Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them. A police doctor's investigation of the deaths leads to the discovery of an army of dead criminal musclemen restored to life, remotely controlled by a vengeful former crime boss and a former Nazi scientist, from the latter's laboratory hidden in the suburbs.
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Following a series of strange deaths across the country, a freak occurrence in the investigation leads police to a mad scientist working with a disgruntled gangster controlling reanimated dead people under their power to kill those who arrested him and must stop his deadly plot.This ended up being quite a bland and overall disappointing zombie effort. For the most part, the film remains solely on the investigation angle of the police trying to determine the cause of the strange deaths around town and interpreting the evidence left behind, running all sorts of different tests and experiments on the material and even debating what they mean for the majority of the film's running time, leaving large portions of the film completely without zombie action at all. Despite the appeal of doing so during the heyday of the 50s sci-fi monster movies running during the same time, in a horror film that type of story doesn't work for it lowers the on-screen amount of time the actual creatures take up, and that in itself is quite the opposite of what's supposed to happen in a genre-related film. Not that the zombies themselves are all that imposing, outfitted with Frankenstein-like marks around the forehead to denote an operation on their face has taken place but otherwise remain completely un-suggestive of traditional zombies or their behavior, and that remains the biggest portion of this one's problems as the lack of traditional zombie actions may make this a bitter pill to swallow for traditionalists, for the creatures are able to speak in a monotone voice, follow commands through a radio-receiver that also allows them to transmit video quality of their deeds and remain lifeless until called upon to act, so the purpose of reanimating the dead tissue for the process, a key component of zombie-lore, remains quite curious for it could've been done through hypnotized lackeys and the result is the same. Though there's some fun sequences here and there, mainly the finale as the army of creatures descends upon the military task-force assigned to take them out, there's just not enough to compound the boredom such a quick film implies.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.
This just Misses being an Unadulterated Classic like say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), it is nonetheless, at times, a Great Looking, Sleekly Designed, Bizarro Story that Anticipated things it never Anticipated.Like the Enduring and Endless Trend of Zombie Movies. Cold War Mind Control Experiments and its Fascination to this Day. Manchurian Candidates doing the Bidding of those at the Controls. Go here. Go there. Kill Him. Come home.It is a Fantastic Film Filled to the Brim with Unforgettable Stuff. Its Creep Factor High and Fun Enough for Fans and those Slumming for Something Unusual. It is Stuck in the Mid-Fifties and Women are Sex Objects and Kitchen Dwellers. Bend over Honey (with a lingering shot of the Backside), and Whip that Cake Batter (while ignoring the Zombie in the Living Room).This is more than Your Rank-and-File Fifties B-Movie Schlock. There are some Very Violent Scenes (notice the squibs not usually found in this type of thing), a Cool Mad Lab, Children in Peril (Psychologically), and much more to Recommend. Unintentionally Influential and Made for Double Features and Drive-Ins, this one is in the Upper-Atmosphere of Atomic Paranoia Movies and is so much more Entertaining than it would seem at First Glance.
From what I understand, writer Curt Siodmak basically hacked this story out, as opposed to the more careful,serious novels and stories he built his reputation on. Even so, and even with some of the more carelessly thrown together elements of the movie, the strength of the story comes through. As a fried of mine who watched the movie with me commented,you can almost always tell when a real writer had a hand in the story.I've also heard that this director was something of a minor talent, but he tended to rise or fall to meet the level of quality of the story he was telling. He keeps things moving briskly here. Aside from a few obvious filler sequences involving driving or necessary exposition, there isn't really any dead space in the movie...so the viewer doesn't get a chance to really think about the absurdity of the premises or some of the unwise story choices that might otherwise detract from enjoying the movie.I've always enjoyed watching Richard Denning in various roles in and out of movies and TV - he can give a smart, humane, energetic feel to his heroes and seems instantly likable as an actor. The actor who plays the gangster Buchanan and the hapless Captain who gets zombified are also quite good at what they do and in the way they play their characters.I'm still not sure why a gangster who had control of a small army of atomic powered zombies would waste his energy and time on revenge when he could have his minions rob any bank in the city and use terrorist tactics to make millions, but we'll skip right over that, and over the part where the heroes neglect to inform the army detachment that backs them up that the zombies are essentially immune to anything but head shots...and over the facts that both the gangster and the professor who aids him should be long dead of radiation poisoning before the final events of the movie (the professor steps out for a beer, and it is discovered that everything he has touched is hotter than a pistol.) Good move, great fun. If I had been 10 years old when I first saw it, I am pretty sure I would have thought it was better than "Gone With The Wind".
One might think with the extremely low budget, the lack of true star power, and a title like Creature with the Atom Brain that this project would be nothing more than many of the same types of science fiction/horror films grinded out in the 1950s, but it is better than you might expect. Sure, it looks pretty cheaply made. Yes, Richard Denning is it when it comes to a name your average 50's movie fan might know. Like other movies of its era and genre, the film is fast-paced and to the point without a lot of expository information given to the audience. What makes this film a bit different is that the story, even though quite ridiculous in and of itself, is rather inventive and the script keeps to that inventiveness quite nicely. Both the story and script are the work of Curt Siodmak, the famed horror/science fiction writer of such films as The Wolfman, I Walked with a Zombie, and so many others. The story is simply that a gangster who had been run out ten years ago comes back with a German scientist that has discovered how to reanimate dead bodies with uranium. The gangster then commands these dead bodies with a microphone and looks at what they see through their eyes on a big screen as they are sent to avenge those men that put Frank Buchanan(said gangster) in exile. The dead bodies have super human strength but otherwise look somewhat normal except for cutting lines around their foreheads. Some of the scenes with the dead are very persuasive, and director Edward L. Cahn knows how to keep the pace tight and the action relevant. The acting including lead Denning as the man able to solve the mystery of the dead rising and taking their revenge is adequate with S. John Launer as Captain Harris, Denning's partner, standing out in an interesting role. Angela Stevens as Denning's wife has little to do, but she looks very nicely doing it nonetheless.Michael Granger and Gregory Gaye play Buchanan and the scientist respectively and are also adequate. But the real stars of this film are the script and Cahn's solid direction with limited resources. The hideout for Buchanan and the way they crawled through these blowing tubes were really inventive uses of limited means. While not a great film, Creature with the Atom Brain is a solid 50's sci-fi addition and quite possibly even a forerunner to movies like The Night of the Living Dead.