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If you thought "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" was unsophisticated, you oughtta get a load o' this schlock! At least in TBTWD, there was a rudimentary rig set up that was supposed to keep the brain (and its encasing head) from deteriorating. In "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (a really snazzy title!) Der Fuhrer's neatly groomed head sits in a transparent case atop a complex-looking machine. But the case is simply detached and carried around like a hatbox--even taken on a car ride (where bare shoulders are visible). The whole film is a silly, schmalzy slow-starter in which some of the Nazis look like Mafia thugs and no more than half a dozen German words are ever spoken. The actors don't even feign an accent or attempt a Teutonic demeanor. The main (and most interesting) characters are a young "CID" agent and his tag-along wife, who exhibit more sexual passion and playfulness than most players in modern movies. Much of the action and intrigue takes place in a fictitious South American country where at least the nationals have believable accents. It's too bad the Hitler head didn't get more screen time. Although it can speak, it does so on only one occasion, filling the rest of its frames with blackly comedic shifty-eyed, twitchy, rodent-like gesticulations. For bad-movie mavens to miss this one is definitely verboten!

This queer quintet of intended black humor isn't funny in the way the creators apparently envisioned, but funny it is. And, if any of its five tales of the preternatural were a mere one-fourth as good as the intros by John Carradine indicate--well, the viewer could at least stop sighing long enough to allow a slight shiver of trepidation, if not a shudder of laughter. But the only impulse likely to replace the yearn to yawn is indeed the urge to cackle as the sorry scripting and stilted performances grow incredibly worse. The sets and sound quality are reminiscent of early soaps, and a couple of the reoccurring actors carry their early-sixties coifs into nineteenth-century roles. The dialogue at times isn't consistent with the direction, as when one character states that coffee is brewing while pouring it into a cup. (Maybe the director figured that the audience would notice nothing but the busty actress's increasing cleavage!) The accidental humor reaches a crescendo in a Frankensteinesque story in which Lon Chaney Jr. slips into near slapstick as the disjointed dialogue has his mad doctor character babbling like a senile sot. Satire and parody are utterly impossible to achieve when the script for a scene sounds as if it were formulated by two writers, independent of one another. But it does sometimes result in hilarity, as in this film.

The corpse of a Mafia informant, reanimated by powers from beyond, rises nightly from a watery grave to reek vengeance and recover the source of his bodily resurgence. Sounds like the makings of a good parody of everything from Frankenstein to The Mummy to Night of the Living Dead, huh? Well, yeah, but only a few of the laughs in this wannabe lampoon are intentional. A whole lot more of them are not. No satire on earth could be brought to life from such a slipshod script, spartan sets, and profoundly unstellar performances. George Gobel, who could have made a comedic splash with his signature dry and droll personae, is instead doused in a role as a straight-up pedagogue of a prof who explains what asteroids are and such. Most of the movie's attempts at humor fall with a thud harder than a meteor hitting the moon. Sometimes, though--like an elephant joke--it's the sheer flat unfunniness of these attempts that make them so risible. And this film is full of them. There's no time given to introspection in such an uncerebral offering, so the pace never slows down enough to make the movie dull. Like the turquoise-looking asteroid itself, it's something of a little gem.

Mediocre acting, melodramatic direction, and sometimes vacuous, uneven scripting make this noirish, wannabe chiller a treat to watch. If the screenplay were half as tight as the women's clothes--even those of a fat, middle-aged blind lady--this offering might have emerged as just another half-baked, predictable haunter. But the incongruous dialogue, lurid reactions, and clumsily presented ghostly manifestations (lopped-off heads and hands) make the film a non-stop feast of fun. Eleven-year-old Susan Gordon has the best lines and, unlike most of the cast, delivers them well. (She also has the best wardrobe, even if it does make her look years younger than her actual-age character.) The only dull moments are when Carlson is (obviously not really) playing the piano, and that just means more ectoplasm--and more merriment--is at hand (or head).

The basic plot of this sci-fier is pretty good. A rabies-like pathogen is rapidly spreading and zombifying folks over the greater girth of the globe. For viewers who dote on CGI, there are scenes where scads of the afflicted swarm at lightning speed. For those in the audience who prefer killer suspense, there is a slow, scary struggle through the halls of a zombie-infested laboratory. One scene--the flick's creepiest--has Brad Pitt and one of the litchy-looking creatures separated by a mere glass partition. As the two silently size each other up, the monster grotesquely glares and gnashes his teeth. Despite all the snapping and snarling, however, the film has a dearth of blood and gore--which probably disappoints many fans of the zombie genre. The movie seems much more concerned with political messages and, sadly, not the sort traditionally seen in science fiction. There is no hint that the dread disease is related to the recklessness or poor choices of mankind, no clue that science has somehow gone mad and birthed a world- destroying monstrosity. The message of this movie is non-subtle and non-stop, and it's the same one that infects almost all modern, English- language cinema. And this offering is so full of it that a viewer might find himself counting incidents of political correctness rather than attacks by the creatures. The film's creators couldn't change the fact that ticket-selling Brad Pitt is a white male, so they made him a pancake-cooking Mr. Mom in an otherwise female household. His neighbors are a Hispanic couple who don't speak English, his old boss an African, his new helpmate a macho Israeli woman. When the latter's countrymen erect a wall to forestall the zombies, they just climb over it. (Of course, like the Mexican border, it's unguarded!) And, naturally, Pitt's humanity-saving mission doesn't land at world-class Ben Gurion Airport, but at Arafat Airport--which is, in reality, a bombed-out, non- functioning ruin. Fortunately, this film has just enough action and suspense to avoid the same fate.

This plane-crash creature feature is fun to watch simply to count the Things People Would Never Do. For instance: 1. Search for matches when several fires are already burning 2. Leave clothes on dead bodies when live ones are freezing 3. Use one of 12 matches per day to start a fire and then let it go out at night These football jocks and their support staff are not scripted as stupid, but their actions prove otherwise. In fact, this bunch couldn't survive in a New York City snow storm, let alone the Himalayas. Of course, maybe the setting is supposed to be an alternate-universe Himalayas. I mean, the ground isn't so frozen that the characters can't dig a deep pit while the creature is asleep. (And would people really do this to trap a monster that can jump like a giant flea?) Most of the actors give this silliness their best effort, which only serves to make the on- the-cheap yeti costume and CGI more glaringly chintzy. The action does move along, and the incongruities never cease. So, sitting through this off-the-wall offering doesn't really have to be a curse.

Even Dennis Hopper doesn't look very punkish in this lame, dated yarn. In fact, Hopper and his male co-punks look like they just left men's prayer breakfast at the local Baptist church! And "man" is indeed the operative word, since most of them appear a lot closer to thirty than eighteen. And Johnny Nash, as the "colored boy" who endures the gang's racially derogatory jibes, even acts like he'd be more at home in Sunday school--or at a high school chess club meeting. It's hard to swallow the cinematic assertion that this bunch could get involved in murder, assault, grand larceny, and conspiracy to kidnap. But, while any thuggishness of appearance is downplayed, their behavior is so over the top that it emerges as farcical. Joby Baker, as a nastily oh-so-cool hepcat, is reminiscent of Mark Rydell in the 1956 feature Crime in the Streets. (Moreover, Baker plainly states that he doesn't like girls.) The actors, however, can scarcely be blamed for this lumpy melodrama. Jeffrey Hunter and Frank Silvera deliver straight, low-key efforts, and Terry Burnham, as Hunter's little daughter, puts in a fine performance. Pat Crowley, on the other hand, could emerge only as overwrought when she is scripted to fret about unwashed dishes as her family flees for its life. Despite the movie's incongruity of characters, the plot--though utterly predictable--does move along at a steady pace. At times, though, it feels overedited, as with an apparent reluctance to deal in detail with attacks on Hunter's family. The film's value lies in its interest as an unintentional parody of Fifties depictions. As such, it is well worth a look-see.

Women who enjoy romantic suspense should like this TV movie about a jewelry-design apprentice who is abducted during a robbery. While being held in a high-rise apartment, she finds herself frightened and flustered by the smarmy advances of one of the holdup men and, at the same time, confused and unsettled by the oddly protective actions of another of the gang members. The characters are well drawn, distinctive, and intriguingly diverse. Lolita Davidovich is particularly interesting as a makeup artist/novice robber. The storyline moves smoothly and steadily and has just enough plot turns to make for a simple but engaging crime drama.

Could any space flick be worse than The Angry Red Planet? Yes, it could. The script for the disaster at hand is so dopey and disjointed that it could have been scrawled out in crayon by a classroom of third-graders, each child submitting a short scene that teacher then patched together, helter-skelter. As for the actors, some of them are without doubt competent. They've exhibited this in other movies. But, here, with such dipsticky dialogue, no one could ever know. It makes it easy to understand why Tom Conway turned to drink and died broke. The story starts with a big strike against it: twelve characters with little to distinguish most of them. There are nine white guys, two women--Swedish and Japanese--and a Nigerian man whose accent never sounds West African and sometimes slips into Southern American. The hatch is scarcely secured when the inter-ethnic squabbling and recriminations start. Didn't these people get acquainted before blasting off in a rocket? From the amorous behavior of the females with two of the males, one would think so. But maybe there's something in the air--or lack of it. There must be some air, even on the moon, since the spacesuits don't have visors. The ship itself, with its bare-bones instrumentation and lack of even a beep or buzz, must be of such advanced technology that it all but runs itself. But, no, that can't be right. The teen math whiz has to use paper and pen to calculate a path through a meteor shower. The medical personnel has to struggle with wrap-around blood pressure cuffs--which they obviously don't know how to use. The only recorder on board--oh, forget it. There are, in addition to the dozen humans, two cats and two monkeys in plastic cases, two parakeets in a traditional cage, and one spaniel on a leash. The boy genius tells them they've been brought along to see if they'll mate on the moon. In the doggie's case, the answer is probably no. One silly circumstance follows another, but maybe the most asinine is that involving a screen-scrolled message from the Moonmen. Although it's somehow known that they communicate only telepathically, they have chosen to relay a series of repetitious, somewhat hieroglyphic-looking symbols. One crew member decides that the writing looks Chinese (it doesn't) so the Japanese woman is told to translate. She does, without a hitch. Now, who but a very young child could make such an assumption?

Beverly Michaels comes off like Gloria Grahame with a splash of Ann Savage's character in Detour. She exudes an airy, blue-collar charm that can quickly foment into a feisty, white-trashy pugnaciousness if provoked. As The Wicked Woman, she's a wonder to watch as she glides slinkily along the street, her long, lean, busty body sheathed in stark white. As she breezes off the bus and over to a low-rent rooming house, the viewer is wont to wonder just what swept such a stunner to these whereabouts. As the storyline unfolds at a slow, steadily deliberate pace, the audience observes her sleek-handed, worldly-wise reactions and can swiftly surmise a probable long-term pattern. She easily wins over many in her sway, like the lascivious gnome next door, the boozing boss and her handsome bartender husband, the habitual barflies. Those with whom she clashes, such as her fishwifey landlady and fault-finding fellow roomers, discover an opponent worth her salt. The plot is low-key and credible, and old hands like the irreplaceable Percy Helton make it reminiscent of fifties television anthologies. The film succeeds in what it was intended to be: a low-budget but well directed and acted character study of a beautiful, manipulative woman.

And now for something completely different: a woman is hypnotically regressed to reveal a former life as a seventeenth-century lass and one of the primeval sea creatures from which--didn't ya know--humanity evolved. The beast looks like a cross between Gillman and a gargoyle, but the really odd thing about it is that it emerges from the ocean as a ghostly figure and quickly materializes into a solid man-size monster that dispatches victims with a karate chop to the shoulder with a crab-like, but apparently non-prehensile, fin/claw. This female of the species goes on rampages as rapacious as any male and only once demonstrates any discrimination in the attack. It's difficult to tell what, if anything, might kill or even repel her, since the cheap sets call for such tight shots that she's on top of her prey before they scarcely begin to fight. And when the sieve of a script does try to explain anything--let alone the monster--it just causes more confusion. The slimy hypnotist who controls the latest carnation/evolution of the creature somehow does so despite her profound hatred for him and desperate resistance to trance. He's seen leaving an apparent murder scene, yet these pre-Miranda-era cops fear lack of evidence and a suit for false arrest--which of course means charging someone for something that's not a crime. As anyone knows, murder IS a crime, and the police think the large, reptilian tracks left at the death site were faked by a human being. Of course, the cops in this film also finger half the items in sight and phone the lab boys only after throwing flour all over the floor to check the footprints. Much of the plot and dialogue are just as dopey, so it can be fun to anticipate the next oddball occurrence. The acting is adequate, though Tom Conway appears to sometimes stare too obviously at cue cards. Even the (unneccessary) comic relief is rather weird. It's a loquacious Scandinavian butler who keeps losing his bow-tie.

Opine that a film is noir, and the arguments will sprout up like mushrooms in a dark cellar. This gritty little feature, however, should cause contention only among those who designate noir in terms of directors, inclusive years, or other mercenary measures. The plot concerns police corruption, and the protagonist is an unsullied, but savvy rookie cop who is ready and willing to cast sentiment aside and get the goods by hook or crook. The Production Code is cracking, and characters talk of a woman putting out and a good guy's willingness to cheat on his wife. There's no soft soap or sappiness--only an oblique noir world that twists and turns and delivers flashes of light amidst the gloom.

A Life in the Balance: even the name bespeaks noir. So, not surprisingly, destiny has a nasty shock in store for out-of-work widower Montalban, who is struggling to make a secure home for his motherless little boy. Neighbors are threatening a custody action, and a smitten ex-lover is resisting repayment of a large loan. And then father and son fall beneath the sinister shadow of maniacal psychopath Lee Marvin. Unware of the terrible turn of events, Montalban bounds fatefully into the Mexico City night. In a pawn shop, he meets Anne Bancroft, a prim, down-on-her-luck lady who is bereft of either street smarts or employment. As the two sally forth into the lights and activity of a holiday festival, his son is in the midst of a far different and dangerous pursuit on dark, deserted streets. Montalban looks sensational, but he is, after all, playing an everyman and conducts his characterization accordingly. Bancroft, though attractive, is unglamorously so and is most appealing in her emotional and intellectual reactions to Montalban. Their relationship, though expeditiously developed, seems deeper and more credible than many seen in classic movies. The plot spins out smoothly, and the settings are well suited to the story. As well as obscure avenues and alleyways, crowded tenement, and typical hock shop, a police station and cavernous cathedral enhance the somber mood. It all makes for a somewhat soft-soaped, somewhat predictable, but nonetheless interesting bit of noir.

Surely no Saturday morning TV kids' show was ever done this poorly. After all, those producers had to count on the audience coming back. Well, in this awful offering, they could at least count the money they saved on sets. The script could have been a reject from some long-forgotten space opera serial, with a few smarmy lines added for cool-dude Gerald Mohr to murmur to Naura Hayden. No director could have done anything decent with such a loony storyline, so the action just plods boringly along. The spaceship props are absurd--a Bulova wall clock and portable typewriter, for example--but the planet sets have got to be some of the worst in cinematic history. Most are crude drawings, and it's all bathed in an often misfocused red light. Even Mohr's bare hairy chest is used as a prop. And it's a bad one--as rib-thin as the plot. Any viewer who can make it to the end of this movie will hear a message from the Martians--and will probably agree completely!

Most of this movie's attributes are typical of 50's B features. The acting is capable, the scripting and the direction are par for the course, and the cinematography is passable. But the big bird attached to the giant claw is so downright daffy that it looks like a cheap prop that was somehow accidentally swung in from some zero-budget children's program. The artificial avian is so turkey-like that its initial appearance in the film is utterly jarring in its ridiculousness. Judging by its saurian maw, one could assume the creature's creators were attempting a pterodactyl lookalike, but somehow they ended up with a fluff-crested, gangly-necked affair with all the scariness of a carnival kewpie. Even 50's audiences must have laughed. The movie would have been so much better had the director paid more attention to the title and made the assaults consist mostly of images of gargantuan talons.

The murders in this schlocky, mistitled movie seem merely peripheral to the real action, which is all the singing, dancing, flirting, and fighting at a local teen hangout. It is hardly surprising, then, that the filmmakers include a songwriter of two tunes featured in the adolescent action. Though the settings are realistic--since actual locations were utilized--no one succeeded in finding a competent director or cast. Bill Bloom, however, as Jimmy, somehow struggles through the mire of an inane script to show some skills as an actor. Most of the players range from wooden to overwrought, so that the movie does emerge with some worth as an unintentional farce.

This odd little film is--oddly enough--good because it is so badly done. For starters, it concerns some sort of South Seas witchcraft instead of voodoo. And many viewers probably feel bewitched while trying to figure out all the confusing plot devices and glaring gaps in the storyline. One can easily get the impression that minimal direction has allowed the players to conjure their own magic in regard to their individual roles. Some ring as hollow as a dried-out gourd, like those of Boris Karloff and Elisha Cook, Jr., actors who certainly knew how to move the spirit in melodramas. Rhodes Reason, on the other hand, puts yeoman effort into his boat-captain portrayal, struggling at times to make schmaltzy lines sound serious. Beverly Tyler, as Karloff's all-business assistant, lays it on thick as a prissy prig, high-mindedly brushing off the attentions of Reason and Jean Engstrom, who, as elegant decorator Miss Winters, delivers a subtle but nonetheless obvious portrayal of a lesbian. In such a lightweight, run-of-the-mill script, Engstrom's character probably could have emerged as merely a sophisticate trying to glamorize Tyler's dowdy Sarah Adams and rebuff Reason's rough-hewn Matthew Gunn. But Engstrom intricately weaves a fascinating, on-the-QT characterization that steals every scene she is in. Both women have to contend with predatory phallic-looking plants as well as the macho ministrations of Reason. And there are threats posed by hexing island natives and their oddly Anglo chief. All in all, a fun flick to be marooned in for an hour or so!

Hopefully, the day will dawn when would-be viewers have to actually worry about the avoidance of spoilers in reviews of Kraft Suspense Theater. For, as it stands, this great television anthology has yet to be reproduced on video. But, for those old enough to have seen the series, there is almost certainly at least some recall of a favorite episode or two. My Enemy, This Town has lingered in my own memory for two primary reasons: it stars good-looking Scott Marlowe and has a surprising ending. I managed to track down the particular title because I remembered that Diane McBain is also featured as a woman who has Marlowe sent to prison for rape. If I recall correctly, when he is released from custody and returns to confront her, she admits that she unjustly accused him, and--lo and behold--the two actually fall in love! Now, how likely is it that such a plot would appear on present-day television? I merely wish that good anthologies such as this would return....

This is a sweet, unsophisticated, improbable little story about a prison inmate who breaks out to visit his critically injured son and, while on the lam, manages to win the heart of a gawky gal, a precious pup, and--by an act of unselfish heroism--an entire community! The plot is strained and simplistic, but, for those who can suspend the realization of harsh reality, it is supremely satisfying in its all-will-be-well premise. Even the delicious villainy of Neville Brand has a fairytale quality to the portrayal, and the traditionally good and traditionally bad somehow melt into the same treacle. Seemingly, only the irredeemably grumpy could complain over such a charmer--which CAN BE PURCHASED FROM robertsvideos.com!!

This rediscovered little dilly wouldn't walk away with any awards, but it's the sort of grade-B fare that makes film noir aficionados jump for joy! As is remarkably common in such flicks, the fog of confusion comes in on little cat feet--this time in the presence of two fighting felines on a fence. The protagonist flings his shoes at them, and fate suddenly starts tromping roughshod over him and his hapless spouse. The plot is somewhat plodding by modern standards, but its patient unfolding allows realization to creep slowly over the viewer, so that the conclusion is all the more credible and satisfying. Fans of crime and mystery films of the forties and fifties should find this offering to be a runaway pleaser!

Bodacious, gloriously-maned Ekberg and her magnificent dog Devil (dubbed a great dame and a Great Dane)are the goodies in this fifties pop-psych piece with its is-she/isn't-she-crazy scenario. Looking like a gorgeous amazonian goddess (purportedly only 5'7" without heels), the mighty Ekberg makes all the human males in her orbit look mousy and malleable as she sashays from loony bin to gin den, her emotions and motivations as mysterious as the titular statuette around which it all revolves. The movie has an offbeat tone and texture and a tendency to unbalance the viewer with the unexpected:

asylum-escapee Ekberg doing her shackled-slave dance routine in El Madhouse nightclub; Gypsy Rose Lee putting the blame on Mame in an awkward, abortive fringe-dress shimmy; the famed stripster's shacked-up status with a cute little hipster. Fans of such censor-bound lesbian depictions should love this cinematic morsel, as will devotees of no-budget noir!

This dull shoot-'em-up, a typical run-of-the-mill, cowboys 'n' Indians, robbers vs.posse oater, has one remarkably fascinating aspect: a bare-bones plot punctuated by surprisingly sexual imagery, much of which can be interpreted as homoerotic. Some scenes are steamingly obvious in their depiction of passion, and others are so gratuitously injected that they can only be seen as surreptitiously symbolic. (There's even a totally irrelevant pussycat with kittens). The creators must have had a bang-up good time foisting such a naughty piece on mid-fifties audiences, and modern viewers should have just as much fun ferreting out each and every nuance! Fans who favor peeking below the Production Code will have a ball!

Set in a nonexistent West Virginia county, this pseudo-shocker rings as appropriately hollow with nonexistent direction, acting, and cinematography.

Its requisite motley gang of protagonist post-teens includes an interracial couple and two lesbians (shock!)who indulge in gratuitous and graphic skinny-dipping (shock, shock!). A viewer could easily imagine pre-teen boys taking dad's digital camera and filming this silly, purulent piece to show in secret to their cronies. (And, of course, they wouldn't use the real name of their resident county, or grownups might find out just who the culprits were!) Worst of all, there's no scare in the scarecrows, the cornfields, the rural darkness, or anything else that better efforts have achieved.

Perhaps the creators of this silly spooker believed that, because it concerns an apparition-plagued abode, motivations behind the characters' behavior could be as difficult to grasp as the ghost herself! The actions and situations are often so preposterous that the audience may well be constantly wondering why anyone would do or say what the script just indicated! The open-minded can certainly accept the possibility of a haunting spirit, but one which possesses the living and turns blue eyes brown? Maybe it's about all one can expect from a T-A Thiessen peekaboo boobfest where even the spec shows pec! As always, Tim Matheson gives it the old college try in this half-jelled melodrama that totally wastes his talent and the viewer's time. Please--somebody secretly bury this flick!

This rockbottom-budgeted feature supposes that the samurai-spawning religion of Bushido is as natural to the Japanese as killing gazelles is to lions--with about the same results! The protagonist, a war orphan adopted by white Californians, hears the blood-call in the suasions of a zombie-like Shinto priest. The pretty, Americanized little boy is inexplicably sent to Europe (to study medicine and art) and returns craggy-countenanced, with a thickened accent and Japanese manners. Stereotypically squint-eyed and toothy, he reunites with his mentor, and the duo leer vampirishly over the prospect of planet-wide domination. With all the panache of a grade-school production, much of the movie is composed of docudramatic narration, apparently as a money-saving measure and to assure the buy-war-bonds message emerges from the slapsticky silliness of squawking Nipponese bureaucrats and sword-slashing pseudo-samurai. As a historical piece, the film is a thorn among thorns (that will prick the funnybone of many!)and is, of course, of interest as a particularly odious example of wartime propaganda.