Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind.
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This was our look at Creature with the Adam Brain, prominently featured in one of my favorite Rocky Ericson songs. Creature with the Adam Brain came out in nineteen fifty five. In this episode, originally published on July seventh, twenty twenty three.
All right, let's jump right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be covering a movie from the nineteen fifties about evil scientists who want to use long distance electrodes to power the brain of dead men to do their bidding. No, not Plan nine from Outer Space, Not The Bride of the Monster. It's another movie with a very similar premise. This was sort of in the air. Apparently, this is nineteen fifty five's Creature with the Atom Brain.
Which has always been a confusing title because I think for a while I even just would read it as creature with the atomic brain, because what would adam brain even mean other than possibly super small brain.
Obviously, Yeah, it seems like an advance on the insult pea brain. You know, you go down to pe brain and then what's below that atom brain?
I guess, Yeah, but no, it's it's essentially in the same vein as atomic brain. But yeah, but not only is this like perhaps an idea of a reduced brain, also reduced runtime. This one comes in at a slim sixty nine minutes. The one of the reasons we picked it for this week was that we had a super long movie last week and we had a short week this week, so it seemed like a good time to dip back back into the nineteen fifties.
Sixty nine minutes, that's I don't know, that's kind of on the long side for these movies. I think a Attack of the Crab Monster is more like sixty three.
Yeah. Some of those Corman and cormanqu pictures come in at an hour or less, so yeah, they can get shorter now. The other fun thing about this pick is that it inspired a Rocky Ericsson song. Rocky Erickson was a if not the Texan psychedelic rocker who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty nineteen, did a number of songs that were inspired or referenced horror movies or horror movie themes, and so it's kind of a treat to get to talk about a movie that he strongly and directly references.
I think another one we've talked about is possibly nineteen fifty nine's The Alligator People. But yeah, today's movie inspired the Rocky ericson track of the same name, Creature with the Adam, which you can find on the nineteen eighty one album The Evil One.
I first heard this album, I'm pretty sure in the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college. I was hanging out with a friend and he put this on while we were playing chess, and it quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time, though it's one that I think is apparently not for everybody. I thought it was just great, But I took The Evil One like back to school with me in the fall, and you know, I was playing it for all my friends, and I feel like a lot of them just weren't
into it. But it's one of my favorite rock and Roll Records, every two Headed Dog, The Wind and More, Bloody Hammer, Cold Night for Alligators, Night of the Vampire, Creature with the Adam Brain, the hits never stop.
Yeah, I think you You originally turned me on to Rocky Erickson, and it took a little while for it to really good. Tooksend to me this album in particular, but eventually it did, and come back to it pretty frequently. They're they're pretty often pretty hard hitting songs. There's pretty heavy stuff at times, and the lyrics are tremendous fun.
But I want to say that while a number of songs on this fantastic album, the album is very monster themed overall, and while a number of songs on the album make oblique reference to identifiable monster movies, for example, The Alligator People, there's a song on there called It's a Cold Night for Alligator as it talks about how the dogs choke on their barking when they see alligator persons in the bog and fog. I'm pretty sure the song Night of the Vampire must have something to do
with a particular vampire movie. That's the one where if it's raining and you're running, don't slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood. That's just logic. But anyway, so a lot of these other songs, the references are kind of, you know, oblique illusions, but this one is just head on. The song is called Creature with the Adam Brain. It's about a movie called Creature with the Adam Brain, and the song, at multiple points just Rocky starts reciting dialogue from the film.
Yeah, yeah, so it's pretty dead on. And I looked around. I've never read any books, you know, dedicated biographies about Rocky Erickson, but I found an article, an interview from The Quietess. I'm not sure what year this is, but titled getting to Grips with Rocky Ericson, and there's a part where they ask him. The interviewer says, what's your favorite horror movie, and Rocky Erickson says, quote, I like the Creature with the Adam Brain, and I like The
Giant Cricket. I like them too a lot. Yeah, so we have that to go on. The Giant Cricket, I think, I'm not sure he might be referring to nineteen fifty seven's beginning of the end, but yeah, pretty strong on the Creature with the Adam brain here. Maybe there's some other interviews where he goes into it more. But there is something it is interesting to think about because on the surface, if you watch this movie not knowing it was anyone's favorite, you might guess that it is no
one's favorite. Like, there are a lot of fun things about it, but it doesn't necessarily scream top tier fifty sci fi horror. But it does some things extremely well there.
You know, there are some moments that are far creepier than you might expect them to be, and the ones that I kept coming back to were these moments where our antagonist Buchanan, who will get into and who is referenced in Rocky's song, is using super science to compel the dead to do things or speaking through the dead, and I don't know, I kept coming back to that thinking about, you know, trying to figure out what Rocky found so fascinating about this movie.
I agree with that assessment. I totally had a great time watching this, but I don't think it is top tier in any dimension. It's not like a truly great fifty sci fi film in terms of being scary or having interesting science fiction premises or in human drama, any of that. It's also not one of the most notable in terms of excesses of cheese, Like it's not in
Edward territory. You know, this is a competently made film, but nevertheless it does have some things that are working in both directions, and overall it's a fun ride and it just moves right along. This is not a slow or dull film.
Yeah, yeah, it does. It does really really move right along. So anyway, it'd be interesting to keep all this in mind. And again we also have to drive home. You don't have to have any kind of like specific reason to champion a particular horror movie or sci fi movie that no one else does. I don't know, you know, this is just one that's stuck with Rocky ericson and he made it into a great song. So there you go.
Sorry, I just put this together. You mentioned that. So he said the other one that might be his favorite as the Giant Cricket. And you think that might be Beginning of the end if that is correct. Beginning of the End is a bird Eye Gordon film.
Oh okay, just had to flag that there might be something else that could be classified as the Giant Cricket. But this is the main one I came across, and it seems to be in that sweet spot of fifties films that he's into.
This is the one, doesn't it have? Like one of the special effects shots in it is bird Eye? Gordon had a regular sized cricket crawling over like a postcard of the New York skyline.
Yeah. I think that's the one.
Yeah, that's smart.
All right, well, elevator pitch for the creature with the Adam brain. The best I could come up with is Popular Science Magazine, June nineteen fifty five, The Horror Movie. That's good, yeah, because there is a real feel of I just caught up on the latest, you know, bleeding edge science and now I'm going to write a script for a horror movie that we have to make next week.
You know, I've got another take on it. So if Edward originally sold Bride of the Monster as Bride of the Atom, this is like they're exploring more stuff in that space. We already did Bride of the Atom. Whatso how about entry level employee of the Atom? And I think that that's sort of the premise here.
Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and listen to that trailer audio. This is pretty goodn.
Fish and science creates an electronic monster so terrifying only screams can describe it. Come back home, Come back home. According to the evidence, Fanny was murdered by a creature with adam rays of superhuman strength and a creature that cannot be killed by bullets. I said I would live to see you die. I just came from the bureau and checked the murderer's fingerprints.
His name is Willard Pierce.
They let me have it from the.
Finals petty theft for three months in prison to prcule. How could to burcular men I have strength enough to break those bars like that?
Do you think that's something?
Answer this one? How could a dead man have strength enough to do it?
Fantastic? But based on scientific fact.
Please hello, your flight.
You will stop all planes and trucks searching for radio activity. If you do not, many people will be killed.
There will be no other war. Hello, Hello, Hello, they hung up.
Before I put the trace wrong.
Slow down, Dave, Dave, Now the killed him.
There you go. Based on scientific fact. This is a This is a film that that screams to be viewed.
This is hard science, hard science. This is like it's like Asimov.
All right, if you're before we go any further, if if if you would like to watch this movie before you get into the discussion, well you can.
You can.
You might catch a stream or two here or there, but the surefire way to view it is to pick up some physical media. There are a couple of nice collections that include it. One is the four DVD pack Icons of Horror collection Sam Katzman, which you can buy wherever you get your discs, that features the Giant Claw Creature with the Adam Brain, Zombies of Mara Tao, and
the Werewolf. Arro Video also put these four movies out on Blu Ray in the set titled Cold War Creatures for Films from Sam Katzman, and I included a picture of the whole spread. Here, Joe, this one looks really nice. This is not how we watched it, but this will splendid if I can't even look at it too closely. Otherwise I'm gonna be tempted to buy this thing, and I don't have the shelf space.
Gorgeous, Maybe I'm gonna buy it and then look.
At that that that Adam brained creature right there on the cover. Beautiful.
I gotta say the original posters for the creature with the Adam Brain are very good because they have a sort of like a green guy wearing a long coat with his arms outstretched walking towards you, and then instead of having him carrying an unconscious woman, they just have like an upside down woman at the bottom of the poster. They're like, oh, yeah, okay, we'll have that in there somewhere, but she's just like floating in white space. But then the green guy, his head is a drawing of an atom.
So yes, there you go. Yeah, like the symbol of the atom just superimposed over his skull. All right, well, let's get into the connections on this one. So normally we would of course start with the director, but we're going to break tradition here and start with the producer since we just mentioned him and I think maybe it's
fitting for this sort of release as well. And we've never talked about this producer before, but this is producer Sam Katzman, who lived nineteen oh one through nineteen seventy three American film producer and director, famous for his ability to pump out low budget features and cereals that actually made money. The genres were all over the place, as
you might expect, but they obviously included horror movies. Not only did he do some beat Nick films, but I've seen some film historians credit him with the creation of the term beat Nick. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but at least he was in there enough that some people think he might have just come up
with the term. He only directed five films, all of them released in nineteen thirty seven, but he produced one hundred and twenty four films, and some of the more well known titles here include some very fun B movies that I think are much beloved. There's nineteen forty one's The Invisible Claw in nineteen forty twos The Corpse Vanishes. Those are both Bela Lagosi films. There's nineteen fifty six's
The Werewolf, nineteen fifty seven's The Giant Claw. That's a giant bird movie, as I recall, nineteen fifty sevens The Zombies of Moratao and nineteen sixty sevens Kissing Cousins starring Elvis.
Oh oh boy, is this one okay question? I haven't seen all the Elvis movies. Does he sing in all the movies? Or sometimes does he just act.
You know, I've never watched an Elvis movie all the way through, but I assume he does. Why w don't you put Elvis in your movie if he's not gonna sing?
I don't know. Elvis was handsome and surely well, yeah, yeah, I think they make movies with singers where they don't sing.
They do, they do, And you know, I think we've we've we've certainly watched some things that had singers in him and they don't sing.
Does Chris Christofferson sing in Blade? I don't think he does.
He does not. Every Elvis movie I've seen a part of includes him singing. But yeah, I mean maybe he didn't. I just don't know if he sings in all of them? Right in, let us know, all right? The director is Edward L. Kahn, who lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen sixty three. I've seen him referred to as the one week Wonder because he could apparently absolutely pump these movies out. He was a kind of you go to guy, you gotta a B movie that needs to be made, it's
definitely got that B movie budget. This is the guy that will get you across the finish line. He was all about quantity over quality and was highly prolific in the low budget film scene for three decades, directing one hundred and twenty eight films, a lot of b movies. Certainly didn't win any Oscars or anything like that, but
there's some really fun movies in the mix. You might know him from some of his nineteen fifties horror and sci fi films, some of which have actually wound up on Mystery Science Theater three thousand and the like over the years. There's nineteen fifty seven's It The Terror from Beyond Space, which is often cited as being very influential and in particular influential on Dan O'Bannon's alien work in the decades to come.
How many different movies have we cited as likely inspiring Alien. We're getting to the point where I don't know if it makes sense to say it's inspired by because if it's inspired by like seven different movies, then that's just synthesis, isn't it.
Yeah, Yeah, I agree. Yeah, there's a whole list of them at this point, but I don't know. I haven't seen it, The Tear from Beyond Space. It be interesting to see exactly exactly what texture or detail he could have conceivably taken from that. Other films from this director include Invasion of the Saucer Men, The Zombies of Marital nineteen fifty six, is The She Creature, fifty nine's The
Invisible Invaders, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. He did a lot of westerns action films, bikers, various social exploitation films of the thirties, forties, fifties, and very early sixties.
I have seen a description of his movie The Invisible Invaders as being pretty much the same premise as Creature with the Adam Brain, except instead of a gangster and a scientist, it's aliens who are using the who are reanimating the remote controlled corpses. Nice.
I mean, you got a winning concept, you keep doing it all right? Well, that brings us who are the writer of this piece? And this is a writer we've discussed prefeit on Weird House. This is Kurt cid Mack, who lived nineteen oh two through the year two thousand. He wrote the screenplay for nineteen forty six as The Beast with Five Fingers, starring Peter Lorii, which we talked about.
He also wrote a novelization of that particular screenplay. He was a German born novelist, screenwriter and director who left Germany for first the UK and then the US due to concerns over rising anti Semitism under the Nazis. His German output was already pretty successful prior to all. This included a sci fi film titled FP One Doesn't Answer
about a sort of sci fi aircraft carrier base. He did British war thrillers in some comedies, but then he struck it big with his nineteen forty one screenplay for The Invisible Man Returns and his original screenplay for forty one's The Wolfman, starring Claude Rains, Bell Lagosi and Lon
Cheney Junior. He went on to write a whole lot of screenplays, including Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman forty three, I Walked with a Zombie from forty three, Son of Dracula also forty five, He House of Frankenstein from forty four, and many more. He wrote the forty two sci fi novel Donovan's Brain, which was adapted three times. Also. His brother, Robert Cimc was a director known for nineteen forty six is The Killers and The Spiral Staircase among others.
You mentioned that he wrote the movie I Walked with a Zombie from nineteen forty three. I Walked with the Zombie is also the name and pretty much the entire lyrical content of another song by Rocky Erickson on the album The Evil One, which just repeatedly proclaims I walked with the Zombie last night.
Great stuff. Yeah, definitely go go listen to some of
this album after you listened to this podcast episode. As far as the script for this movie goes, you know, perhaps nothing special on the grand scheme of things, but I think it does seem legitimately interested in creating something inspired by the frontiers of science of the day, maybe on a tight schedule and a limited budget, obviously, But I also thought the die log is mostly pretty snappy, even if on the whole the movie feels very explanatory
and procedural. Reminds me of some of the serials I've seen from this time period, but better pace, better acted, and so forth. All right, let's get into the cast here. Our star is Richard Dinnon playing doctor chet Walker. Dinning lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety eight. Now you might well recognize this lean cut of fifties leading man here because he did work quite a lot, and he's probably
best remembered though for one particular creature feature. His credits go back to the late nineteen thirties with various adventure films, comedies, and so forth. But in nineteen fifty four he starred in Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Was he one of the forgettable humans in it?
He's the forgettable human in it?
Oh?
Okay, look up if for some reason you're looking up stills from a Creature from the Black Lagoon and you don't focus on that fabulous monster costume, you'll probably see Richard Dinning standing around, you know, shirtless boat or on a boat with a shotgun, comforting a woman. That sort of thing.
I would say, Richard Dinning is not bad in this movie, but not great either. He's sort of there, He's fine.
It's a very warkhorse performance, Like does he do anything wrong?
Now?
Is there anything bad?
Now?
Is there anything where you're like, Yeah, you really leaned into that and made it more interesting than it should have been. It's hard to make a case for that, but absolutely fulfills the role here. So after Black Lagoon he continued to act in war in action films, and really most of his output is not sci fi or horror.
But it's just one of those quirks where I think, I mean, Creature from the Black Lagoon casts a far greater shadow than perhaps anything else he was in, certainly in terms of things we're likely to discuss on Weird House, but he was also in nineteen fifty seven's The Black Scorpion. I know this is a monster movie you've been tempted to do before, Joe, because it has a kind of a redunculous looking monster in it.
I've the name sounds familiar, but I've forgotten what this monster is. I must have sent it your way. Let me look it up. Oh yes, okay, yeah, we may have to return to this someday. Sorry. I got briefly sidetracked because there's apparently another unrelated movie called Black Scorpion from the nineties that looks like some kind of I don't know, erotic action movie or something. I'm seeing a lot of shiny leather.
Yeah, that's some sort of like syndicated female superhero thing. Now, this one was like a desert monster movie with a big goofy scorpion monster in it.
That sounds right, Okay, yeah, yeah, well I have to take a look again.
He was also in nineteen fifty five's The Day the World Ended, and if you're looking outside of genre, he also had a pretty i think third billing in nineteen fifty seven's Unaffair to Remember, which is a pretty big picture, but not creature level. Not creature level.
I'd say his role in this movie is somewhat likable actually, except he's somewhat flip about danger to his child. We can come back to that later. But he really needs a dry martini and he is really into his wife.
Yeah. I wasn't really prepared for just how all over each other. These two are the married couple that we have in the film of Doctor chat Walker and Joyce Walker.
It is an enthusiastic marital relationship.
Yeah, even though I think they have the nineteen fifties like single pair of single beds in the bedroom.
They got the twin those four but yeah.
So yeah, that was interesting. But yeah. Joyce Walker is played by Angela Stevens, who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty sixteen, nineteen fifties blonde bombshell who pretty much only acted during that decade, retiring fairly early on for family reasons. But she did a nice smorgas board of b cinema, westerns, horror, women in prisons, jungle adventures, that sort of thing. This may well be her her biggest role, but she also has an uncredited role in nineteen fifty six is the
Harder They Fall? Now, what does she do in this film aside from you know, being doctor Chet's loving wife, you know, again for the for the nineteen fifties especially, they're they're kind of all over each other.
They are, And she also like she's really keeping up with the news and with the caper, because there are multiple points where like she reveals a detail to one of the investigators or even to the bad guy in the form of an adam brain zombie who is sitting in her living room playing with her child that ends up moving the plot.
Yeah, yeah, so I think that's a good point. Yeah, she's not nearly as minimal a presence as you might find the hero's wife in many of these films from the nineteen fifties and so forth. All Right, our movie does have a German mad scientist, and it is doctor Wilhelm Steig played by Gregory Gay who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen ninety three. He was a Russian born actor
who left after the nineteen seventeen October Revolution. His first screen role was an uncredited role as an officer in John Barrymore's nineteen twenty eight silent movie about the final days of Czarist Russia, Tempest, but he went on to bigger, small roles, bigger supporting roles, often playing Russians or Germans, often playing diplomats. I think he even shows up on the sixties Batman series at one point playing a Russian
diplomat uncredited. Some of his more visible roles include a bit part of a German banker in nineteen forty two's Casablanca, a casino owner in nineteen sixties Oceans eleven, and he also pops up in nineteen sixty one's Blue Hawaii. This starred Elvis and was filmed at the hotel from Death Moon, the Coco Palms Resort.
It just occurred to me, I can't believe they never made an Elvis werewolf movie. Can you imagine how he could howl?
Oh man? Yeah? Off the top of my head. I don't yeah, I don't think any Elvis movies get into horror sci fi, they're all they're all based more in just kind of teeny boppy comedy and drama.
Elvis Presley starring in The Werewolf of Makeout Beach.
It would have been good. All right. We have another villain in this and it is Frank Buchanan. This is the character whose name is reference in the Rocky Ericson song. This character is played by Michael Granger, who lived nineteen twenty three through nineteen eighty one. He is our and
we'll have to come back to this. I guess he's our deported American mobster who was wandering around Europe, found alf a German mad scientist, and now has returned to seek vengeance on both sides of the law with super science.
How does one like acquire so you need a doctor Fritz to make zombies for you? How do you acquire one?
You just you. I took it to be like the situation where he found this guy. He started financing his work, and then you know, once you've been financed by someone like this, after a while, you know what they're gonna do. They're like, it's time to move this project back to the States and begin the next phase, which is Project Vengeance, Project Personal Vendetta.
Okay.
Now, Granger is pretty interesting because he's an American actor of stage and screen who mostly worked small parts on the on the screen in the likes of nineteen fifty three's The Big Heat and the Magnetic Monster, one of only a handful of movies that Kurt siat Meca actually directed, as well as nineteen fifty eight Murder by Contract. But he was also very active on Broadway and was in the original Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof. Oh now it's been It's been a long time since I've
seen Fiddler on the Roof. I think I saw it as a child, so I haven't watched it in a while. But he plays a character the butcher named Lazarre Wolf. Not laser Wolf, I assume, but Lazarre Wolf. And this would have been from like nineteen sixty four through nineteen seventy two.
Oh wow, you know, I do remember it being emphasized as laser Wolf. Really, I don't. I don't know if that's how they would actually say it in Russia, but I remember it like scans that way for the lines in some of the songs. Wolf is the so the oldest daughter, Zetol, is engaged to laser wolf but she doesn't love him. She loves what's his name the other
I think Muttle the tailor. And so there's this whole like like, Teva wants to find a way to get his daughter out of that engagement so she can marry the guy she really loves, and so he has to come up with this scheme where he may up a dream with a bad omen where where Laser Wolfe's wife will come back as a wraith. And do you remember any of this?
No, man, I don't remember it wraiths or anything. Yeah, it's I just remember. I literally just remember the same there's there's someone does sing on a roof, right or is that a fabricated memory plays a fiddle on a roof. That's okay, that's the part I remember.
No, Okay, well, yeah I remember. It's actually a great subplot. So basically, the guy he wants his daughter to be able to marry the guy she loves instead of the guy she's engaged to, and in order to do so, he makes up a fake death omen dream.
Hm hmm, okay, I really need to I need to see it again. That's it? Or I almost see it for the first time. Anyway, Granger, I really liked him in this. He has a voice that's just as smooth as crushed velvet, and he gives way more charisma to this role than I think anyone was asking of him. He's he's quite good. I don't want to take anything away from Dinning, because again, he's he's solid, hits all
the right notes. But Granger brings that nice bit of something extra to the role, Like the dialogue is already nice and snappy, but he breathes just a little extra malice and machination into everything, which is especially potent when he is speaking into the minds of the dead or through the dead, because I think if memory serves the voice we hear come out of most of the walking dead the Atom creatures is the voice of Granger, the voice of Buchanan, and Yeah, it's eerie and effective.
Yeah. Later they upgrade their technology so that the Adam Brain zombies can speak with their own voice, but they only do that for day if I think.
Yeah, which is I think more plot oriented than anything we'll get into the end of Dave.
Yeah, I don't know exactly how it works that when the earlier ones talk they speak with Buchanan's voice because they would still be using their vocal cords, but I don't know. Yeah.
Now, special effects, which I guess they're not that impressive in this particular film, are worth noting here just because they're by Jack Erickson, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen seventy eight, special effects guy who worked with Ray Harryhusen the same year on It Came from Beneath the Sea, which was also part of the double feature with this very film.
That's right. Yeah.
Ericson also has a special effects credit on the Galaxy Being episode of the classic Outer Limits series. That episode starred Cliff Robertson, but more notable than Robertson, it featured one of the series more memorable aliens. This was this kind of like weirdly glowing creature that. Yeah, if you go back and watch any Outer Limits episode from this time period, that's the one to check out, because the creature absolutely pops.
Galaxy Being. I can't help but imagine that title inspired the title of the later Don Dollar film Galaxy Invader.
Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely it did. Love Galaxy Invader. That one's good, all right. Finally, just a note on the music here, it's all stock music, so there's somebody to single out here, just all stock music. Nothing remarkable about it. Now, all right, well, shall we get into the plot.
Let's do it. You know what, quite strong opening. In fact, I would say I think the best looking shot in
the film is the very opening shot. So we come up on a kind of a silent alley way in the night time, with trees and shrubbery crowding in on both sides, and then in the background, in the distance in the shot, there is moonlight pouring in from above in a kind of shaft, and that moonlight is falling on the dark shape of a man shambling slowly toward the camera as nothing but a heartbeat pounds on the soundtrack, and then the credits roll as he wanders in our direction.
It's very very strong opening.
Yeah, it doesn't waste any time. You know, it's screaming, get kids, stop making out and watch your I guess second help of the double feature.
But as I said, I don't think any other shot in the movie is as artistically composed as this one is. This is the best looking thing we're going to get now with my post. George Romero expectations. I thought this was going to be a decaying zombie coming toward us because of his shambling gait. But no, it is a man in a suit and a tie who looks actually pretty normal, except his expression is sort of vacant. He is a stocky, square featured fellow. He walks like right
up in our faces. And then the next thing we see is him driving a four door sedan around some kind of winding mountain roads. So I was thinking, wait a minute, is he a zombie or not? Because zombies, as generally understood cannot operate motor vehicles, with the exception, of course, of Jason Vorhees and Jason takes Manhattan, because I stand by my assertion that Jason does drive the boat.
Well, as we'll learn, this is a special kind of zombie. This is a super science zombies, so maybe different rules apply.
Right. So the zombie non zombie guy, whatever he is, he parks his car beside a street lamp outside some large building that rob I wonder, what did you initially think this building was? I was like, okay, is he at like city hall or a nice hotel or something.
Yeah, it looked a like more official like that. I was a little surprised when it turned out to be more of a like a criminal underworld location as opposed to anything concerning like the you know, the city government.
Yeah, I thought, maybe, oh, maybe this is a bank, but I think it's supposed to be a casino and maybe like an illegal underworld casino. So I don't know why it's so fancy looking, but yeah, So he gets
out of the car, he shambles towards the building. Inside we see cashiers closing up money changing stations, and then we see a lackey in a tuxedo taking a bag of money into a spacious office decorated with nick knacks like there's a big Easter island head And this is the office of mister Hennessy, who is the number one head guy in charge of this hotel city Hall casino. The lackey reports that the take for the night was
twenty grand. Hennessy seems pleased with this, and Hennessy opens up his wall safe and starts counting the money and narrating into his dictaphone as he does so. And interestingly, he's not counting in terms of he's not like counting the money. He is counting the numbers of individual bills. So he's like, this many hundred dollar bills, this many
fifty dollars bills. Is that normal criminal behavior? I don't know. Meanwhile, outside the window, the zombie driver keeps staggering toward the building, and then we see through the zombie's eyes, and then there's an interesting transition. We see through his eyes on a TV screen on screen. So now we're somewhere else in a laboratory. They make it easy to know where you are by like having electrodes emit zapping sounds. And there's a TV showing the zombies eye view, and there
are two guys watching it. You've got a stout gangsters gangster looking man in a suit and a bespectacled scientist in a white lab coat. And the gangster guy is holding a microphone up to his mouth while the scientist is fiddling with knobs. Back at the casino, the zombie bends the bars outside the window to Hennessy's office. He just you know, grabs him with his hands, bends him back,
and then smashes through the glass. He actually basically he just like flathand outward pushes through the window.
There are numerous stunts where like a sort of roundish man goes through a plate of glass glass window in this movie. And I was looking at some of the stunt players and one of the guys did this I think, pretty much the same stunt in The Wizard of Oz as the Cowardly Lion. So I guess it was just like printed on this guy's business, like you need a like a slightly rotund actor to go through a window.
I'm your guy, and I'll do it just by pushing the glass out.
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's trick glass, but still specialized skill.
I don't know. I don't know if I can tell trick class just by looking at it. I will assume this was a safe set. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so the guy comes through the window. He goes up to Hennessy. He says in a in a mechanical voice, I told you i'd come back. And here we're getting into one of the bits of dialogue that Rocky Ericson just recites in the song. And the zombie says, remember Buchanan, and Hennessy says, but you're not Buchanan. The zombie says, I
may not look like him, but I am him. Don't you recognize the voice, Jim, I promised to see you die and I will. Then Hennessy he whips out a pistol tries to shoot the zombie, but of course it does no good. The zombie grabs Hennessy lifts him up over his head and then we see only a shadow of the two figures cast upon the wall, and in the shadow, the zombie just folds Tennessy like a wallet. He just snaps him in half backwards like a kitcat bar crunch. It is brutal.
Yeah, I love this. This is a great use of shadow and implying the physical violence. There's another example of this later on in the film, but this is the best example of it. It just lifts him up in a gorilla press and does this backbreaker death move. And as this was occurring, as he was like setting this up, especially where you see an actual zombie grab a good dude, grapple him and lift him up, I was like, I
bet this guy's a wrestler. Sure enough. This role is played by former pro wrestler Carl Killer Davis aka Crippler Carl, who lived nineteen oh eight through nineteen seventy seven. I was not familiar with this guy, but apparently it was
a big heel in the thirties and forties. He got his first acting break playing one of the I think ten strongmen who opposes Mighty Joe Young in nineteen forty nine's Mighty Joe Young, alongside fellow wrestler turned actor Tor Johnson, as well as some other big guys like Italian boxer wrestler of the Day Primo Canara and anyway. This led to a whole career of heavy roles for Davis. And here he is our zombie.
He's got a great look for film too, though he's got very kind of square head and sharp features. He's good.
Yeah. Unlike Tor, I think he mostly played like heavies and like you know, enforcers and so forth, as opposed to outright monsters.
Wait, this wasn't one of the communist saboteur wrestlers in the Mighty Tobar, was it.
No, that was a different guy. But that was another one where you could tell, like the way he was I think it was the bumping in that one, Like the way he was falling down. You know, he could tell, Okay, this guy's a wrestler. He's got to be and you know, sure, enough once you know the signs, it's pretty clear.
All right. Well so anyway, after the zombie just breaks Tennessee in half like a cracker, Hennessy's goons run in the start shooting at the zombie, but he seems unbothered by bullets. I think there are some squibs in this scene that look pretty good.
Mm hmm. Yeah, there are a number of effects in the film where people are like shooting through zombies, and yeah, it looks believable. A lot of films would just have the maybe you're having the gun actually fire blanks, and the rest is just implied.
It's just a mid shot you don't like see it. But this was like you see like these squibs exploding out the back of the zombies suit jacket. Yeah, but anyway, zombie goes out the window, he gets in the car and drives away. Meanwhile, we see back in the laboratory where the two guys are watching Zombie ITV. The guy holding the microphone starts saying, come back home, come back home. So it's clear what's starting to become clear what's going on.
This is like a remote controlled zombie or somnambulist or something here and then there's a kind of funny moment where the other guy grabs the microphone, like the scientist takes it from the gangster guy, and he starts saying in a German accent, get in the automobile, Get in the automobile, the automobile, get inside. So eventually the zombie obeys, and then the gangster guy this is Buchanan, and we already know that because he was the one talking through
the zombie. Remember Buchanan, I am him, and the scientists this is doctor Steig. They chatter about how the zombies work. Buchanan is afraid that the zombie won't make it back because of his gunshot wounds, but Steig says that as long as he still has an ounce of fluid in his body, he'll keep moving. And when these creatures are damaged or run low on power, they automatically return to the home base.
Like a room.
Oh yeah, like that. But there's also you can see emerging some conflict between Buchanan and Stig zombie mission control. Buchanan is pleased. He's like, all right, that was the first of them, first of the people on my murder list, But there are more we have to send our zombies after and then Steig kind of breaks into a lament.
He's like, oh, you know, I invented these remote control zombies hoping that they could be used to help humanity because they could do tasks that were dangerous for living workers. But now that I'm working with Buchanan, he's like, all you want to do is see people die. But Buchanan protests, He's like, look, I don't just want to see people die. I want to see particular people die and I'll get
them all. After this, Buchanan and Steig go into the first of many in the movie almost ritualistic scenes of dressing in these lead lined suits with respirator hoses and crawling through a plastic lined tunnel into the operating room, which I think we assume must be flooded with radiation. This is kind of the storage room for more zombies like our spine cruncher friend, and these are the titular
creatures with the atom brains. Now, while in the radioactive room, they have to decommission a couple of Adam brain dudes who have deteriorated beyond use. Because Stig explains, different parts of the body die at different times and buchanans like, does the brain still die first? And Steig says, always, the brain always dies first.
They didn't have an acid vat for this though. This would have been a great time to have an acid vat.
Oh yeah, you know you think that the they say it so portentously, you almost think that the brain always dies first is going to become a plot point. But I don't think it does.
That's I think that this is something we can chalk up to, but not only the script of the performances here, but there are a lot of lines like this that that work far far better than they they probably that they could have or certainly should have. You know, it's like it this is not an important detail, but you know it still kind of zings and sticks with you. And I don't think this is Granger speaking this line. I think this is this is the doctor.
Yeah yeah, But all right, that's sort of the setup for the film. You start to see, like what the supernatural or science fiction premises, what comes next in this kind of movie. Police arrive on the scene, of course, investigators, and one of them is our hero, who seems to be I'm going to say that the hero character is the product of a compromise in the writer's room. They went something like this, It's let's see, should our leading man be a cop or a scientist? What if he
was both? So our hero, Chet Walker is some kind of science cop. He is a cop, but he heads up a forensic laboratory full of microscopes and glass slides and Geiger counters, and he seems to be, I don't know, like a mister wizard detective. He's like where the police come to console his genius in order to solve murder cases. But they also don't just refer evidence to him. He's like always first on the scene investigating the crime.
Yeah, this is kind of like the nineteen fifties version of CSI. I guess you know where you have the forensic expert. He's also just very, very and perhaps unrealistically front and center of any investigation.
All right, So chet and colleagues are on sen at the casino where Hennessy got crunched like a ritz cracker, and they discover several interesting things. They say, whoever broke in was able to bend back the iron bars outside the window with his bare hands. They noticed the perpetrator did not bother to steal the money from the safe. They say he was shot, leaving behind a trail of blood and yet was still able to escape, and then finally they discovered that his blood, his fingerprints, and his
footprints all glow in the dark. Also in this scene there is the beginning of a theme where Chet is followed around by a gang of I don't know, like five to seven excitable and fairly credulous reporters who are all slobbering for a story. And so the reporters are like, how did he ben those bars? And Chet says maybe he ate all his vitamins, and the reporters like vitamins like he thinks, so maybe this is a real scoop. I don't know about vitamins vitamins behind iron bar killing,
I think. In the scene we also meet Chet's friend Dave, who is some other kind of cop. Is he supposed to be like FBI or something or police captain? He seems in some way separate from whatever Chet is.
Yeah, yeah, I can never completely nail it down. I will throw in that. Dave is played by s John Lonner, who lived nineteen through two thousand and six, mostly small roles, but appears in Hitchcock's Marnie from sixty four, Mommy dearis from eighty one and was also in both The Werewolf in fifty six, and I was a teenage Werewolf from fifty seven.
So back at the lab, Chet analyzes the luminous residue and the blood left behind at the crime scene. He discovers that the blood is not blood at all, it's some kind of artificial concoction containing microscopic crystals. And then the question is why does it all glow? Well, Chet starts holding a Geiger counter up to it and it starts it's going nuts. And doctor Walker's like, this so called blood is radioactive, Dave says dangerously, So Chet responds, plus nine.
Yeah, didn't throw in like you wouldn't want to be around this stuff for long because that's back on the desk and kids conversation.
They just put it on the desk. You keep talking. Yeah, So, while leaving the lab, Chet is again intercepted by the reporters.
They demand a story, and Chet tells them that Hennessy was killed by quote, a creature with adam rays of superhuman strength and a creature that cannot be killed by bullets, and the reporters are angered by this because they think he is pulling their leg, and one of the reporters threatens to misspell chet Walker's name, which this sent me down a rabbit hole of what would be the best way to misspell chet Walker. I'm gonna say, like Cheb Wonker. M M.
Yeah. It's a delicate balance because you don't want to put anything in the paper that I'll get you in trouble. He's got to get it, get it, you know, the right level of insulting without being profane. But anyway, I like this one little back and forth here because it's like, yeah, I'll just tell you straight up what's going on with the zombie and dare you to print it? Dare you to take me seriously?
So the next morning, Dave comes to Chet's house and he's greeted by Chet's wife, Joyce. This is when we first meet Chet's family. We find out he's not just any science cop. This is a science cop of the family. So he's had a wife named Joyce and a daughter named Penny. Penny has a cherished doll named Henrietta, and this leads to a weird exchange where Dave, who I think is like trying to feed either Penny or the Dolls serial. But Dave is like, you know, I used
to go with a girl named Henrietta. And Penny says what happened to her? And Dave says, what happened to her shouldn't happen to your doll? She married a con man. Hey strange, But anyway, this is not a social call. Dave is here to discuss work. He has some alarming news. They got back a match on the fingerprints found at the crime scene. They belonged to a convicted criminal who died in jail twenty four days ago. From here we go to let's see, it's been a few minutes since
we had a murder in this movie. We've got to have another Adam Brain murder. So now we cut to district Attorney McGraw, who we met at the first crime scene earlier. I think he had a line that was something like, look, just a district attorney, not a chemist. McGraw is getting in his car in his garage when he is startled by a strange man in a mechanics jumpsuit. It looks kind of like Michael Myers without a mask, and the man says I'm from Buchanan. If you know that,
you know why I'm here. It's no use, McGraw. And then he reaches into McGrath's car and yanks the steering wheel out of its housing, and he says, I said I would see you die. I am watching you now. I think there's like an implied therefore, like he's saying I said I would see you die, I can see you now. Therefore you're going to die.
Well, Buchanan knows he only has so much time to gloat. He's got to get to it with this remote death via reanimated corpse.
Right, So this Adam brain lifts McGraw up by the neck and then crunches him somehow does another crunchy thing. So Chet and Dave arrive at the murder scene in the garage, and there is a doctor on site who's like, yes, of course, I already gave his wife a sedative. It is nineteen fifty five. I know what I'm supposed to do. But he also concludes that McGraw was killed by having
his bones crushed by a single hand. I can deduce that by looking at him somehow, And this leads Chet and Dave to conclude that it was the same murderer as Hennessy. But that doesn't make sense, they say, because Hennessy he was some kind of gangland boss and McGraw was a district attorney, so that was like cop and criminal. They're on opposite sides. How would they share a common enemy. Well,
there are more clues. McGraw's car is radioactive now and the fingerprints of the murderer match a man who died a few weeks ago, so another dead man's fingerprints around the scene. And the reporters show back up again there, you know. They go up to Chet and they're like, hey, were you actually serious about these murders being done by a thing with a brain charged by Adam Rays? And Chet's like, yes, I was serious. And then the reporters say,
hot dog, you know we had a scoop. We didn't even know it, And then they all run off together. I'm like, is that a scoop if all nine of you got it at the same time? Yeah?
Are they all working for the same papers? This is the budget for this newspaper? Is a ditting question.
They also they don't like stop to get a quote or ask any follow up questions. They just he just confirms it was Adam Brain's and they're like, okay, we got a story, and they run off.
Confirmed.
Yeah, okay. After this, we go to one of my favorite characters in the movie. Who is uh is his name Dick Cutting?
Dick Cutting?
Yes, yeah, okay, So we go to Dick Cutting is a man who looks like he should be playing like a commander in the Galactic Empire in Star Wars. He has that kind of he should be Admiral Cutting.
Played by Richard H. Cutting, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy two.
Wait, that's his real name.
Apparently. Yeah. He was also an attack of the crab monsters in South Pacific.
Oh, I didn't recognize him from crab Monsters. We'll see which one was he is he the scientist in it? I'll have to come back and doctor James Carson. Okay, okay. So he's got a news monologue which is just tremendous. His scenes are some of my favorite stuff in the film. So he says hello, ladies and gentlemen. He's sitting at like a very nice looking desk, and then behind him there's a shelf full of what looked like very old books. You know they're like, I don't know first editions or something.
He says, Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Dick cutting with today's commentary on the news. As you know, today's story hinges around the killing of District Attorney McGraw, whose body was found today in his garage, murdered in much the same manner as Hennessy was. What connection can the murder have to Hennessy, who was obviously a gangland boss is unknown at present. Chet Walker of the police Laboratory has given out a fantastic story so incredible that one
can lend it little credence. Doctor Walker is of the opinion that these crimes are being perpetrated by dead men. Yes, I said, dead men restored to life in some unknown manner by being charged with atom Ray's which gives them superhuman strength and makes them impervious to bullets. Well, if you want to believe that story, you can, And then cut to Buchanan switching off the TV angrily.
There'll be more from Dick cutting here in a bed. It gets even better.
Today's commentary on the.
News, filmed in what just looks like a lawyer's office as opposed to a TV studio or.
Something, except there are curtains on the wall in the background.
Ah.
Yes, yeah, So Buchanan is mad that I guess they've figured out the whole scheme. And now, even though dick cutting does not lend it any credence, he's mad just to hear it being spoken, the lips of dick Cutting, even if to be dismissed. Yes, so Buchanan says, this doctor Walker has quite the imagination, and then Steig says, the kind of imagination that could prove dangerous to us. And then Buchanan says, you mean the kind of imagination
that could prove dangerous to him? Ooh, Buchanan is ruthless. Now next we get another what I thought was a highlight of the film, which is the meeting at City Hall scene. This is like twenty two twenty three minutes in Walker meets with the mayor and a bunch of big wigs, including a General Saunders, and oh my god, this guy's line deliveries. I don't know if you found them as hilarious as I did, but they're just perfect.
He's I don't know if I can do an impression, but you know they're they're introducing everybody, and he's like, I'm from the military called just concerned me. So Chat explains the creature with the Adam brain theory of the case by talking about Faraday's experiments with a frog's leg, you know, animating it with electricities, Like what if we could do the same thing but with a human with atomic rays and that, you know, basically like Colonel Sanders
is oh wait, no, is that his name? Colonel No? Sorry, General Saunders. The genuine mistake here, okay, General Saunders, who says, oh ye sorry. Chat requests trucks and planes that can detect radiation so that they can find the headquarters of the atom brain monsters, and General Saunders is like, I'll go through your.
Plans, oh man, So now the investigation into the atom creatures, the atom brain creatures is about to have military support.
This is I think we've talked about this before, but this is a way that a lot of stories from this era are structured that makes them I think not nearly as thrilling or high tension as they could be just in the plot wise, because it basically has the heroes aligned with like powerful forces and many you know, lots of backup, like the police, and the military are aligned with the heroes, helping search out the isolated, besieged bad guys.
Yeah, all all of the lawful good agencies are going to align and will overcome the I guess lawful evil or maybe chaotoic evil forces of the villain. Like, there's not really, there's no conflict among them, there's no question of confidence. It's just a matter of time.
Really, all right. So somewhere in here there is a plot where Buchanan and Steige send a road assassin after Chet Walker. They figured out that he's onto them, and they get this guy in a car like trying to chase him down and run him off the road, but instead they just follow him to a military airfield where they're like, oh, actually we need to do surveillance. This
guy's got something big cooking. But next there is a scene at Chet and Joyce's house, and I thought the sequence of this whole scene, the arc here is hilarious. So first Chet comes home, Chet and Joyce are all over each other, of course, then they announced it's time for dinner. Then Joyce sees a newspaper that has a banner headline do dead men walk city streets? Authorities tracking down all clues. Also some other headlines. I see building code under fire.
Oh man, I feel that that was going to be the lead. But then this dead man walking the street thing popped up exactly.
So Joyce gets the paper. She says, it's not true, is it? I assume she's not talking about the building code. She means like, is it true about the dead men? And Chet says, better hide it from Penny. Say, could use a really nice cold martini, So Joyce makes him one. And then as she is making him a nice cold martini, she's like, well, pennies out playing in the street where the atomic brains are? Is that safe? And doctor Chet says,
there seems to be some sort of definite pattern. Can't put my finger on it, but I do know that Hennessy and mcgral were killed for a reason. And then Joyce is like, well, it's all right. Then he didn't really answer the question, and Chet says, well, for a while, I don't think they've gotten around to indiscriminate killings yet.
That's not even part of the plan. Has been described by Buchanan. They are very specific killings. These they're not random killings either, a specific vengeance killings.
But so Chet seems to be like, yes, it is okay for Penny to play in the street with the Adam Brains. And then Penny comes inside. She asked for the newspaper because she wants to read the funnies, and they lie and tell her it didn't come today. Then she wants to turn on the TV, and they lie and tell her the TV is broken. You know, it must be new tubes or something. Then Chet gets his martini and he's like, ooh, I've been thinking about this
all day. And then Dave arrives. Captain Dave here arrives to explain more Adam Brain news, and then they send Penny to her room so she can't hear the conversation and they have a whole big argument about it. Penny's like, you know, oh, I you know, I promise not to bother them. They're like, no, you must go. I think they tell her to go to her room and like
punish Henrietta the doll or something. So there is this persistent theme about them systematically hiding knowledge of danger from Penny while actually not protecting her from the danger itself.
Yeah, and of course I think you could make a lot out of that too as a commentary on people growing up in the nineteen fifties and even some subsequent decades. You know, not so much as it concerns the threat of adam brained walking corpses, but various other issues in life. You know, this sense of being overly protective in one way, but not preparing a child at all for the realities of well, in this case, the walking dead.
Right, So Dave has some information. He explains the backstory that he pieced together that could make sense of all this. There was this guy Buchanan, the old crime boss in town, who many years ago was tried and convicted of crime and then sent into exile in Italy. What was this like a common punishment in the nineteen forties. So you're convicted of being a mafia boss and instead of going to prison, you're sent to Italy.
Yeah. I had the same head scratching situation with this detail, and I was looking it up and I can't find anything that would support this as an actual reality. I think you can get instant just some murky stuff about US states being able to exile people from a given state. But I didn't come across anything regarding like judicial exile, like unless Buchanan was an Italian national. I guess maybe that would make sense, but there's nothing to indicate that
he is or was. This is his name is Buchanan. Yeah, that's a Scottish name. Yeah, So I don't know. I mean, maybe there's something lost and re writes to the script like it's one thing if he was living in exile because he fled the law, like that would seem to match up. But this idea of being exiled even in like the nineteen forties, to another country because you were a criminal, career criminal, I just don't know if that makes any sense at all.
Well, anyway, apparently when he was convicted, he stood up in court and swore revenge on Da McGraw and everybody else who had testified against him at trial, which included Hennessy, who was his number two, but also included three other guys, and we'll meet them in a minute. We also will eventually learn, via these repeated cabe that they received from police in Rome that while Buchanan was there, he made friends with a German scientist named Stig who did weird
experiments on dogs, cats, and monkeys involving atomic radiation. So it's all coming together now for the police investigators. But they think, Okay, these other three guys who testified against Buchanan, they are in danger, so we got to round them up. And then at the very end of the scene, there's a strange thing where Joyce offers Chet a second Martini to take in the car with him. He turns it down, so she chugs it and then has a coughing fit. So it's like she can't hang stretch.
Like, even if it doesn't make sense, it's like the script is economic. They're fitting a lot of stuff. Then there's no ways in space. Even if we don't really understand what the point.
Is, right, but we know what's going to happen next, Right, Buchanan's going to be sending Adam brainiacs to kill the three more guys, the others who testified against him. The police offer to let those guys stay in jail for their own protection, but they turn it down. They're like, no, I'm going to be at home. Now.
We're about I think at the thirty four minute mark here and there's we're gonna check back in with Dick cutting for just an absolutely perfect newscast that brings to mind the newscaster from the Simpsons. There's this great sort of issuing of an apology concerning the Adam Brain creatures. I, for one, welcome our new Adam Brain overlords, according Dick Cutting, so he says.
And with the murder of Jason, Oh so, one of the guys, one of the three guys gets murdered, Dick Cutting says, And with the murder of Jason Franschat last night, I must apologize for my recent skepticism regarding these atomic creatures. It seems they do exist, and they are prowling the street. I love it, but I think there's a subtext also, which is like, but please do allow your children to continue to play in the street. We don't want them
to know there could be any danger. And now a message from our sponsor, you know, healthy lung cigarettes.
I do feel like this movie was sponsored by pipe smoke. There there's a lot of like Chat is always smoking a pipe. There scenes where two characters having conversations smoking pipes at the same time. I haven't seen this much pipe smoke since Lord of the Rings.
We're going to get to a pipe scene in a minute. So, but first, there are those planes and trucks that the Chet requested earlier. They've got radium finders equipped and they're scanning the city to find Adam brain HQ. And there's a scene where Stig is out on the town. I think he's out getting medicine to treat his radiation poisoning, and he ducks into a bar to hide from the military because they're like doing a house to house with their bayonets out. I guess looking for I don't know
any scientists. I don't know exactly what they're running around with. I guess they've got Geiger counters. Maybe they're scanning people to see, like, are you radioactive? So he runs into a bar to hide, orders a beer and then runs out through the back door, leaves radiation on his beer and they find that there. But they're like, oh, okay,
so we're looking for this German accent guy. Then there is a research segment of the film, rob I think you recently alluded to there's a like in each campaign of Arkham Horror, there's like a research segment.
Yeah, yep, this is our research segment for sure.
Chet goes to consult a neurologist friend of his about Steig and his research. He learns all about Adam brain experiments. Actually not Adam brain experiments. He learns about so I think the thing is he learns that there have been experiments that you can use electrodes to remotely control the behavior of other creatures, like dogs. So they watch a film strip with an electric dog. That is the cutest thing I've ever seen.
Yes, you'll never see fictional footage of dog mad science experiments. That is so horrible because yeah, there's the the implication on some level is that this is cruel and monstrous, but you don't get that from the footage because it's clearly like somebody's beloved pet dog with a couple of wires attached to its collar or something, or maybe just kind of like tucked into its fur, and then it's just doing dog stuff. They're like, look it barks on command, Look it sets down, and so forth.
How can you imagine a dog doing something on command? But no, they're doing it by controlling its brain. But also it's funny because the dog is like, they're like, you hear, by flipping this electrode, you can make it vicious and then it goes er.
But it's the cutest dog, So it is.
It's cute viciousness. Yeah.
Yeah, this is like I don't know what kind of dog, like a bingee dog, you know, that level of dog.
So that's the like electric control. But then I think they make the bridge to the Adam brain thing by saying, oh, but could you control a dead person with this kind of method? And the guy's like no, because you didn't have the energy to power the body if they were no longer alive. But then Chad is like, what if you used atom rays? And then the guy's like, oh no, I hadn't thought of that.
Yeah, He's like, we're not there yet, but kind of implying like it's a good idea though, like this is a good way to use corpses, but we're just not there yet.
But this whole scene, they're just digging into some pipes.
Yeah, yeah, just so much pipe smoking. They both have one going.
It's like, try some of my tobacco blend.
Yeah.
Now, from here, there is a subplot where Buchanan and Styg resort to terrorism. They're trying to get the army to stop scanning with their radium finders, so they have one of the Adam brains call in from a payphone to the Army. I guess to call somebody and say, like, stop your investigation or there will be disasters. And of course the authorities don't negotiate with Adam Brain, so they don't stop. And then we are treated to stock footage
of like trains derailing and mountains exploding and stuff. We see a headline in the newspaper that says, plane bus and rail crashes stir public.
Really in this calculation on the cannon's part, because he always doing is antagonizing the military at this point, if he really wanted the heat to die down, they should have just stopped doing Adam Brains.
For a little bit. Yeah.
Also, doesn't he have just like three more murders left to complete his agenda here?
I think he did one of the three, so he's got two more.
Two murders left, and you're gonna go ahead and rile up the military. I don't know.
Yeah, it seems like he should keep his eye on the ball, like they're really getting sidetracked. I feel like it would be harder to accomplish plane bus and rail crashes than to just finish his business. Yeah, but oh no. Then we get to a scene where Dave Chet's friend gets Adam brained. He gets attacked by I think the one of the three guys who was on the murder list, the accountant, the former accountant of Buchanan. He gets killed in his house by an Adam brain. He gets turned
into an Adam brain. He kills Dave in Dave's car, and then Dave gets Adam brained.
And we get to see the is this the Adam brain itself? Could I couldn't make out all the detail when I was viewing it. It's just some sort of implied some sort of like thing with wires on it. It's going to go into the open cranium because I don't know. Do we mention that all the Adam brains have like what appears to be stitching across their forehead.
Yeah, that their head has been opened up like a like a pez dispenser and something is inserted in it. The thing is some kind of electrode brain plates. I think they install the plate in the brain to send electrodes down into the brain tissue to control the body remotely, and then they power it with the Adam rays. So they Adam brain Dave and then they get Dave talking. They're like testing him out. They find that he can use his own vocal cords so he won't sound like
Buchanan when he talks. He'll sound like Dave. But they're like get you. They're like, you know, Captain Harris, say your name, and he goes, my name is David Harris, Homicide Squad. And then they tuck a knife in his pants and they send him on his way. I think they're sending him to try to go kill Chet Walker, the main guy.
Yeah, and since he can talk like Dave, he's more of an infiltration unit at this point.
So there is a scene that I think is supposed to be very tense but actually was mostly funny where Dave goes to Chet's house. Chet's not home, but Joyce and Penny are there. He comes to the door and Penny's like, who is it, and he goes, my name is David Harris, Captain Harris, Homicide Squad. And she lets him in and Joyce is like, oh, why so formal, Dave? You sound terrible? Are you coming down with a cold?
And he's playing with pennies Dolly while Penny goes into the kitchen to talk to her mom, and then Joyce just happens to let She's like, oh, Chet had a brainstorm this morning, Dave something about giving out phony information to Buchanan about where the men and protective custody are when actually they are at the county jail. So now not realizing that Dave is actually Adam brain Dave, and now Buchanan has that information, you know where he's going.
He's going to the county jail to get his revenge. But the end of the scene finally made sense sort of some of the lyrics from the Rocky Erickson song, which again I'd never seen the movie before, so I didn't know what this referred to. But there are some lyrics that say threw the doll right down, ripped its guts off, and threw it on the ground. And at the end of the scene, Penny comes back into the room, Dave is gone, but she finds her doll just smashed to pieces on the floor.
If you're not familiar with the lyrics of Rocky erics and songs, they often do have this kind of like stream of consciousness kind of quality to them, and they seem kind of cryptic and hard to decipher and don't always include proper grammar, but often uses improper grammar in ways that feel intentional and important to whatever he was trying to get across.
Right, Like the preposition ripped its guts off instead of out interesting and it doesn't have guts, it's a doll. Yeah. So Adam brain Dave goes to get his revenge. Buchanan sends him to the jail where he kills the other two witnesses. And then after that, Adam Brain Dave tries to kill Chet because Chet gets into a car with him and then they're like, crash the car, smash it to pieces, but Chet jumps out of the car in
time to save himself. Though I don't know if you jump out of a speeding car, that's you're gonna get hurt. That's not good for you.
Yeah, not in movies. Though in movies you can just jump out of them and you're fine.
It's the same principle as like if you jump up right before the crashing plane hits the ground, you'll be ok. But after this crash, the police recover Adam brain Dave. Adam Brain Dave is damaged, so he's no longer following orders from Buchanan. But so they like they check him out and they're like oh wow, look at all the electrodes in his brain. But he recovers some functionality while in the hospital does another window stunt, like he pushes the glass out of a window and then jumps out
the window to shamble back to Adam brain HQ. This leads the police in the military right to the bad guys, and then we have our final showdown. Buchanan gets mad at Steig for some reason. I don't remember why. Actually, Buchanan just kills Stig.
I think then Iig finally is like, I can't take it anymore. This is too much murder. I wasn't in it for the murder. I was just in it for the resurrection of the dead. And so he brains him with a with a some sort of eye guy Ranch or something before he can destroy the machine.
Yeah, so Buchanan then he gets all of his Adam brain's active at once. There's like ten of them, and he's like, go out attack the police kill them all. So there's a big fight where the police are all fighting with Adam brains on the lawn and then Chet has to go inside and smash up the machine. But before he can do that, Buchanan corners him and there's
like a there's a showdown there. But ultimately Buchanan is destroyed by his own wrath because one of the Adam brains comes in and grabs I think it's the Adam Brain Dave maybe comes in and grabs Buchanan and strangles him. He kills him.
Yeah, destroyed by his own Adam brains. A fitting ending there.
Yeah, And then they destroy the Adam ray machine and that powers down all of the Adam Brains on the lawn and good prevails over evil.
Pretty pretty solid ending, mostly by the books. I loved the battle on the lawn between the Adam Brains and the law and military. It was better than I expected it to be. And again you get the people, you know, firing bullets through the Adam brains and a lot of like crunching and so forth. But then we close things out though with the family unit at the dinner table with with with Chet and his family.
And that's enough of that. Yeah.
Yeah, And we get this super weird ending where the little girl what's her name, Henrietta.
No, Henrietta is the doll that got stripped off. The girl is Penny.
Penny, yes, sorry, Penny is asking about Uncle Dave. She's like, where's Uncle Dave? And they don't tell her that he's dead. They're like, oh, he's gone for a little while, which is crazy, right, because it's one thing to you know, obviously you want to keep it age appropriate. You don't have to tell her that a career criminal and a mad scientist murdered him and then stuffed his brain with electrodes and reanimated his corpse and made it do murders. But to just be like, oh, the Uncle Dave went
away for littlely, he's on a vacation. No, no, Uncle Dave is dead, Like, at least tell her he's dead.
He went up to an Adam farm upstate.
Yeah, it's so weird, and perhaps you know, telling of how you know, we approached the protection of our children in previous decades. I don't know.
All right, Well that's all I gotta say about creature with the Adam brain. Why is he acting so strange? It's because he is a creature with an Adam brain. The mystery is solved.
Ah, yeah, it's it's a it's a fun one. If you enjoy fifties B movies, this is a solid and entertaining good time. You know it's again it's not not top tier for genre and time period, but but pretty solid. It's never boring. Uh, there's a lot, a lot to
love here. As always, we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on the movie of the week, Creature with the Adam Brain, if you have thoughts on the music of Rocky ericson as it relates to this movie, or just in general, well yeah, right in we'd love to hear from you about that as well.
A reminder that we're primarily a science podcast here at Stuff to Blow your mind with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete list of the movies we've covered over the years here for Weird House Cinema, you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E or boxb dot com.
We have a profile there called weird House and we have a list of all the movies we've covered, and you can do all sorts of neat filters to see like what decades and you know what genres and so forth, and I also blog about these at sim mutamusic dot com. I'll definitely do a blog post for this movie because I want to make sure that I throw in somewhere where you can stream that Rocky ericson song and compare it to the film.
Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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