EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Michael O'Keefe Edward Cahn directs Curt Soidmaks screenplay about "zombie" assassins. An American mobster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) provides the funds for an ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gay) to continue his experimentation. Buchanan forces the duped doctor into resurrecting cadavers with radioactive brains into becoming the walking dead henchmen to get even with the bad guys that crossed him in the past. Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning) teams with Capt. Dave Harris (S. John Launer) to investigate the unbelievable murders. This film is produced by "King of the Quickies", Sam Katzman. Rounding out the cast: Angela Stevens, Tristram Coffin, Harry Lauter, Charles Hovarth, Michael Ross and Charles Evans.

Coventry Edward L. Cahn…I'm definitely a fan! The name of this b-movie director probably won't ring any bells, but I invite everyone here to click on his name and check out his impressive repertoire! He was an incredibly busy bee, with sometimes up to twelve movies directed per year, and active in various fields and genres like crime, western and horror. Admittedly he never made any true classics or influential milestones, but he did deliver a lot of fun movies like "It! The Terror from Beyond Space", "Invasion of the Saucer Men" and "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake". And, most of all, he – unwarily – contributed to the historic development of cinematic zombies with this unbelievably underrated and surprisingly suspenseful "Creature with the Atom Brain". This is just my own personal theory, but creation of zombie cinema roughly occurred in four phases and, as far as I know, this cool little movie kick-started phase II… Phase I started it all with the legendary pioneer movie "White Zombie", featuring what is arguably Bela Lugosi's best performance (yes, better than "Dracula"). In these very first zombie movies the living dead are portrayed as disciplined and docile slaves, solely resurrected from their graves to work for evil plantation owners. To a lesser extent, "I Walked with a Zombie" and "King of the Zombies" also fit into this initial phase. Then we have phase II with this "Creature with the Atom Brain". The zombies are still just slaves, but now they are brought back from the dead to serve as controllable murderers with superhuman strengths. The idea is brilliant, as far as I'm concerned, and results in a handful of truly suspenseful and innovative sequences. "Invisible Invaders", also directed by Edward L. Cahn, also belongs in phase II and here the zombies are controlled by extraterrestrials. Phase III – a very short one – almost exclusively contains the very first adaptation of Richard Matheson's monumental novel "I Am Legend", retitled "The Last Man on Earth" and starring genre icon Vincent Price. After a worldwide deadly plague, the dead rise again and act entirely by themselves for the very first time, but they are more reminiscent to vampires since they only come into action after dark. Then, of course, we have George A. Romero to thank for phase IV, as he made zombies to what they still are to this date with "Night of the Living Dead": vile and merciless undead monsters that hunt down the living in order to feast on their flesh and brains.So, I'm probably exaggerating a bit, but I personally think that "Creature with the Atom Brain" is a historically relevant little B-movie. But more importantly, it's a very clever and entertaining '50s horror gem with action and suspense. Frank Buchanan, a nation-wide feared mafia gangster enlists the help of a brilliant former Nazi-scientist to extract vengeance on all the people responsible for his conviction. Through zombies that are brought back to life with atomic energy and remote-controlled through brain wave manipulation, he kills off prosecutors but also fellow gangsters that betrayed him, while he remains within the safe and heavily isolated walls of his mansion. The screenplay of "Creature with the Atom Brain" is very talkative and many of the dialogs are quite tacky, but the underlying ideas of the film are compelling and – as stated above – quite renewing. The film does remain a low-budgeted '50s Sci-Fi/horror production, so naturally the special effects are cheap and cheesy. Still, the close-up zombie hit men are rather uncanny. Edward L. Cahn also maintains a grim atmosphere throughout and even the sequences with the head investigator's 6-year-old daughter aren't that irritating. Good movie, strongly recommended to horror fans with an open-minded mentality.

ferbs54 Perhaps no other actor of the late '40s throughout the 1950s squared off against as many sci-fi monstrosities on screen as Poughkeepsie, NY-born Richard Denning. In 1948's "Unknown Island," Denning battled a T. rex and other prehistoric nightmares; in "Creature From the Black Lagoon" (1954), he grappled with the most famous amphibian in cinema history; in "Target Earth" (also from '54), his problem was invading aliens and a humongous, lumbering robot; in "The Day the World Ended" (1955), it was a marauding mutant; and in 1957's "The Black Scorpion," it was giant arachnids in a Mexican volcano. But 1954's "Gillman" was not the only title "creature" that Denning had to face, of course. In 1955's "Creature With the Atom Brain" (released in July of that year as part of a truly awesome double feature, paired with "It Came From Beneath the Sea"), the handsome, blonde, sci-fi stalwart was faced with one of his most bizarre menaces yet: remote-controlled cadavers, animated by atomic energies, that are being used by an ex-crime boss to eliminate his old enemies; a menace that almost makes dinosaurs and giant bugs seem pedestrian!In the film, Denning plays Dr. Chet Walker, the head of the police lab in a large metropolitan city. Chet's latest case is a baffling one: a string of murders perpetrated by a killer who leaves luminous fingerprints, whose blood traces show no hemoglobin content, who is seemingly impervious to bullets and who deposits a radioactive residue wherever he walks. His investigation turns even more baffling when a fingerprint analysis reveals the killers (yes, there are apparently more than one!) to be dead men; corpses that had disappeared from the local morgue! Meanwhile, in a lead-shielded house on the outskirts of the city, the viewer is allowed to see just what is going on: Deported criminal Frank Buchanan (nicely portrayed by Michael Granger) has snuck back into the country, bringing with him a new accomplice, German scientist Dr. Willhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye). Using Steigg's remote-controlled, atomic-activated corpses ("You may be a crackpot but you're also a genius," the mobster tells him), Buchanan is systematically eliminating all his old enemies...and some new ones, as well. And Chet, it would seem, has just risen to the top of that list....An "entertainingly preposterous concoction," says Glenn Kay, writing about the film in his wonderful reference guide "Zombie Movies," and that certainly is the case here. But the film is also surprisingly intelligent and well acted, at times coming off like a film noirish policier crossed with a way-out, Saturday matinée sci-fi thriller. In truth, the film reminds this viewer of one of those old Emma Peel/"Avengers" episodes--such as "The Cybernauts," "From Venus With Love," "The Winged Avenger" and "The Positive Negative Man"--in which a madman concocts some diabolical means of offing his foes, and we see a series of attacks that take up the bulk of the hour (in the film's case, 69 minutes). "Creature" tries hard to make its outrageous premise more plausible via the use of scientific chatter; hence, we get a statement such as "a dilated solution of hematin; two absorption bands between the Fraunhofer lines," and references to "somatomotor and visceromotor effects," "selen cells" and "amygdala stimuli." The film is taut and compact, often suspenseful, and builds to a memorable conclusion, as Walker and the police do battle with a horde of the reanimated dead. The zombies here are not of the flesh-eating George A. Romero/Lucio Fulci variety, of course; they are more like remote-controlled robots than gut munchers. Still, they do look pretty impressive, with their suture-stitched foreheads (did I fail to mention the receiving gizmos that Steigg has implanted in their noggins?) and automaton gait. The film also features any number of standout sequences. I love the initial attack, in which we see one of the creatures kill somebody by breaking his back; a scene shown only in shadowed silhouette. Also memorable is the section where Chet's friend and fellow policeman Capt. Dave Harris (S. John Launer), having been turned into one of the atomic creatures by Buchanan and Steigg, arrives at Chet's house and talks with his unsuspecting wife (yummy Angela Stevens) and young daughter. And speaking of Chet's wife, nice to see the two of them enjoying a refreshingly randy and frankly sexual relationship...especially for a '50s couple! Other things to admire in the film: some crackerjack direction by Edward L. Cahn (who, over the next four years, would go on to helm such sci-fi and horror favorites as "The She-Creature," "Zombies of Mora Tau," "Voodoo Woman," "Invasion of the Saucer Men," "It! The Terror From Beyond Space," "Curse of the Faceless Man" AND "Invisible Invaders," that last boasting a plot similar to "Creature"'s, with aliens taking over the bodies of the dead), a no-nonsense script from Curt Siodmak, and noirish cinematography by DOP Fred Jackman, Jr. Sadly, the film falters a bit in its final minutes, and for the life of me, after two recent viewings, I cannot figure out how the zombified Harris turns on Buchanan at the end, or what happens to Buchanan during the final melee. And that's a shame, because for the first 65 minutes or so, the film had been quite lucid and fairly gripping. Still, these two quibbles are hardly reason to dismiss such a fun picture. For the most part, the film is aces, and should prove as stimulating to your cerebellum as a nice jolt of atomic energy....

Scarecrow-88 A "police scientist" (Richard Denning, always smoking pipe and exuberant/aware in how his talents are depended upon by the police and press) determines that a series of odd killings (tied to a vendetta-fueled mobster who afforded a Nazi scientist a laboratory and technology used to further his research and allow for revenge) are committed by dead gangsters with radioactive "blood" and fingerprints (that illuminate in dark!) and atomic power that allows them to snap backs and necks of targeted victims! The mobster named Buchanan likes to use a microphone to "speak through" the dead gangster zombie killers to those he is about to have killed as to remind them of who is responsible prior to their deaths! This silly sci-fi hokum from Sam Katzman Productions has the look and score of a Universal Horror film without the studio's finesse and pizazz. The plot is bonkers but that has always been part of the B-movie charm that comes with these kinds of films. Dead gangsters (and later cops) with "robotic" brains that can be controlled from a source, atomic energy used to give them great power that also includes being impervious to bullets or harm unless the machines and men behind them are put to rest; this all is preposterous yet entertaining nonsense. There's just always been an appeal to me with these dorky sci-fi movies. Denning has enthusiasm to spare and the zombie-formula helps make this far more fun than it has any right to be. Always handling the material with a serious approach, the actors involved holding a straight face when the plot is as far-fetched and loony as Creature with the Atom Brain, the entertainment value only increases. There's this imminent threat to the atom men that the film milks repeatedly, even at one point having a montage of disasters caused by them thanks to Buchanan who uses his zombies to cause chaos because the police and military are on the lookout, using radium-detecting devices to pinpoint high radioactive areas that send off warning signals. Of course, Buchanan and his German scientist consider Denning a threat because of his "imagination" and intellect, soon killing (and using as a zombie killer/locater) his cop buddy (a later possible threat to his child and wife is established)…Uncle Dave, because of his inside knowledge of the last two men Buchanan wants dead for snitching on him, implicating him, and thus responsible for his deportation to Europe (where Buchanan soon encountered the German scientist), could be important in putting a stop to Denning's hero. Seeing the zombies in gangster suits, their skulls with surgical marks indicating head surgery, attacking cops and soldiers is such an odd sight but should provide plentiful kicks and giggles. Obviously, Denning saves the day, following the lead to his zombie cop buddy, entering Buchanan's lair, and taking a wrench to the machinery behind all the death and violence. Lots of exploding consoles, broken windows, and fisticuffs result. Surprisingly violent for its time, we see bullets riddle the zombie gangster bodies, and there are shadow silhouettes and carefully photographed attacks of victims Buchanan wanted crushed for their betrayal of him. You know if you are the type of audience this is made for, and I am of that number. Complete with Denning, a dutiful wife in apron always preparing him a martini and wanting to spend just a little time with her busy husband, and the cutie daughter doting on her dolly. Fun fact: Curt Siodmak (who lent writing to such diverse screenplays as "Donovan's Brain", "Black Friday", "The Wolf Man", "Beast with Five Fingers", and "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers") was the writer for this film's screenplay.