Weirdhouse Cinema: The Brainiac

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty two Mexican horror film The Brainiac, starring Abel Salazar Rosa, Maria Gallardo or Guyardo, and Rubin Rojo. And this is one that I saw many, many years ago. I think I watched this with a friend in high school. I remembered very little about it except the exquisitely bizarre design of the monster, and this was such a treat upon revisit.

Yeah, I had seen it previously, I think in a rift tracks form so on. I was not expecting expecting to have my thoughts provoked much at all, and yet that they were provoked, So I will agree with you

I think before there was as much of a market as there is today for weird, low budget horror film, this was one of the few. This was one of the ones that was on people's radar, along with maybe ed Wood and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, I mean there are various references to it. For example, some of you may be familiar with it because Frank Zappa references it in a song from nineteen seventy five called Debra Cadabra. This is the one where he says, make Negro brainiact fingers but with more hair, and he also there's also a line in that says from the puffed and flabulent Mexican rubber goods mask, which I believe must also be referencing the monster in this picture.

Now, if you at home are wondering what are Brainiact fingers, how are they different from regular fingers, you gotta stay tuned you'll find out.

Essentially, what we have here is a resurrected warlock revenge picture, a subgenre that I honestly love. We've covered various examples of this on the show before, but there are some neat sci fi type. There's a there's some creative use of dissolve effects, and again a monster that is deliciously creative in conception and an execution is you know, at times comical, as low budget monsters often are, but also at times pretty terrifying and always absolutely weird.

And this is also an example of inquisition'sploitation. Is the reshorter version of that word.

No no, I think I think that's it in quisploitation, maybe, but I don't. I don't feel like that conveys the full meeting.

Now, as far as resurrected warlock revenge films go, how does Brainiac square with your other favorites of the genre. I assume you the main one I would think you're referring to there is Horror Rises from the tomb Am.

I wrong, That's That's one of my favorites. So though, there was also Piranha Mandir uh Parana Mandir the the the Bollywood horror film from the Ramsey Brothers, a very similar plotline, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some other ones, probably some major examples outside of the Weird House episode list.

Now, there's a question that has really been interesting me since I rewatched Brainiac here, and that is how sympathetic is the baron we were talking? We just recently last week did an episode on Todd Browning's Dracula in which we discussed changes to the character of Dracula as he has been The story has been retold and reimagined through different adaptations and films over the years, and one of the big changes is that in the novel there's really

True? True to what extent are these charges by the Inquisition valid at all? Again? Are they all just trumped up charges against a man who did some good in the world, And there's some strong questions regarding whether he was a man to begin with. Perhaps we have indeed an alien visitor here who does some good in the world and is punished for it, or it just doesn't know how humans work and does a mix of both, not really understanding how one act falls on the side

Okay, so I was gonna say, elevator pitch. This is not really an elevator pitch, but it might be a good tagline for like a repackaging of the film, and that is the Spanish Inquisition could not have expected this.

Oh that's pretty good, pretty good. The only thing that came to my mind was Dracula. But make it weirder, not that it has much to do with Dracula other than the evil the baron. The Baron of Terror in this picture is dracula esque in some regards. You know, he's a suave dude who does weird eye hypnosis stuff, and you know, enjoys the ladies, enjoys not their blood but their brains. Loves them for their minds, but not in the good way.

I think there are some fairly strong similarities.

Yeah, yeah, but not in terms of like plot or anything outside of that.

I think one of the big differences is that clearly Crosses would not work on the Baron of Terror. Here. The brainiac would laugh at your at your crucifix.

That's right, all right, Let's hear just a little bit of the trailer audio.

The RADIANC, I.

Shall return to your world within three hundred years. When that comment completes its cycle, it is once again in these latitudes. Three hundred years later, the Count returns to Earth. In The Brainier, see horrible and insane killings. As the Count turns into a monster and seeks his revenge, see that Count feast from human brains. Don't miss the most horror film film of.

The scripture, The Radiac, The RADIANC, The RADIANC, The Rainier, B B B.

All right, now, if you want to watch The Brainiac as well, certainly you can follow follow Michael Weldon's advice and watch it on TV or look for the video cassette upgrading that for today. There's a really nice looking blu ray from Indicator. But again, the film has a long history of playing on cable on television. It's been available on DVD for quite a while. The Riff Tracks guys covered it at one point. I didn't give myself enough time to get my hands on a physical copy,

Yep. Yeah, if we watched the same version, I had the exact same search problems as you like. Search often wouldn't bring it up. I had to get it like in my library on one device before I could actually view it on another one. So yeah, same issue. And also, yes, the scene in Spanish in the middle of the movie, it's the scene where the characters are like reading newspaper articles about the brain murders.

Yeah. Luckily the context is pretty much implied. You don't need to speak Spanish or have a translation to know basically what's going on here.

So maybe they were just trying to cut costs on the dub, you know, the scenes that are just a recap of what you've already seen anyway.

Yeah, and or if you see enough of movies like this, you essentially know what's going on. All right. Let's get into the people behind this film. The director is Chano Iwerta, who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen seventy nine. Mexican film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor active behind the camera

I think I've gone looking for a couple of these in the past.

He also acted again, especially later in life. His credits on this front include two Sam Peckinpah films, The Wild Bunch from sixty nine and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia from seventy four. All Right, in terms of the script and the story, here we have Fredrico Kiel,

Yeah, Wolf Rovinski's was one of the bad guys, one of the Martians in Santo Versus the Martian Invasion.

Yeah, a luchador turned actor, but not a mass lucidor too handsome for.

That, so he played kind of like Kirk Douglas.

Yeah. So there's another Neutron film in sixty three, and career also wrote and directed several Santo and Blue Demon films, as well as some Nostra Damis films and vampire films. He's also acted and is in fact one of the detectives in this film. He was also a cartoonist. Oh, which of the detectives is he? Is he the comic relief one or the serious one? I am not sure.

Okay, all right.

The other adaptation story credit goes to Aldolfo Lopez Portillo dates unknown, credited on several films from the sixty seventies and eighties, mostly westerns, but also including sixties. There's The Living Head. And then, according to IMDb, Antonio Arelana nineteen twenty three through twenty eighteen, uncredited writer on this one. Mexican writer, actor and occasional director. He wrote on several Santo films, including sixty two Santo Versus The Vampire Women.

The Living Head keeps coming up. Maybe this is a sign that we need to go to that.

Next Yeah, yeah, the posters look cool.

I've also seen a lot of references to the Curse of the Crying Woman. Is the Urona movie? Yeah, I actually I just looked it up. The Malediction de la Youurona.

Yes, this is not a film I've seen, but I'm familiar with it just by reputation. It shows up in a lot of lists of films that I've considered checking out.

So this guy really kept reminding me of somebody. He's great in the film. He's got a lot of scenes where he actually just doesn't say anything, like other characters are talking at him and he is sitting there silently, either staring at them menacingly or just king and laughing and you know, scoffing at whatever they're throwing in his face. And so he does a lot of that. But also

Yeah, yeah, I can see some Garrett Graham there. I also kept thinking of the actor, contemporary actor Patrick Fischler, who's in like Mulholland Drive and a ton of other things. I can see that too, but with more swaggering charisma.

Yeah, but also disdain, just judgment, looking at people who he who are who are lesser than him.

Yeah, all right, so we'll talk more about this performance. On the good guy side of things. We have again Rubin Rojo playing a role. Again. This is a this is there's a revenge element to this, but it's a revenge across time, which we sometimes see with undead Warlock pictures. So in the past he plays Ronaldo Miranda and in the present he plays Marcos Miranda or any other way around.

Okay, Marcos is the one in the seventeenth century, the modern one. They say Rinaldo online. I don't remember if they ever say that in the movie. In the movie they call him Ronnie.

Okay, dub at least that's the thing about the dove they do. They do streamline some things.

Yeah, in the dub he's Ronnie and Victoria Contreras is Vicky.

Okay. Well. Rojo lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety three Mexican actor, perhaps best known for his award winning supporting role in nineteen forty eight Soldad. He also played Matthew in the nineteen sixty one American Bible epic King of Kings, which I think mostly it had a large American cast, but also made use of multiple Mexican actors as well. Rip Torn plays Judas in That By the Way.

I feel like we haven't seen the last of him. No offense to to Ruben, but he's not really the highlight of this film. He is there to just be the good guy. He doesn't have a whole lot to do often.

Yeah, and the kind of ghosts for most of the rest of the cast. Really, I mean everyone is this kind of fulfilling a basic role and you know, doing a good job within those roles. But yeah, this is about our villain and our monster.

It's Brainiac's world. We're just in it, that's right.

Okay. We have Vicky as you referenced earlier, or Victoria Contrena's contreras. This is our leading lady. This is one of the situations where I found some confusing casting information between the databases, but I believe I have it correct here. Played by Rosa Marie Gallardo. Her other films include sixty one's Mark of the dead Man, sixty five's Creature of the Walking Dead, sixty fives she Wolves of the Ring. That's a luchadora movie. In nineteen seventies.

Ruby Okay, so she is usually going to be in the same scenes as Ruben Rojo. Again, they're mostly they're the good characters, but they're mostly just reactive. They're like young people who are studying astronomy and they're just sucked into the world of the Baron of Terror, and they kind of hang around in that world until finally he tries to suck their brains out, and fortunately they're saved at the last minute.

That's right now. One of the victims is noteworthy, at least one of the victims credited just as bar Girl. She is the you'll know when we come to this scene. She is a lady hanging out at the bar that the baron ends up killing and brain gobbling. Played by Erodny Welter. She lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety eight. Mexican actress with a ton of Golden age credits. She was in the Lewis Bunnell film The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz from fifty five, but she pops

She has a good scene in fact, one of the ones I was just talking about in a minute ago, where people talk at the baron and he doesn't say anything back to them. She's drunk at a bar and is I guess, falling in love with him while he just stands there staring at some place like behind her head, over her shoulder, and then suddenly he brainiacts out, and we'll describe what happens.

Later, but yeah, she gets a great scream in, that's for sure.

Yeah, there's a brainiac process. He goes into processing mode.

All right. The lead detective, the Commandant, is played by David Silva, who lived nineteen seventeen through nineteen seventy six. Pretty standard performance here, but he was an opera singer and actor with some great connections, connections to some shining gems of Mexican weird cinema. He pops up in The Batwoman from sixty eight, which we previously referenced.

Really fun flick starring one of the Martians from zetto in Yes, the Martian Invasion. Yeah, yeah, it's little Lichadora film with fish people in it. But Silva also appears in both Alejandro Jodowski's Al Topo from seventy and Holy Mountain from seventy three. I don't recall him in that, but that would make sense. He feels like he's from a different world than most of the cast. This is the serious one, right, not the comic relief cop. The comic relief cop is Benny.

Yeah, this is the serious one. I'm pretty sure. He's also in a pair of weird films from Juan Lopez Montezuma, The Mention of Madness from seventy one and Alokarda from seventy seven. They are both those both star Claudio Brook. I have not seen Alacarta yet. It's supposed to be pretty terrific. I've seen The Mansion of Madness and it is super weird as well. I would say almost Holy mountain Es, well, not Holy mountain esk its. Holy Mountain is kind of on its own level, but let's say

That's a recipe for fun.

Yeah, all right, now, just a few other characters. There's another double role here, someone who is an inquisitor in the past and is a victim in the present. This is the one that gets to make some really crazy eyes. Played by Germain Roeblis Live nineteen twenty nine through twenty fifteen, Mexican actor in horror movie legend in his own right, the Vampiro movies that I mentioned, well, he plays Count

This is the guy who plays in his modern of course, he's one of the inquisitors, as you said, but in his modern form he is the professor. He's a professor of history, and he gets to invite the baron over to his house to meet his beautiful daughter and then talk about the history of the Inquisition. What do you know, it's just his area of specialty.

It's not going to go well. And one, I'll say a couple of others here. This film was not directed by Renee Cardona, but just because he didn't direct it doesn't mean he can't show up anyway. He also plays one of the inquisitors, slashed like doomed aristocrats that is ultimately killed by the baron.

He's like the head inquisitor. And then in the modern day he's the guy who's an industrialist coming up with new metal alloys.

Yes, let me show you my alloys in the basement.

Yeah, you want to see my alloys?

Bro. And then there's there's one more one of the let's say. Senora Mensis is played by Ophilia Gomin. She lived nineteen twenty one through two thousand and five, Spanish actress whose other films include sixty two Is the Exterminating Angel and The Man in the Monster. Now. I mentioned Kay Gordon Murray earlier, who lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy nine, producer and distributor of the English dub

Oh interesting, I was gonna say, it's very similar. The so we get some narra in the prologue of the film, and I'll talk about this in a bit, but it felt familiar. It felt like the narrator from Santa Claus.

Yes, yes, like it would be. The voice should be saying, Lupita, do not sentence the baron to death.

Yeah, exactly.

And then finally, the composer on this picture is Gustavo Caesar Carrion, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety six. Mexican film composer who worked on a number of horror films, including several of the titles we already mentioned, The Witch

Yeah, And I can see how that's also a change from the kind of core of that band's musical musical movie kind of crossover space, which I would say is something like The Witchfinder General.

Yeah. Yeah. Having said, I am curious to check out some of his scores for these other films of note, like Curse of the Crying Woman. I wonder if if those have any of these electronic elements, or if this is just a case where's he's scoring this film and it's like, oh, a comet shows up astronomy factors into the picture, so we need to add some sci fi noises. I wonder if those are present in these other pictures

You know, a really great ending of this film would have been if instead of death for the baron, he just became Santa Claus. Did you see that transition? It would make sense Santa Brainiac. Yeah, I think it would work. Someone should do it. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. I mean Brainiac would know.

Yeah, you need to leave a bowl of brains out for him in a little spin.

All right, you ready to talk about the plot.

Let's get into it.

So the credits play over some very nice Goyademonia illustrations. We've got some kind of winged imp with a lion head sprouting out of his crotch, who appears to be swooping around in the air or terrorizing the peasantry. There's also imagery of the tortures of the damned. We get penitents writhing in agony and these naked wretches fusing into trees. So I think there's a bit of Dante stuff going on here. Also, there's a really good one under at

Yeah, It's like c Span for the Inquisition.

Here, and it will go on and on. There is a Macaw absurdity to the sheer volume of text we get in these verdicts and proclamations. In the opening scene here, there are even moments where it feels like the voiceover artist is like reading fast to try to get through it all. And originally I was torn on whether to like actually read everything from the scene, because I did transcribe it or just summarize. I think I'm just going to summarize, starting at one point because it's too much

Yes, yes, very judgmental.

So this part I will read. The prosecutor comes in and he reads from a scroll and it says the following report on the sentence and the trial by torment, that this Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition instituted against said Baron Vitelius for heresy and the instigation of heresy for practicing dogmatism. And I was like, huh, and that what

Yeah, does that mean magnetism with dogs?

Yeah? No, no, so there's kind of a pause. He's like, for practicing dogmatism, and then he goes on for having used witchcraft, superstitions and conjurations for depraved and dishonest ends, for having employed the art of necromancy, invoking the dead and trying to foretell the future through the use of corpses, which I think that's the same thing as necromancy. And then there's a long pause and he says for having seduced married women and maidens. And here we cut to

And to be clear, like, there's no reason this guy would We're given no reason to believe he would be lying here, Like he seems like a you know, a complete babyface. He's like, yeah, he's I knew him back in Europe, and he's yeah, he's he's a good guy. He seems like he's, uh, he's really tried to help people.

Yeah. But then so immediately from the end of the testimony, without a moment's pause, the head inquisitor says, Marcos Miranda, the force that you have tried to perpetrate has earned you the punishment of two hundred lashes. What Yeah, which she'll be applied immediately in the torture chamber.

Wow. Yeah. And so then he's just taken off to be whipped, and the trial two hundred lashes.

I think, I think that is a death sentence. And before he's led away, Miranda and Vitellius make brief eye contact, but they never talk to each other, so we don't know anything about their relationship. So the inquisitors very briefly compare notes and then render a guilty verdict. But didn't they already I thought that was part of the proclamation. It was already like he's guilty. But they do it again, and they sentence him quote to be dressed in the

It's pretty cool. I mean, we're overthinking it. We might wonder why he hasn't used these powers to escape already, but yeah, you know he's using it to dramatic effect here at any rate.

Well, yeah, it does kind of suggest that if he were so inclined, he would be able to magically escape his punishment altogether, but he chooses not to. It's implying that the baron is willingly facing this unjust sentence. He's willingly going out to be burned at the stake. And when I realized that, I started noticing a number of parallels here. This might sound crazy, but are the filmmakers trying to tap into some kind of parallel between Baron

Yeah, that may be separate from this, but yeah, I think these are strong points. I mean, this wouldn't be the only example we can look to where a Spanish filmmaker has incorporated some elements of Catholicism, be they thematic or visual, into some sort of a horror picture.

So at this point in the story, what are you thinking, Rob, Are you thinking that the baron is actually he's what his friend said here, that he's actually somebody who is a nice guy who's trying to help the downtrodden and is mostly just doing things to help people and is being unjustly accused by the Inquisition or is he actually a wicked warlock and sorcerer who is manipulating people and

Yeah, they don't give us anything to build upon this idea that he may have any decency to him, you know, which is kind of a missed opportunity. Or I don't know, maybe they weren't permitted to go there, But that would have been rather interesting if we hit later on, when we see his return in the nineteen sixties, if we see him at least in small all moments reaching out to the poor and helping the downtroten instead of just just making social calls and getting seeking revenge and eating brains.

Yeah. Anyway, the staging of the execution is pretty cool. So it's an indoor for outdoor shot sets with creepy crooked trees, this big crowd of onlookers in the night. They're all huddled together behind hooded inquisitors carrying luminous torches, each one putting off this huge tower of flame, and they have Vitelius dressed up in mockery as some kind of anti pope in a pointed hat.

Yeah. Yeah, all the all the hallmarks of of a classic cinematic witch burning here, you know, vengeful Christianity in its most base and dark form, the withered trees kind of, you know, matching up with this idea that here is just a fruitless, decadent, degregated faith before us.

There are bunch of movies I can think of from the sixties and seventies that have this as their prologue, like somebody gets executed by the Inquisition and it looks soften like this. I'm thinking of Mario Bava's Black Sunday. Yeah, yeah, and of course horror rises from the two. Well it's time to burn in then, that's right. Well, so he's at the stake and Vitellius makes eye contact with Marcos

I guess he has to watch.

Yeah, And we hear chatter from some people in the crowd, so like, there's one guy who's standing there with some ladies next to him, and he says to one of the ladies that fiend will pay dearly for all his sins now for what he did to you. But the lady doesn't say anything, so I don't know what she thinks about it. We also see a couple of older

Yeah, magical or surreal, dream like and so forth. Yeah, it's certainly a common musical cue anyway.

What it corresponds to here is that the baron suddenly looks up in the night sky and happens to see a comet from our point of view, a very blurry comet. This is not the best special effects in this part, because it looks more like a dead bug on a car windshield that got smeared by the wiper blades. Yeah, we've seen some better space effects in movies from this period. But Marcus Miranda, the Baron's character witness, sees the comet too.

It kind of comes back to something we said in a recent episode of Weird House Cinema, a film like this, you need various middle aged experts that you go to to get just additional tidbits on what you may or may not be facing in your monster.

Yeah. So this setting and the character they kind of indirectly infuse the plot with some nice scientific energy, but at the same time that it doesn't make for great moments on screen generally, Like when the two younger characters first arrived there with Professor Malan, he just starts quizzing them about comments. He's like, how many miles you know? How many miles close does the Halle? Does Halle's comment

Yeah. Yeah, he's talking to them like their high school students or something.

Anyway, Professor's on the hunt tonight. He's got a big stack of decaying cottices on his desk that he shows them. He explains he's been looking through them, and they all tell of a comet that appeared three hundred years ago in sixteen sixty one, and based on Professor Milan's calculations, the comet should appear again tonight at two thirty six am local time, which means right now. So they go to look through the telescope. It seems not correctly aligned.

A list, all right, Here we go.

So the brainiac is bipedal size of a tall man with a loose fitting rubber mask of a goblinoid character. And I have to emphasize loose fitting on the mask. This is not a this is not a tightly organized monster makeup face. Like the mask is dangling and jiggling off of the head.

But also pulsating which I really like. Yes, and I would say in addition to goblin esque, it also has certain satanic elements to it. Like it feels, you know, kind of like a you know, a classic illustration of a death.

Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a goblin baphomet so like long pointy ears drooping at the tips, a long, sharp beak like nose, shaggy black hair and beard, and it's kind of patchy, doesn't look healthy, but it is. Also there's a lot of it, a lot of hair, deep hollow, empty eyes that are just sagging, like it's not tight around the eyes of the actor underneath. Instead you just

Yeah, ye, there are elements of this creature that also remind me a bit of crampus, you know, yes, yeah, for sure, the lolling tongue, though in this case again it is forked and that'll be key.

So then we got to go down to the hands. Each hand is a sort of flesh clamp with exactly two fingers per hand that can close together in a pincer motion. These fingers are, as we see, not solid but hollow. They are some kind of flaccid tube fingers, so think soft, squishy tube claws.

Yeah, and they are. They're the most bizarre detail of this creature design. And they're completely mysterious because we have no idea what if anything they're doing, Like does he breathe through those holes the ends of the fingers, are they indeed finger I mean, he does use them to grasp and to grab, but are those indeed apertures for you know, anything he doesn't see. He doesn't feed with them. Maybe they're for drinking water. Maybe he hears through them.

Do liquids come in or go out through the tips of those fingers?

Yeah? Or what goes in? And now I don't know it's but it's you know, it's bizarre and strange, and I love it. It's because again, it's just a monster design that is really going for it. They just really set out to create something here that is unlike anything we've seen before. And I don't know that we've seen much like this since it's as bizarre as anything that has been in a monster movie in the subsequent decades for sure.

So when the Brainy act first appears, he's wearing the Barren's clothes from sixteen sixty one, but they're very tattered, so I guess it's been a rough ride on the comet, assuming that's where he was. I'll have questions about that. But he quickly fixes his clothing situation via the terminator method. He steals clothes from a chronolocal.

Yeah, he kind of like teleports the clothes off of the guy onto himself, but not the underwear because Brainiac goes commando.

That's exactly right. So the Beast advances on the man who pulled over to see the comet crash down. He then begins to hypnotize him, and we will see that the Brainiac has some of the same powers as Dracula, including a hypnotizing glare, which interestingly is signaled on screen with the same effect we highlighted in Todd Browning's Dracula last week, where the face is mostly kept in shadow, but a focused beam of light falls over the eyes that lets you know that the hypnotizing is going on.

Yeah, I'd say it's not quite as like it's perfectly executed in Dracula. Here it feels less perfected, but it's still it's still great.

But there's also a difference because in Dracula it's a static light. This effect is like just a that goes over Dracula's own face when he's working his evil magic. In Brainiac, the light flashes on and off, so it's a pulsing light. But also we see the focused light

Yeah, pretty ambitious for the time. I mean, this kind of thing would become more of a hallmark later on. You and I both recently rewatched Joe Dante's The Howling, which makes great use of this kind of like pulsating you know, bladders inside of you monster mask. You know, this is a lot cruder, but it is kind of a sign of things to come.

Mm hmm. One last thing we should know. Brainiac does make noises. They are essentially the growls of a lion or a big cat.

Yeah, they're very effective, though I thought they were quite creepy.

So, in an attack pattern that we will see repeated many times, the brainiac approaches his terrified victim, who is somewhat hypnotized or frozen in place, grabs him about the neck and shoulders with his tube fingers, and then goes around behind the victim and then pokes him in the back of the head with his floppy forked reptile tongue.

And then, as we'll find out, this is how he sucks out the brains of his victims, which course, yeah, which is fabulous. Again, they really went for it, they went They took sort of the basic vampire myth, and they're like, they said, well, what can we do to make this stranger? What can we do to make this more grotesque? And yeah they pulled it off. Now, one of the big questions that I end up asking myself throughout the rest the picture, is this what we see

This is such a good question. I had the exact same thoughts. I actually made a list of questions here or ideas. So my question was what is the brainiac or the baron? What is his nature? And what is the source of his power? So to review what we know before execution in sixteen sixty one, the Baron had at least some powers of sorcery. Some of these powers we see directly, such as the power to dematerialize and materialize objects like the chains on his legs, remember that,

Yeah, and we have no idea. These questions are never answered, but I think that's part of the appeal of the film. I think is is just such a bizarre character, such a bizarre monster, and we're just left to wonder at how it all pieces together. And maybe that's quite accidental.

I don't know, you know, I'm timpto to say that he was merely a master of some minor tricks and you know, master of the arts and sciences back in the seventeenth century. Then he somehow got himself aboard a comet rode it around space a long time and encountered strange alien beings who gave him these additional powers. He brought them back, Maybe he fused with them and brought all that back to Earth with him.

I like that, that is. I lean towards that explanation. But we also have the whole thing about him being of unknown origin.

That's true, yeah.

And that could just mean that he was a foreigner, but he could also mean he could be from space. I don't know.

There's one part later where he claims that he never had any ancestors, and I didn't know if that's just a weird translation of a line or if he means that literally.

Yeah, that he's not of this.

Earth anyway, So brainiac. In this scene he steals the guy's clothes via like clothes teleportation, victims clothes under his body, and also of course transforms himself out of brainiac mode, so he's no longer a giant Harry Reptilian brain goblin. Now he has the suave face of the original Baron Vitilius.

Yeah, he's good to go. Now he has the tools, he has a mission. He's in the wilderness, but you know he can remedy that pretty quickly. I think.

Also right here, Victoria and Ronnie arrive on the scene because they're looking for where the comet landed, and they run into Baron Vitellius, and they just stand there saying nothing, looking at each other for a long time.

Yes, but then we get we get some excellent dialogue here.

Yeah. The Baron is like, allow me to explain myself. I always just walks at this hour of the night. And then Ronnie explains that he and Vicky are astronomers and they're hunting a meteor, and I think Vicky is like, oh, don't bore him. There's no way he'll understand what you mean talking about a meteor. But then Baron Vitellius is like, no, no, I too have great interest in astronomy, so I know what meteors are.

Yeah, he's like, astronomy is actually my weakness, which is is At first I had to at for a second. I'm like, wait, does that mean it's like garlic? And I'm like no, No, that just means he's like, that's how into astronomy he is. Yeah, that's his weakness. So that's something to keep in mind for, you know, any job interviews folks have coming up. If you get to asked that question, well, what's your biggest short following or

I'm a brainiac.

Yeah.

At first they exchange information one they give each other their cards. But the baron goes out after this to prowl the city. He's on a brain hunt. So he goes to a restaurant which appears to still be open at three am or whenever. This is the bar crowd is winding down. This place does look very cool. There's a backsplash behind the bar that's like this big, round, kind of translucent window with these weird symbols on it and an upside down brandy bottle. It's cool.

Yeah, absolutely, like what we see of presumably Mexico city nightlife is very very swap and charming here.

So in this place, there is a single woman drinking by herself at the bar. All the other patrons have left, and there are a manager and a bartender closing up for the night, like drying glasses and counting money, and the baron walks into the place. He approaches the woman for some reason, he turns invisible as he's walking up, and then he appears again, like becomes solid again when he reaches his destination, which is standing right next to her.

And of course to highlight again that the effects guys can do dissolve shots.

Yea, they use this.

All the time, whether it's stripping the clothes from a victim in a field or just making him go invisible for no real reason. We also saw it earlier when he was seeing the faces of the hooded judges.

Yeah. Yeah, So the woman talks to the bartender into giving this new guy a drink even though they're trying to close, and he didn't ask for one. In fact, not only did he not ask for a drink. The baron says nothing in the scene. He doesn't talk, but the lady at the bar starts talking to him and then seemingly forms a very intimate connection without him saying

So more brains for the brainiact.

Right, And then we got straight to the morgue, so we're seeing bodies on slabs, and here we meet several more recurring characters. There's the Morgue attendant, who I think shows up a couple of times. Surprisingly handsome and cool looking fellow with horn rimmed glasses, a thin mustache, and very neatly parted hair.

Yeah. I don't know why this guy is in our star, because he has all the hallmarks of one.

Yeah. And then the two cops we mentioned, the inspector detective, the gruff, stoic bald man. He's very strongly built, with a fedora low over his eyes. He's serious. And then there is Benny, his partner or subordinate, who's the goofy comic relief cop. And the first action we get of this guy is him offering impossible theories to explain the crimes, and then when his partner's like, no, that doesn't make

I mean, it is interesting to think there are other ways to get to the brain, but the brainiac chooses to just make his own holes, not to use any of the various other holes that are there, and in a roundabout way, do lead to the brain. The police with a little help, with a.

Little Yeah, well, one of the police inspector responds to this by saying, I wish they'd find some way to control the subjects of man's studies. A maniac with a lot of knowledge is a threat.

Yeah, clearly that's the problem.

Yeah, that's an interesting perspective, Like the most important part of law and order is preventing maniacs from doing research. We also learned from the two cops that last night there was a major bank robbery, and I think we can assume it was the Bear and acquiring funds for his mission of revenge.

Yeah, I kind of feel cheated. We didn't get to see that sequence though.

Yeah. It's kind of like in the face behind the mask, right, we never actually see the heist.

Yeah, I want to see the heist, don't skip the heist. But they're like, they know what a heist is.

Okay. So from here, the rest of the movie I think can be split up into like two or three main plots. You're going to have the baron locating and then getting revenge on the descendants of all of his enemies, generally by sucking their brains out, sometimes by other means. Then you're going to have the police investigators trying to solve the case. And then you also have Ronnie and Vicki being brought into the Baron's high society social circle

Two of these plots are more interesting than the other. I would have to say that the police investigation, aside from one kind of hammy bit of comedic relief. I don't know. I always felt a little slow for me.

Yeah, I agree. The police scenes are usually over pretty quick. At least they're sprightly.

That's true.

There is a scene where Baron Vitellius visits the local historical site of the inquisition executions. He goes to the place I guess where he was burned, and then he also goes to the city archives and learns the names of the judges in his trial. But I was like, what is the point of the scene. I thought he already knew them. He said these names three hundred years ago.

Now he was three hundred years ago. Maybe he for kayle, Yeah, you know. I mean i'd seen this movie before and it was less than three hundred years ago, and I forgot everybody's name, but they weren't.

It wasn't your inquisition trial.

True.

After this, he goes out on the street and then he meets a sex worker on the sidewalk, lights a cigarette for her. They make out a little bit, but then he turns into brainiac and eats her brains.

I feel like he's missing out on so many moments for like authentic connection with people. Yeah, and or to help the downtrodden, you know, Yeah, these would have been good seeds for that.

He goes brainiac mode too early, Like if he got to know people, maybe he wouldn't want to suck their brains out. He could then again, maybe this is his way of getting to know people, if we go with the alien theory. Actually, this raises a question. When Brainiac eats people's brains, does he gain their knowledge?

Hmmm, maybe maybe he does? Or yeah, I don't know. Maybe I would like to think that maybe it's just sustenance. Though there's so much I feel like like a Gimmel del Toro or someone like that could could really have come in and done like a really thoughtful, heartfelt remake of Brainiac and explored some of these questions.

Hmm, yeah, like the Chronos take on Brainiac.

Yeah.

Anyway, After this, there's a scene with the two cops having lunch in a cafe while they talk about the case. There's one I took a screenshot here of one of the cops says, as usual, Benny, his brains have been sucked out, and then Benny Wheelern has ordered calf brains to eat at the cafe. That's just on the menu here, but then when the waitress brings his plate, it seems he has lost his appetite. Yuck, yuck.

They don't play this scene up as much as I feel like other movies would have, but I still appreciate it.

The inspector also concludes, based on the fact that the brains have been sucked out that quote, the killer must be a schizophrenic.

Okay to doing throwing anything at the wall here to see what sticks.

I guess, okay, and then oh. We also get the first of these mini scenes, the recurring subplot where Professor Miland can't get any other observatory in the world to confirm his his sighting of the comet. So he's like opening letters from Moscow, from Paris, from everywhere, and they're

Arm, representing the sciences.

Yeah. Also, at some point during this fancy party, the baron has to sneak away to the coat closet basically to an adjoining room room to eat brains out of a big golden chalice. The spoon. He's just got a it's like locked inside a chest. He just has a big old grail of brains.

I love this, but it also just raises more questions. Whose brains are these? When has he been harvesting or did he harvest these? Like he did he maybe buy these off the black market or you know, got them from a morgue or something. We don't know, but he has a sizeable little cauldron, little bowl of brains here.

And they're basically intact, which would not be the case if you sucked out the brains through those tiny holes in the back of the head.

Yeah, and he's constantly going in for little nibbles and bites. It's like, you know, it's like it's like I do when I'm working here at the house. You know, I'm just constantly snacking on snacknecks or something, and he's the same with his brains.

So there's a scene at the end of the party where everybody tells the baron what a wonderful time they've had, and they all make plans to see him again. It's like, oh, Baron, once't you please be at our wedding And he's like, oh, yes, I will be there. So I think we can run kind of quickly through the various revenge scenarios. The first one is maybe my favorite one. The Professor of History Depentoha.

This one's really good. This one's legitimately creepy.

Yeah, because the guy just happens to be a scholar of the Inquisition, and also, wouldn't you know it his beautiful daughter Maria, also a brilliant historian of the Inquisition. So like, they bring the baron to their house and they're like, look at these papers we have about the trial of the whoa baron Vitilius. He had the same name as you. That's that's pretty weird, isn't it. Yeah, there's one line where the professor says religion was not extremely enlightened at that time. Baron.

Yeah. Baron's like, yeah, I know, quite.

Aware anyway, So they're like, hey, you know he had the same name as you. This guy must have been one of your ancestors. And then, in a kind of shocking twist, the baron just straight up announces himself. He's like he said, this is the scene where he says, I never had any ancestors. I am the Baron Itilius Destera, and you are the descendants of one of the inquisitorial judges, and now I will destroy you.

And this is a great revenge sequence. Again legitimately creepy because he hypnotizes petrifies the father, and then I mean he hypnotizes them both. But he's just frozen there, wide eyed. This is your Maine roadless that referenced earlier, but he's just frozen in place, petrified with these wide eyes as he watches the baron feast on the brain of his daughter.

You know.

Well, first he kisses the daughter and she's like, oh, I'm in love with the baron now makes a face indicating that I guess she's probably hypnotized. And then he turns into the brainiac and then sucks her brains out, and the guy and the professor is just standing there with like his eyes are like they're like a mile tall.

Yeah. So this this scene hits pretty hard, like even today, so I feel this must have terrified folks back in the sixties.

And then Brainiac burns down the house.

That's right, Yeah, he the trashes the office. Let's you know, we don't see a lot of like really overt rage from him over all of this, but here we do.

Later, the cops are on the scene and the inspector says, the line is quote these people were burned. Only that doesn't fool me. It's clear that the madmen extracted their brains as well.

All right.

Also at this scene, this is where we get some more comic relief with Benny. He he's like yelling at the people who are doing the forensics, and he's like, I've got to examine these bodies to find out who drilled those holes in their skulls. It was probably some maniac who thought he was cracking a safe.

Maybe that joke lands a little better in the original Spanish, I don't know.

Maybe The next murder is that of the industrialist Manaises, the one descended from Baltazar Demoneses. So they're in his lab with he and with him and his wife, and they're talking about collaborating on a new alloy. And then the BRAINI act does a similar thing here. He's like, hypnotize, kiss the lady, turn into beast mode, eat the wife's brain, except in this case, instead of eating Maneesa's his brain, he hypnotizes him to jump into his own industrial furnace

Oh, he says, I would like to give Vicky some jewel and it should just be her that comes with me into my study where I keep all the jewelry. It would be wrong for you to try to influence her on which piece of jewelry she chooses. Yeah, and you know, Ronnie's like, well it makes sense to me.

But she is saved, so this turns into a scuffle. Of course, Ronnie hears her screams and comes running. But then, in a really surprisingly brutal twist on the side of the good guys. The cops show up. Our inspectors, both Benny and the more serious cop arrive on the scene, both wearing backpack flame throwers.

Yeah, like full blown space movie flamethrowers on their back and yeah they and then just light him up. And I mean, I was about to say, unfortunately, sadly, from some perspectives, the baron dies a second death by fire.

I couldn't believe it when I saw the flamethrowers. They're running in like it's like Drake and Vasquez, like.

Rock wearing a huge honking flamethrower apparatus.

Is.

Yeah, there's no setup for there's no like, there's no like, you know, there's no bit where they're like, you know, we just got those new flame throwers in over the precinct. I don't know why we did all that training on them, and we're probably never going to use them. There's nothing like that's just suddenly they're here, a turbo team with flamethrowers ready to go.

And the baron is not part of the turbo team.

No, he's not. He gets toasted, burned to a crisp and brainiac form. Then we get a like a dissolve effect into do we go right to skeleton or you go to I like, charred humanoid form?

First, I think it's charred skeleton with like no feet, right, no.

Feed or hands. That really threw me, and it made me think about the brainiac fingers all over again. I was like, were those maybe those are just he had no hands in their tubes? Yeah, like there were no bones in there. And then again a million questions about exactly how all of this works.

So question, did we miss something? I wanted to compare notes with you? Was there something I missed in the movie that explains more about what the brainiac is and where he comes from? Did that scene just go buy me?

I don't think so. Now I am to understand there's a director's cut of this, but I also have not read anything to imply that it really answers any of the questions we actually have. I think it was maybe just some more character stuff, But I could be wrong, But it's my understanding that none of these outstanding questions about the nature of the beast are really answered.

Listeners, If there are answers to our questions about the brainiac, things we don't know, but you do right in let us know. Contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com. Tell us what are we missing about The Brainiac?

Yeah? I also wish I'd been able to see it in the original span, in the original Spanish with subtitles. Not that something like that couldn't be lost in the subtitles as well, but you know there's always the possibility.

Oh you know, sometimes I like the original language, but a movie like this, I love a dub. Dub really works well for Brainiac.

Yeah, you know, you are right, And also the dub is a part of this film's history. This is the way so many English speaking moviegoers actually saw the picture over the years on television late at night, trying, you know, themselves flabbergasted by this strange monster that shows up and starts sucking brains out of people's necks with a fork tongue.

Okay, what's the subject.

Well, first of all, there's the matter of the inquisition. Now, some of you might be wondering, well, okay, the inquisition that was obviously active in Europe and certainly in Spain. We're talking about Mexico here, we're talking about New Spain. Yes, the Tribunal of the Holy Office, the Inquisition in New Spain was established in fifteen seventy one and wasn't entirely disbanded till eighteen twenty. So the basic time frame we see in the early part of the picture here is reasonable.

Yeah, and now this doesn't answer the questions that we have about whether, within the narrative logic of the film, the baron is actually supposed to be guilty of the

Now for a little additional context about the use of history in this picture and this picture's place in the history of Mexican cinema, I turned to Doyle Green's Exploitation Cinema, A Critical History of Mexican Vampire, Wrestler, ape Man and similar Films nineteen fifty seven through nineteen seventy seven.

That's an enticing title to me, But I was trying to think, have we watched a movie that covers all three of those? I think Doctor of Doom might that would definitely include Wrestler and ape Man, maybe also Mexican Vampire sort of Yeah, I don't know, brain ish.

That we need to be on the lookout. We need to be on the lookout for that special picture, the Goldilocks picture. Anyway, I was reading through this book, and Green has a couple of books dealing with weird Mexican cinema, and so I've added them both to my card. I'm gonna have to pick them up to really dive in

But let's be real, brainiac is not about the good guys right.

Now. Specifically, on the topic of the Brainiac, Green has this to say. He writes, quote, the past is a period of unchanging violence rooted in irrational superstition, reflected in both Baron Vitilius's use of black magic and the oppressive

I do think it's interesting what Green points out in this passage. You read about the vision sort of the worldview of Brainiac being one of a kind of total rejection of the past, that in the prologue there are no good guys. Really, assuming that we take the side that the Baron was not actually like the nice of Jesus figure who was just railroaded, that if it is more what it looks like, where the Baron is a

Yeah. Yeah, And we have to remember that the barons the mission of vengeance here is against the descendants of the people who wronged him, you know, so, like everything he does in the present is completely vested in the past and its horrors.

I guess one question that raises is how are we supposed to feel about those descendants. We like Victoria Contreras, we like Vicky, but the other targets of his vengeance plot. What kind of feelings are we supposed to have about them? I feel like the movie doesn't really nudge us very far one way or the other. They're presented kind of neutrally.

Yeah. Yeah, in retrospect, it would have been perhaps more interesting if we'd explored ideas in either direction. You know, like maybe some of them are horrible and entitled and are like you know they and you know, we see like the accumulation of vast wealth over generations, while you know, others are our heroes and so forth. And in many ways, that would also fit the pattern we've seen a lot of revenge films. Right, start with vengeance against those who

Okay, that's all I've got on Brainiac.

All right, Well, it's a fun one. Like I say, one of the one of the most unique monsters in all of horror cinema. I think it's quite a quite an accomplishment there, because you know, there there have been so many strange monsters over the years. Obviously, there's also a lot of sameness, and while the Brainiac creature certainly riffs on various existing monster tropes, it really goes off in its own ludicrousal direction and it is to be

Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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 Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts, it's from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.