There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you can’t make this stuff up, and considering how awful it is, you probably shouldn’t…
Monstrosity (aka The Atomic Brain) (1963)
Distributed by: Emerson Film Enterprises
Directed by: Joseph V. Mascelli (and Jack Pollexfen, uncredited)
We all deserve a break.
We could all use a break from our present. Sometimes, we need to turn off the news channel, put the phone on silent, threaten anyone who pops in who tries to tell you how bad things are without saying “Hey, did you hear” first…
Even the bad films from what we thought were better days than these can give us respite. A suggestion of times that seem less crazed than they are now, even the worst film from a good year can be just what you need to deal with it all.
Most of the time…
We open cold as we watch Dr. Otto Frank (Frank Gerstle) working on his experiments in the basement of a large isolated mansion. It’s fairly obvious what Dr. Frank is working on, thanks to the ever-present continuous assault of Bradford Dillman’s narration.
We get the topline summary of where this film’s going from Dillman as we watch Dr. Frank set up a comely young corpse, her body demurely covered by the restraint bands holding her to the apparatus. The basic points of where the story goes is that mad science will someday allow us to transfer brains into new bodies, and that folks who are rich enough will likely make up a large enough segment of this market to make it a concern.
We then follow the good(?) doctor as he takes along one of his experiments, one where he placed the brain of a dog inside the body of an uncredited actor, on a visit to the cemetery. The experiment kills the night watchman while the doctor finds another comely corpse (an uncredited Margie Fisco) to bring back to the lab to experiment on.
We soon meet who Dr. Frank’s working for, as we observe Hettie March (Majorie Eaton) and her “male companion” Victor (Frank Fowler). Mrs. March abuses everyone, from the cat to Victor, who stays around her in the hope of inheriting March’s fortune when she’s gone.
Which isn’t likely to be anytime soon. March is financing Frank’s work so that she can have her mind transplanted into the body of a younger woman. She goes down to the lab to see how Frank’s work is coming along, observing him as he reanimates the corpse he’d stolen earlier. The experiment’s a success, as the formerly deceased damsel proceeds to bump into the walls like a broken Roomba.
Giddy at his success, and amused while watching the comely corpse bounce around (in more ways than one, ifyouknowwhatImean…), Frank shows off the corpse to March as a test of concept, showing her that he can reanimate a body, even one without a brain, which means Frank can now take the next step on his patron’s behalf.
The next step involves not one, but three potential bodies for March to choose from: There’s Bea Mullins (Judy Bamber), a young English woman brought to this country via an agency to have her work here as a domestic servant. There’s Nina Rhodes (Erika Peters), a young Austrian woman brought to this country via an agency to have her work here as a domestic servant. And there’s Anita Gonzales (Lisa Lang) a young Mexican woman brought yeah, yeah, get on with it already…
All three are picked up at the airport by Victor, who brings them to meet their new employer, March. She makes an assessment of each woman with less class than Donald Trump did at the 2001 Miss USA Pageant before showing the help their rooms. Bea, based on her stunning looks, gets a very comfortable bedroom, while Nina is placed further away in a smaller room and Anita gets a very small spot in the basement.
Since poor Lucy is obviously out of the running, Frank uses her to make another test: He puts the brain of March’s cat inside Lucy. Lucy now behaves like a cat (while spending the rest of the pic making dubbed in cat sounds), in particular the pet that March abused, which gives the feline a little more of an advantage against her rival now…
That said, the success of this operation means that the main work can proceed, to put March’s brain inside one of the other two victims. And thus things proceed, spiraling badly out of control, not just on screen but throughout the entire production…
The history of this film is one big example of something coming together despite all the odds against it, bypassing any possible quality controls that failed along the way. Producer Jack Pollexfen (who also did uncredited work as writer and director) would tell Tom Weaver in an interview for his book Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers that this film was the worst of his career.
According to Pollexfen, the film was shot in 1958, and got only half way through the schedule before Cinema Ventures, the backers for the film, went bankrupt. Before the end of the shoot, he fired Mascelli and took over directing the pic without credit. In spite of these setbacks (and lacking any good sense to leave well enough alone), he would take the footage and try and save the movie in the editing room. As trying to fix the unfixable took over four years, this became the last film Pollexfen released in his career, coming a few years after he directed The Indestructible Man and produced Daughter of Dr. Jekyll.
Why he even tried is impossible to fathom. Not only was the directing of what little footage he had bad, there was nothing else he had to work with. Neither Bamber nor Peters give their foreign characters anything resembling an accent from where they came. The score by Gene Kauer lurches between “you know you’re supposed to be scared now, right?” and “boom-chika-wah-wah, huh-huh” with all the grace of a bad sitcom’s laugh track.
All we’re left with is a poor tale of rich villains threatening beautiful women that are running around in skimpy apparel (and maybe a side of suggested undress), which even if the script were written by Rod Serling would come off crass. It’s not just exploitation to appeal to a base sensibility, it’s badly done exploitation to appeal to a base sensibility; the former you might find something interesting being said in the subtext, while the later is just a waste of everyone’s time.
And this is just not the time for this one…
Right now, if you’re looking for escape from rich people abusing the help, visitors to the United States who are then disappeared, women being denied their rights while someone else gets to decide what they get to do with these women’s bodies, white privilege giving you a cushion from bad things happening, the white guy coming out on top again, all of this saturated with objectification and sexism… No, this is not the movie for you.
You deserve a much better break than this…
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