant it as a good time political action thriller comedy on a drive-thru budget. It is sort of those things, if you are willing to accept a very loose definition of the individual terms.

Clever Plot? Not at all (actually confusing if you stop to think about it) Believable characters? Nope ... but just as I don't kick puppies I won't beat up too much on the merits of this lovable loser. It's goofy fun and doesn't take itself that seriously. Coming in just barely over an hour, it's not too much time out of your life, and I would say probably is worth it on the 'I"m just curious' dilemma surrounding all of these campy drive thru films.

Rating: 16/40

not as bad as they say

[johnc2141 · 5/10 · 23 January 2009]

I watched both the madmen of mandoras and they saved Hitlers brain with the 70's edits,and i thought it was quite entertaining.not as bad as they say.but its no masterpiece but it is better made then the other bad films;plan 9 from outer space and robot monster.i never knew this was from crown international pictures,which made quality low budget pictures like American international did in the 50's,60's and 70's.with the morbid plot of Hitlers head in a jar still living.madmen of mandoras is a creepy movie full of red herrings,Nazis and secret agents in mandoras south America.i always wanted to see this and they saved Hitlers brain and finally seen it,and ill have to say i enjoyed it.madmen of mandoras has a longer scene at the end of the movie.not giving away spoilers thank you.but saying madmen of mandoras is a bad film would be an injustice.as a b-movie its pretty enjoyable,make some popcorn throw a party and entertain your guests with madmen of mandoras.look for actor nester paiva as a policeman,nester paiva has been in many monster movies including;creature from the black lagoon,mole people and 20 million miles to earth.madmen of mandoras is available on a DVD set called drive in classics(all from crown international)also included on this DVD is;the creeping terror,they saved Hitlers brain,the devils hand,land of the Minotaur and a few more mini classics,all recently restored.5 out of 10 check it out. and beware of Mr h.

"Mach Schnell, Dumbkaupfs!!" Before there Was Manos, there was this... :=8P

[MooCowMo · 1/10 · 11 December 1999]

Well, they saved enough to make a wax head in a pickle jar shout out "Hogan's Hero's"-styled German to a bunch of scurrying lab assistants. Of the many, many, MANY bad films released during the 60's, few can rival the amazingly boring and incowherent non-energy of "They Saved Hitler's Brain". Huge, indigestible chunks of film debris from other films are awash in this film, like so much flotsum. Legend has it that at least 2 moovies were ground together to make up this one film, but there may be more - and the MooCow is here to tell you that they only ground together the moore boring and irrelevant scenes. Seriously, this is a film were virtually nothing happens. Except for scenes showing the grimacing "Mr. H.", this wad of celluloid is completely worthless. The MooCow's favorite scene: idiot #1 and his girlfrend are driving idiot #2 around for no reason; a car drives by, shoots idiot #2 dead, and drives off; idiot #1 looks at the dead idiot #2 and says "what happened?"; idiot #1's girlfriend says "I think he's been shot". Guess the car that blared by, with blazing guns, didn't quite register. Since the film is virtually plotless, the MooCow cannot provide you with even a cursory explaination as to what;s going on, excet that in the end the wax Hitler head gets melted, and the world is saved. This moovie is moore an endurance test than a film; schlock-fans, remember those boring 15 minutes of soybean fields at the beginning of "Manos: the Hands of Fate"? Well, imagine an entire moovie made up of that. We're not kidding! :€ No one in this film is worth mentioning, except the hideously poor direction was provided by David Bradley, the "genius" behind "Twelve to the Moon". The MooCow says avoid this film like a pre-frontal lobotomy, for serious film masochists only!! :=8P

Would Be Good For MST3K, Not So Great By Itself

[gavin6942 · 3/10 · 18 October 2010]

A group of fanatics on the island of Mandoras, in their attempts to eliminate all threats to their diabolical plot to conquer the world, kidnap a famous American neurobiologist, triggering a rescue search that blows their plan to bits.

Also known as "They Saved Hitler's Brain", which really gets more to the point than the "Mandoras" title. Where is Mandoras? Not sure... let's assume somewhere near Argentina, just for the sake of putting it somewhere.

Some of the lines are cheesy, but memorable, such as, "I'm a very good police chief. I always obey orders, most of the time." Tom Sharon, perhaps a Texan, is the only spirited character of the film. He saved the movie from being completely worthless.

Most other reviewers will trash this film even more than I would, so I won't bother to say too much... just be confident that it's not good.

Bring Hitler's Brain into your home!

[guru-12 · 10 November 1999]

Watching this movie has become a tradition for me and my friends every semester. With the possible exception of The Dead Next Door, this is the worst film ever made. Every possible ridiculous script nuance, from the name of the town (Dos Palabras) to the fact that no one knows that the guy in the car has been shot, despite the fact that he clutches his chest after a shot rings out, until they stop the car, race around to the other side, open the door, and find a bullet hole. Och. But why do I talk about such ridiculous, trivial matters? The star of this film is, of course, Hitler's Brain. That such a photogenic head in a jar never managed to have the acting career he earned in this film is a travesty. And of course, that immortal "MACH SCHNELL! MACH SCHNELL!" that makes the film come alive. I watch this film on a regular basis and you should too.

Must-see iconic schlock

[jamesrupert2014 · 5/10 · 6 November 2018]

This is the original 'Hitler's head-in-a-jar' movie (the more strikingly titled "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (1968) is simply a padded version of this film with some homemade-looking footage added in the late '60s/early '70s to increase running time). Briefly, a group of Nazi survivors (including der Führer's animate head) are lurking in the fictional Latin-American country of Mandoras where they are planning to use a deadly nerve gas to revisit their dreams of world conquest. The film's plot, such as it is, revolves around kidnappings and murders as the conspirators attempt to eliminate all knowledge of the gas' antidote. Their boss "Mr. H." rants occasionally but usually just rolls his eyes menacingly or leers when some nasty business is underway. Better (if only because it's shorter and has a more gruesome finale) than "TSHB" but lacking the awesome brand. Would make a great double feature with the thematically similar and equally delirious "The Frozen Dead" (1966).

Good central idea, yet brought to the screen a little too conservatively

[Red-Barracuda · 5/10 · 13 June 2016]

A neurobiologist who has developed an anti-dote to a deadly virus is kidnapped and taken to a small Latin American nation called Mandoras. It turns out that this is all linked to Nazis who have managed to keep Adolf Hitler's disembodied head alive in a jar, from here the Fuhrer barks out orders as he attempts to resurrect the Third Reich.

I realised quite early on as I watched Madmen of Mandoras that this had to be the early prototype for a movie I had previously seen, namely They Saved Hitler's Brain (1968). It turns out that this earlier version had been released briefly in 1963 and was turned into a movie fit for TV five years later. In order to achieve this, additional material was added to pad out the running time to a more acceptable ninety minutes. Unfortunately, this extra footage was filmed by amateurs and looked very much like what it was, i.e. people from 1968 interspersed into a story filmed several years earlier. It was also, of course, re-titled with the more entertaining, yet major plot point revealing, new name.

From memory, there is really not a great deal of significant difference between both versions but Madmen of Mandoras is certainly the better. For one thing, it's shorter and for a film as decidedly ropey as this one, that is a clear blessing. It's also purer in the sense that it doesn't contain pointless extra newer footage whose only purpose is to add more minutes to the run-time. In truth Madmen of Mandoras is a semi-passable b-movie in most respects. Although it really should have been far schlockier given its premise, unfortunately in the main it is uninspired adventure type fare that's on offer here. At the end of the day, Hitler's head is the real star of the show in this one. It's not often you really get to say that sentence, in fact I'm pretty sure this must be the only scenario where that specific point can be made. Even the demise of the head is a highlight, where it melts while engulfed by flames in a sequence that really is rather well done all things considered. All-in-all, this one is okay but should have been better given the potential of it's decidedly psychotronic central idea. If you really have to see a Nazis/mad scientists on a tropical locale film, then I would suggest the more entertaining She Demons (1958) as the way to go.

"The slappers of women! The torturers of old men!"

[cookieman108 · 2/10 · 5 January 2005]

Why am I drawn to bad movies like a fly to a steaming pile of excrement (this metaphor is exceptionally appropriate given the film being reviewed)? I've never really given it much thought, but I suppose it's a similar reaction people display when driving by a particularly bad car wreck…you don't want to look, but morbid curiosity is a compelling, often intrinsic, trait among humans. As far as car wrecks go, cinematic ally speaking, They Saved Hitler's Brain (1963) is a real doozy…the film is actually two movies (the original made in the late 50's to early 60's but never released for some unknown reason, and new footage filmed in the mid to late 60's) spliced together, like some twisted Frankenstein experiment. Apparently the company that owned the original film, Crown International (purveyors of schlock), got some UCLA film students to produce the new footage, and then, in an extremely futile attempt, married the two in the unholy union that is this film (director Al Adamson made a career on doing this, most notably with his 1971 monster mash Dracula Vs. Frankenstein).

The film, originally titled Madmen of Mandoras aka Amazing Mr. H aka The Return of Mr. H (before the celluloid mating) was directed by David Bradley, whose earlier films include a juvenile delinquent picture titled Dragstrip Riot (1958) and the epic sci-fi craptacular 12 to the Moon (1960). The film stars Walter Stocker (Lassie's Great Adventure) and Audrey Caire, who seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her until I looked up her credits as saw she also appeared in Joe (1970), one of my more favorite films of the early 70's. Also appearing is John Holland (The Naked Brigade), Carlos Rivas (True Grit), Marshall Reed (Ghost of Zorro), Scott Peters (Panic in Year Zero!), Nestor Paiva (The Three Stooges in Orbit, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter), and Bill Freed (who later adapted Dean R. Koontz's novel Watchers into the 1988 film of the same name) as Adolf Hitler, or, at least his head.

The film starts out with the newer footage (which actually looks worse than the older footage), relating some kind of story regarding secret agents, nerve gas, and various murders. The main character, named Vic (who looks a lot like Chuck Negron, the original lead singer from the 70's band Three Dog Night) is a secret agent assigned to investigate the death of a scientist, but he himself eventually dies in a fiery car crash (actually his death is represented by footage taken from the 1958 feature Thunder Road, starring Robert Mitchum). All of this takes about 27 minutes, and then we cut into another film, already in progress, featuring the actors I listed above (the actors in the newer footage are not listed in any credits). From here we follow the exploits of Phil Day (Stocker) and his wife Kathy (Caire) as they travel to the tiny Caribbean Island nation of Mandoras to locate Kathy's recently kidnapped father, a scientist who developed an antidote to a deadly nerve gas. Phil and Kathy soon learn a handful of Nazis, lead by Hitler's head, and their nefarious plans to take control of the world. Will Phil and Kathy be able to stop the madness, or will the Third Reich finally achieve the goals it set for itself some 20 years ago? Their plan seems pretty rock solid, so things don't look good… I'm unsure why the newer footage was added, especially since it matched up so poorly (it looked like a bunch of laid-back hippies running around, compared to the more conservatively attired characters in the original footage). The original film is actually not a bad little B film (at least, compared to the newer footage), but I suspect some of the original footage may have been lost (or never filmed), hence the addition of the newer material, as to try and provide a setting for the older material. Thing is, the newer stuff was shot so very poorly, lacking any sense of direction (hey, it's daytime…no wait, it's night…oops, it's daytime again), and I was able to piece together much of the intended story from the original footage I didn't need the newer material. And that music for the newer material…27 minutes of really crummy free form jazz…the horror, the horror…the concept of saving Hitler's head seemed kinda cool, but what was probably meant to be a shocking surprise (the whole plot of Hitler's head plotting a conspiracy) was effectively ruined by the newer title. The special effects are pretty much what you might expect, with Hitler's head, when not being carried around in a jar, sitting atop an older model videotape machine. Freed's head did look a little creepy, sort of bug-eyed and slightly emaciated, with his only dialog, as a disembodied head, being 'Mach Schnell! Mach Schnell!' (I guess one would probably get pretty cranky and impatient surviving in a jar, relying on the charity of others…I wonder which lackey got the job of trimming his little moustache?) My favorite scene has to be when Phil and Kathy get kidnapped by a mysterious Hispanic man, and as they come to a stop light, another car pulls up, shoots the Hispanic man dead, but the couple, who are in the car with the now dead man, don't realize he's dead until much later, eventually stuffing his corpse into a phone booth, the intent being someone will find him (and someone does, in the form of an impatient, rotund lady wanting to use said phone…oh the comedy!)

Cookieman108

Despite the title, this movie is JUST BAD--and NOT in a funny way

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 30 May 2005]

When I saw this film, I was expecting a bad film. The fact that it was bad came as no surprise. However, it was NOT fun to watch like many of the Ed Wood films--it was just boring and dumb. About the only funny part was near the end when Hitler's head in a pickle jar was yelling out "Mach Schnell!!!" as it began to melt. Boring, boring, boring.

FYI--I have watched the vast majority of films from THE 50 WORST FILMS book (Medved and Dreyfus) and really like seeing most of the shlock. This film didn't make the list but was pretty darn close. Other bad but unfun films: The Conquerer (seemed like a 9 hour film), Dondi, and Pinocchio in Outer Space.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

[Scott_Mercer · 9/10 · 16 December 2006]

Let's get the confusing history of this film at least somewhat straight.

Released in 1963 as Madmen of Mandoras, this film played drive-ins and grindhouses. I highly doubt they used the superior title of THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN in 1963. This was a true B-movie with a running time of 74 minutes.

Move to around 1971 or 1972. Somebody (perhaps the film's producers) felt the movie had to be a little longer to sell it to television.

They lopped off the first ten minutes. 25 minutes of new footage was filmed...(including shots stolen from THUNDER ROAD), making it 92 minutes long, and the title was changed to THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN.

The New footage was filmed by "Paragon Productions" (the credits say so) using uncredited amateur actors. The film's original credits are shown, except for the new title, one shot crediting Paragon Productions for "additional post production," and another crediting "additional music". This music is only heard over the new footage and consists solely of annoying, tuneless tinkling on some sort of keyboard.

Whoever did the new footage in 1972 (best guess based on hair styles and clothing, but certainly later than the mid-60's, as some stated) tried to integrate their footage into the old, but this was a fool's errand. If the 1963 feature was low budget, this new footage had zero budget seemingly.

In spite of the difficulty of the task, they didn't even come close to having the resources to pull it off. And they did a bad job in any case. Everybody's hair is just too long. They couldn't afford a hair cut for the actors? A scene shot at "CID Headquarters" has a photo of Eisenhower on the wall, which should have been Kennedy. They went to the trouble of renting the appropriate year vehicles, but they couldn't dig up vintage clothing which was only 10 years old?

Another problem is the music in the original. This was stock library music, probably recorded decades prior to the filming.

This gives the film a sort of late '40's Poverty Row feel. Almost all the men are wearing hats, adding to the 1940's vibe. This makes it even harder to match up footage. It also doesn't help that the 1972 people are awful actors. I believe I read a rumor once that they were UCLA film students who worked for nothing. All the males have these giant 70's mustaches that make them look like unemployed porno actors.

Having gone deep into the flawed history of the film, I'd like to now hail the recent release (in BCI's Starlite Drive-In Theater series) of the original MADMEN OF MANDORAS, taken from the original negative! Now the curious can easily see the original film in pristine quality, after several years of having to suffer with the DVD of the inferior THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN.

No distracting 25 minute prologue from 1972 on offer here. We head right into the 1963 footage. We meet the hero, Phil Day, within the first scene, and follow him throughout the confusing plot, instead of meeting him at the 25 minute mark, after all the 1972 people are killed off.

Phil is with the "CID", (CIA), and is married to the daughter of Professor Coleman. The Professor is the only person on Earth who has an antidote for "G Gas," a deadly poison that could wipe out entire populations with a few small canisters.

In short order, the Professor's daughter is kidnapped (not Phil's wife, another daughter...so, Phil's sister-in-law, I guess) and Phil and his wife K.C. are kidnapped by a desperate man with a gun. He is shot by the bad guys soon enough and Phil leaves him propped in a phone booth, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S style!

Before you can say "cheap stereotypes," Phil and the wife are off to the sleepy Caribbean island nation of Mandoras, where plenty of B-movie actors with phony accents are ready to act out every cliché seen in a B-movie depicting Latin America since the film industry began. We get the sweaty chief of police who is not all he seems, his sluggish lieutenant, the café filled with mariachi band AND flamenco dancer, and the "El Presidente" dictator of the island.

By the time we finally get to see Hitler's head floating in a jar and goggling its eyes (not brain, entire head, which can even speak primitively -- I guess THEY SAVED HITLER'S HEAD would not have been quite as good of a title), we have no alternative but to laugh at the goofy machinations of the utterly over-the-top plot, dialog and directing. There's no way to take any of this seriously, so your only option is to just sit back and get caught up in the insanity.

The film's climax comes with another favorite zero budget film gambit: a trip to Bronson Canyon! This is where a plane carrying "German generals" will land. They will take Hitler's head, restoring it to its place as leader of a decimated world, as soon as the canisters of G-Gas located all over the world are released at the stroke of midnight (nice touch), killing 99% of the world's population.

But not if our heroes, Phil, his perky wife, her slutty sister, the blustery professor (they were all reunited during the course of the film) and the plucky natives of Mandoras, can help it! Quick, hide in the caves from Robot Monster and throw hand grenades at the evil Nazis! This is all so irredeemably silly and ridiculous that I don't understand how anyone cannot love this as a piece of cuckoo-bananas entertainment.

If you love Ed Wood films, this baby should be on your list, but MAKE SURE you get MADMEN OF MANDORAS, not the highly inferior THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. (The only improvement in that version was the title change.) Give in to the MADMEN OF MANDORAS!

Title should be "They Saved Hitler's He

[rickmacnamara · 7/10 · 5 January 2024]

Yeppers, they did better than save Hitler's brain as promised in the poster, they saved the Nah-Zee Furh er's entire head and put it into a big fish tank sort of thing where it sat yelling things like "Mach Schnell!" and other.cliche German expressions. Best scenes IMHO are when they put Hitler"s fish tank on the back seat of a car and he can be seen between the the driver and the passenger shifting his eyes back and forth and grimacing like someone with Tardive dyskinesia. And apparently the fictional South American country of Mandoras has an exact copy of Bronson Cave in Griffith Park outside LA in which to hide the famous dictator's head while his minions kill everyone else on the planet with poison gas.

I gave this a 7 because it is actually a lot of fun for fans of cheesy movies and its popularity is obvious since it is still available on disk or streaming sixty years after its release. I can appreciate why the more serious reviewers here gave this a low rating because it is not exactly Citizen Kane, but there is a lot of action and tacky dialogue to hold a viewer's interest which is more than I can say about a lot of other movies.

boring and nonsensical

[Kabumpo · 1/10 · 8 February 1999]

As much as people (especially video distributors) may want to call this film "so bad it's good," the simple truth is that it's incredibly boring. It opens with gassing an elephant to death, then it moves into a plot with some typical old-movie types going to Mexico. The youngest gets married during the vacation. This film is said to be two movies cobbled together, and it certainly appears that way. Until Hitler's wax head appears in a jar, it's pretty dull, with nothing interesting do do with its stock characters. When the head finally does appear, it's hardly ever shown, and when it melts in a jar is pretty messy. The moments of Hitler's head are the only things, save an occasional joke, that are funny, and the film contains nothing to recommend it, unless one is in media studies and interested in the portrayal of the archetypal young girl that gets married, because it is so stock, and not only that, the relationship is never really shown!

Two Versions

[Michael_Elliott · 30 October 2008]

Madmen of Mandoras, The (1963)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

They Saved Hitler's Brain (1972)

* (out of 4)

A deadly nerve gas is causing fear in the states but thankfully a Professor knows how to make the gas useless. The only problem is that crazy guys kidnap him and take him to a secret location where they are keeping Hitler's head alive. Hitler, being the nut he is, wants to use the gas to take over the world. Making a horror movie with Hitler's head coming back to life seems like it would make for some great fun but that's not the case with this turkey as it's pretty dry from start to finish without any redeeming factors. The biggest problem is that the screenplay is so poorly written that it really doesn't know how to exploit the subject matter. Instead of fun things happening we get a tiresome adventure story as our heroes must save the Professor and eventually destroy Hitler once and for all. The performances are all rather bland and that includes the man playing Hitler. Hitler's "screaming" and ranting are rather silly and comes off very stupid. What really doesn't make sense is that we've got a very silly story yet the director treats everything so serious as if we were watching some sort of documentary on actual events.

Nine or ten years later Crown International were starting to release their films to television but this one didn't run long enough so they went back and took out ten minutes worth of footage only to add twenty-five more minutes and the end result was They Saved Hitler's Brain. This features the same story as the previous film with the exception of the "new scenes", which involve two government agents trying to find out if the Professor is safe or not. Needless to say, with an original movie as bad as Madmen was, you really don't need to add extra running time. This movie here is just as worse due to the longer running time and all the added scenes do nothing to improve the film. The only good thing about this film is its outrageous title but then again that really doesn't make the movie any better.

They Saved Hitler's Brain, But Hitler's Brain Couldn't Save The Film!

[lemon_magic · 4/10 · 22 October 2010]

I saw this one as part of the recently released "Gorehouse Greats" collection of public domain movies. I have to confess that the presence of this movie was my main reason for buying the package (admittedly, it was only $5 for 12 movies). I had always wondered what kind of goofy insanity could lay behind a title like that (at the time, I didn't understand the history of the film, so thanks to the intrepid posters here at IMDb.)

I got my answer: "Madmen/Hitler" is a dopey, low budget B&W action and intrigue caper with a McGuffin Hitler head and a plot to devastate the world with "C-Gas". It appears to have been written by a committee of "Mens Adventure Magazine" hacks (think of the old "Argosy" covers) who were then censored and bowdlerized by the Better Homes and Garden Editorial Board, who took what should have been a juicy thriller and turned it into "Hugh Beaumont and Donna Reed Fight the Nazis on a bunch of sound stages in Mexico-land".

Well, the cast goes through the motions, and there are a couple of decent character bits from some of the minor players, and there's at least one attempt at a Hitchcock style black-humor trope that sort of works. And Hitler's head does melt down real good at the end.

This isn't the kind of film that makes you want to wash your eyes with broken glass...it's just kind of trite and misconceived. I suppose it was worth the price of purchase just to satisfy my long-standing curiosity about it, but don't you bother.

What a Hoot!

[Pretentious_crap · 1/10 · 15 October 2008]

A few things, stay away from "They Saved Hilters Brain", the added footage is just painful. Also, do not come into this thinking this is 007, or Oceans Eleven.

This is awful but enjoyable to watch. Every character is just incompetent. Heck, there wouldn't be any drastic changes to the events if the main characters, Phil Day and Kathy Day were kept out the story-- they're totally insignificant.

The sets are obvious; Hotel Mandoras and the surrounding buildings look like something you'd see in the Three Amigos ride at Epcot. The bunker's walls are half an inch thick. Also, pay attention to how people close doors.

Check out the cheapness when the camera pans a full-front of the car; There's not even a background projection: it's pitch-black.

To top of all the idiocy, there's Hilter's head in a jar!

only the head of Hitler is funny to see

[trashgang · 3/10 · 18 June 2012]

I do have the Starlite mega box containing a few grindhouse classics. By opening the DVD box containing this flick I saw that there were 2 versions available. One from 1963 called The Madmen Of Mandoras clocking in at 74 minutes and another one called They Saved Hitler's Brain made in 1968 and clocking in at 91 minutes.

But what's the difference? being a hit at the drive-ins and grindhouses somebody decided to make a TV worthy. 74 minutes can't be seen on television as a full feature so they added some new shots. But it went even further. They used amateurs to make the new footage and did it on a zero budget. it shows in so many ways. Clothes and hair didn't fit in into the older version and everybody added in the new footage had to die or disappear because they didn't fit into the original one. I saw that the first 13 minutes was new and had nothing to do with the original flick. Then they picked in with the older version and recut it still in the next minutes with new shots. It just didn't work at all. Because as I said earlier, nothing looks the same, everything was wrongly done.

Still, it's really a turkey with a goofy head in a jar from Hitler. I only saw one effect worth seeing and that's the burning of Hitler's head. Overall there's much talking going on and nothing really happens. They also used news footage from WOII when they are narrating what and who Hitler was. Also strange is the use of a real footage of an elephant dying on so called nerve gas.

I can only say that it looks like an Ed Wood flick but still it do has a few moments you will never forget due being a turkey.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

A plot to conquer the world!

[michaelRokeefe · 3/10 · 27 July 2012]

A very low-budget science fiction thriller...too bad to be true; well you know what I mean. Also known as THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. A bit confusing for not being rocket science. Nations are in fear of a deadly poison called "G Gas". Only one person on earth has an antidote and that is Professor John Coleman(John Holland), who has been kidnapped and taken to Mandaros(a fictional South American country). Zealous Nazi officials at the end of WWII removed the living head of Adolf Hitler and relocated in Mandaros in hopes of resurrecting the Third Reich. The surviving German madmen have the idea that Professor Coleman can keep Hitler's brain alive in order to proceed in the attempt of conquering the world. This 64 minute film is directed by David Bradley and the cast includes: Walter Stocker, Marshall Reed, Audrey Caire, Dani Lynn, Carlos Rivas and Bill Freed as Hitler's head.

The brain is dead. Stop beating it.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 18 February 2022]

Okay, so I accepted the fact that they could dramatize what happened with a group of young clones of Hitler in "The Boys from Brazil", but that's had a classy production and a sensational cast of legends. It wasn't exploitation in any way, and it even had a good message. But this science fiction film with psychological horror of what could happen if a bad man's brain was indeed saved after their death is just tacky from the start. Add in a very low budget that looks like it was 20 years before, a cast of some very bad actors, and you have a candidate for one of the very worst films of all times, and considering that the script is completely banal adds to the absurdity of the film when scene 60 years after its release.

It's not just bad enough that they made this in 1963, but unrelated people to the original film grabbed it, threw in some tossed in footage, and created a supposedly new film that was aired on television rather than showing in theaters. Obviously very few people saw it in 1963, so they got away with it, with one of the issues being that there is so much extraneous footage in this is that a good 20 minutes could be cut out for the plot to be developed, dramatized and wrapped up. The first half hour is filled with a ton of this extraneous footage, and that makes it a very difficult film to try to get into because it's exploiting the era it was made in rather than dealing with the story it was trying to develop. By trying to be a hip early 60's movie with the weird plot, it's just one of those films that you gape at and wonder what was in the writer's mind when they even thought of the idea, or what they had smoked.

Better than the Longer "They Saved Hitler's Brain", this is a silly but enjoyable bit of nonsense

[dbborroughs · 8/10 · 18 August 2009]

Scientist working a new nerve gas is kidnapped and taken to the title location where he is forced to help a bunch of Nazi's with Hitler's head under glass in their plans to take over the world. This is the shorter original version of the film with the infamous title They Saved Hitler's Brain. Running some 75 minutes the film was deemed too short for TV sale and an additional 20 minutes shot in the early 1970's was added. As it stands in its original version the film isn't quite as horrendous as the legend makes it out to be. The film certainly is enjoyable in a good bad movie sort of way, I mean how can you not enjoy the five foot tall ham bone playing Hitler prancing around and over acting in his sequences before he ends up as a head under glass? A perfect late night film, the film is better than its reputation, especially when freed of the almost unwatchable added opening. I think the reason the film has the poor reputation, and rightly so, is the concept of Hitler's head under glass is so incredibly stupid that it ruins any chance the film might otherwise have had. I kind of like the film in a twisted sort of way. Worth a look in this watchable form (The longer "They Saved…" is not).

Between 6 and 7 out of 10 depending upon ones mood.

Mad Mad MAD.

[andyrob35 · 10/10 · 16 April 2002]

Brilliant. Acted with passion, I was incredibly moved by this production. You can feel the sorrow and remorse from the Madmen. One does feel sorry for them. Mandoras didn't deserve what happened to it, but you just knew that no blame could have been placed on these poor wretched Madmen. Buy this on Video right now and enjoy!

Why do people hate - this is terrific!

[lorenzoestevez · 8/10 · 16 February 2018]

Same film as They Saved Hitlers Brain - but with less footage than TSHB ... This is a great film - do not by pass it ....

Cool Lighting Effects

[Athanatos · 7 August 1999]

The version of this film usually seen had some additional footage, shot about 5 years after the original, added to it. And, in addition, it seems to have earlier had some wrapping of this sort. It looks, in other words, like a film within a film within a film. Each wrapping made things worse, and the original was remarkably bad. But I must say that some of the lighting effects in the original are quite cool.

A curio of cinematic ineptitude

[orb-2 · 11 October 2000]

Originally titled Madmen of Mandoras, this was supposed to be a political paranoid thriller along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate, with a respectable budget and moody wide-screen cinematography, but halfway through principal filming in 1963 it was shut down and shelved. Somehow this film and one of its supporting actors ended up in a nameless cheapie studio in 1973, and got completed with grainy, shaky, cropped photography, a cast wearing shag hair and mini skirts and driving groovy convertibles, and cheap electric-piano and twitchy-guitar cop-show music that tries to sound like Shaft or Dirty Harry, all anachronistic and mismatched to the already-then outdated original. This film then, with the copyright date and credits of 1963, and a running time of barely one hour, went straight to sindicated TV release in the late 1970's as They Saved Hitler's Brain. This is an obvious chop-shop job. The original project's sheer preposterousness still impresses, with an unusual portrayal of You-Know-Who with an actor sticking his head into a glass tank through a hole in a table for closeups, and a puppet head in that infamous pickle jar for the long shots. Some connoisseurs of the worst should be rewarded if they're able to stick it out for the whole hour.