CIB

Some people collect action figures, or video games, or unemployment. But the three films we'll discuss below all feature deviant souls who have chosen, instead, to collect...women.

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The Peter Hurkos Story (1960)

Grade: D

We couldn't help but be offended by The Peter Hurkos Story, for much the same reason we were mildly irritated by The Night America Trembled. And that, to remind our loyal readers once again, is because it's bullshit.

From all reports Hurkos was a typical "psychic" con artist, using an array of manipulative tricks to prey on people's hopes and fears. So while this film -- really a two-part episode of One Step Beyond, sponsored by Alcoa and edited together (rather badly) into a single 51-minute feature -- is, in terms of pure craftsmanship, a reasonably well-made example of TV entertainment...

...we can't quite will ourselves to believe anything in the narrative, because Hurkos himself trafficked so unrepentantly in lies.

Was he really a member of the Dutch Resistance? Did a fellow Resistance member, believing Hurkos to be a traitor, really try to smother him in his sickbed -- only to stop when Hurkos read his thoughts? Is there any truth at all to the story, or is it just another fiction from a master manipulator and serial liar? And why on earth did Alcoa sponsor such a cavalcade of cynical crap? 

At the end, the real Hurkos even pops up to offer the following proclamation:

"So long as I live, I offer myself for any test, any study, under any conditions that scientists may impose."

Yeah...about that. (And here's a bit more.)

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The Embalmer [aka Il mostro di Venezia] (1965) 

Grade: D+

The Embalmer's original Italian title translates, shockingly enough, as "the monster of Venice". And just like it says on the box, a depraved killer is roaming the streets (or really scuba-diving the canals) of Venice, drowning young women before adding them to his collection.

How does he ward off the stink and keep them NM+/NIB, or at least NM-? Well, that's where the English-language title comes in, natch.

But formaldehyde fiddlings can't thwart a reporter's houndlike ability to sniff a good story from a mile away -- and naturally our spunky colleague (Luigi Martocci) rapidly outpaces the police in his efforts to crack the case.

The nexus for all this activity is a sketchy hotel that -- conveniently enough -- is hosting a gaggle of schoolgirls and their chaperone (Maureen Brown). That's, uh, some spectacularly ill-timed tourism.

The Embalmer is one of those films that plays better in memory than in actuality. Before rewatching it to write this review, we had some recollection of it as a middling effort, a bit like (say) Phantom of Soho: murky, meandering, but at least competent in the basics.

But truth be told, it's not really very good at all. The biggest problem is the film's presentation of its own plot, which simply falls down at the task of giving us important information in a way we can understand and retain. That's something crucial in a murder-mystery, even in one with pretensions toward being a horror film.

It'd be easy to blame the dubbing for the fact that (for example) we had no idea who the killer was until we went back and reviewed several key scenes in the movie. Oh, we saw his face, but we didn't recognize him at all, or remember him from earlier in the film.

But we'll hazard a guess that the issue is just as present in the Italian original: whatever the language, if a character doesn't get the necessary screen time or have the needed presence, the issue remains the same.

The real blame probably lies with the film's director and editor. Especially on second viewing, The Embalmer is just loaded with padding that masquerades as suspenseful buildup, and characters who serve no structural purpose in the film, however interesting their faces might be...

...or however amusing it might be to see the Italian Elvis pop out of a coffin.

And even now that we understand the killer's identity, the movie's third act is ultimately a dismal affair. Despite a few memorable images and set-pieces, the inevitably violent conclusion offers no real catharsis, but simply a downbeat shrug of indifference.

However we were hardly indifferent to the actress who played Grace (pictured on the left below), who stood out from the dreary surroundings like a sequined suit in a pile of black velvet.

Her screen time is sadly limited and her name remains unknown to us (thanks, IMDb). But we couldn't help but take note of this fetching young woman, who clearly possessed a certain nous ne savons quoi...

...or maybe we savons exactly quoi it was, now that we think about it, and clearly the cinematographer knew it too. Tanto meglio.

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The Atomic Brain [aka Monstrosity] (1964) 

Grade: D-

It's almost never a good sign when a movie opens with a lengthy voice-over delivering exposition that ought to be shown, not told -- and that's just one of several ways in which The Atomic Brain is a sub-mediocre mess. In offering up the tale of a rich old woman (Marjorie Eaton) who teams up with a mad scientist (Frank Gerstle) in pursuit of renewed youth, The Atomic Brain succeeds only in being tacky and half-assed without mustering any real charm.

It's not as if it's a secret why old Mrs. March has placed an ad for a new servant-girl (applications must include your bust, waist, and hip measurements!). Nor is it a surprise what sort of treatment -- in either sense of the word -- the three naïve young women who answer the ad are soon to be in for.

But The Atomic Brain plods forward, undaunted, trailing that half-baked collection of vignettes, clichés, and confrontations it hopes to pass off as a plot.

We were particularly amused by Judy Bamber's attempt at an English accent, yielding a strange hybrid of Texas and New Zealand (plus a dash of South Africa). She's apparently the sexpot of the bunch, and when she swings her hips as she walks -- or just bounces on her bed -- her bodily motions are accompanied in the soundtrack by what we can only describe as "sexy xylophone".

Now that's a word-pair (let alone a concept) that, outside of a particularly hard-fought game of Scrabble, really has no right to exist.

Anyway, the body count is high, the body beautiful count is low, and the door for a sequel is left open in a rather hamfisted manner.

But who would really care to watch The Atomic Brain 2, or Monstrositwo for that matter? It's hard enough to imagine an audience for this film which, though not the very bottom of the barrel, still offers no real rewards for even the most tolerant viewer.

(Unless you really like cats. It's got some of that, at least.)

Body Part Problems (Part 2)

Two in one week? Amazing!

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The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1959/1962)

Grade: D+

As the curtain rises on this campy, turgid exploitation flick (which was finished in '59 but took three years to find a distributor), we hear a quivering woman's voice pleading "Let me die...let me die!..."

But the title refuses:


(No! That's German for "The brain that wouldn't, the.")

Within moments we're transported to an operating room, where a patient lies dying while Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers aka Herb Evers), a brash young physician, is having a battle of wills with his conservative, safety-first father (Bruce Brighton).  When the patient expires on the operating table, the elder Dr. Cortner relinquishes command, giving Bill a chance to put his bold new ideas into practice:


("I'm going to make panko-crusted brains with a fruit candy gastrique and a bitter melon salad.")

Dr. Bill revives the patient, with the help of a little bit of electricity and a hearty dose of chutzpah.  Nonetheless, he earns a stern lecture from Dad for his arrogance in treating medicine like a game, experimenting on people, indulging in reckless transplants (hint hint!), and a laundry list of other behaviors designed to set up the younger Dr. Cortner as the epitome of the post-Frankenstein physician.


(Dr. Bill gets the Henry Rush treatment.)

After a few Oedipal minutes, Bill's fiancée Jan (Virginia Leith) injects herself into the conversation.  We learn of their plan to spend a quiet weekend at the Cortners' country house, prompting the elder Cortner to exclaim how "you're always sneaking off up there...the place gives me the creeps -- I should have sold it when your mother died."

The younger Cortner immediately gets uptight --"You can't sell that place!" -- and then backpedals: "Well, I mean, it's nice to get away from the city, I can work without anyone snooping around."  Subtle stuff!


(This picture summarizes the family dynamic pretty well: consternation, adoration, self-admiration.)

Shortly thereafter, Bill gets news that he's urgently needed at the country place because, according to his assistant Kurt (Leslie Daniels), "something terrible has happened".  So they hit the road, and Bill puts the pedal to the proverbial, ignoring numerous and ominous warning signs (in the most literal sense of the phrase).


(Aaaaaaaaand.) (With apologies to Sir Paul.)

The predictable accident happens, and Bill is thrown clear.  He staggers back over to the burning car, and with a look of horror on his face, sees Jan still trapped inside.  Her hand is raised, then drops out of the frame...it seems all is lost...but wait, what did Bill just wrap in his jacket?


("You were in a car crash, and you lost your..." With apologies to, uh, Member Ringo.)

Well, whatever that parcel is, he proceeds to sprint home with it tucked under his arm, prompting an extended scene with no dialogue that resembles nothing so much as a grotesque touchdown run.


(Remember not to spike it when you reach the end zone.)

And well, you've probably guessed what happens next, in the basement laboratory:


(Also sprach Frau Leith: "Think of the money...think of the money...")

"What's done is done, and what I've done is right," says Bill, despite the scruples of his assistant Kurt -- who, we soon learn, has himself been one of Bill's experimental transplant subjects, with less than successful results:

(Too soon to make a Dick Clark joke here?)

The "terrible" event in Kurt's message turns out to be an unspecified experiment, now locked in a closet, and which has apparently turned into something too horrible to show onscreen...yet.

Meanwhile, Jan (who's still unconscious) can only live as a severed head for around 48 hours, so Bill goes out in search of a donor body.  Cue some sexy, sexy sax music as Bill heads into a sleazy club, surveys the goods on display, and soon ends up backstage with the star attraction, an "exotic" dancer who may or may not also be a prostitute:


("I need to save my fiancée, but while I'm at it, how 'bout some VD?")

However, folks tend to notice when a high-class guy like Bill comes into a cheap joint, and our sexy, sexy dancer has a rival who's equally interested:


(Pining for the mesa, perhaps?)

The rival's arrival ruins everything since Bill doesn't want to leave any witnesses, so he takes off, and a ridiculous catfight ensues:


(Indeed a fight, though in still shots it looks more like the prelude to a kiss we don't especially want to see.)

Just to make sure we get the message, in what may be one of the greatest cutaways in cinematic history, at the end of the fight the filmmakers insert a shot of two painted cats, with an overdubbed "Meow!"  Seriously.

Right around now, Jan wakes up and -- despite not having any lungs -- begins to soliloquize.  Apparently the process has somehow transformed Jan, as on the one hand she's consumed with hate, furious at Bill for keeping her alive in this horrible state, while on the other she seems to have developed some sort of nascent psychic power.

After Jan speaks with the creature in the closet for a while (who communicates back with dull thumps), Kurt returns.  Their stilted conversation has Jan offering up plenty of stagy, overbaked lines:

"Like all quantities, horror has its ultimate, and I am that!" and

"He may produce results he didn't ask for...results more terrible than your arm of relative beauty."

This is the basic template for The Brain That Wouldn't Die: 33% preachy soliloquizing, 33% sexy sax with soft-pedal smut, and 33% suspenseful string tremolos with occasional gore.  (The remaining 1% owns the rest of the movie, via several holding corporations in the Cayman Islands.)

Since two-thirds of that formula involves little or no dialogue, you can't really call the movie "talky".  But it sure does start to drag, especially when Bill goes out for his second and third attempts at finding Jan a body.  Cue the sexy sax, of course.


("I've got kind of a third-rate Paul Newman thing going on here, you know?")

After leering at female pedestrians for a while, he bumps into a woman he knows...


("...and with a little work, I think you could be the spitting image of Marie Antoinette.")

...who, no joke, invites him to a "Best Body" beauty contest that just happens to be going on.  How serendipitous!


(More sexy ladies. Ever notice how older movies often cast women with widely-spaced eyes for trashier roles? Is there some ethnic subtext there?)

It becomes clear that Bill's main priorities for finding Jan a new body can be summarized by the 20th and 1st letters of the alphabet.  You'd think he'd be in the right place for that already, but when Bill's lady friend notes that one of the contestants has the "second-nicest body I've ever seen", it piques his curiosity enough to leave so as to track down #1, a former figure model whom they both knew in school: Doris Powell.

Doris (played by Adele Lamont) has become a semi-recluse since an unspecified accident, but still poses for creepy, overenthusiastic men in order to pay the bills:


(The male gaze in its most vigorous throes.)

When approached by Bill, Doris is prickly at best, proclaiming in the finest Dworkinian manner that "I still hate all men!"  And it's hard to really blame her since, it turns out, her "accident" was actually an attack by a jealous boyfriend that left one side of her face badly scarred:


(Her secret shame, revealed. She's still the best-looking broad in the movie, though.)

"Am I so appealing to you now? Doesn't it make you sick?" she asks bitterly.  But Bill insists he's not on the make, reminding her that he's a doctor (and his father a plastic surgeon, which makes the opening scene seem a bit strange since plastic surgeons aren't usually first-line trauma doctors), and offering his help.  She's cynical about her chances for treatment, but he talks persuasively about recent advancements in the field and whatnot...and before you know it, she's agreed to come to the country house that night for a consult.

And then we hit the head (of Jan) again, who's coaching the unseen beast to kill Kurt.  We don't mind too much, since Kurt seems to be the focal point for most of the movie's stultifying soliloquies.


(Soon your self-justifying speeches will end.)

Carnage ensues in the basement lab, which Bill discovers after ensconcing Doris in the upstairs living room.  But he's not too fazed, and pours himself and Doris a drink.


(By now the viewer needs one of these too.)

But he puts a little something extra in Doris's glass, just as she's learned to trust again (alas, the irony).  She remains conscious for long enough to realize she's been drugged, but at least Bill doesn't tell her why.


(Yep, he slipped you a mickey. But hey, at least it's not The Human Centipede, right?)

Before long, Doris is on the operating table, and Bill is ready to start the procedure to graft Jan's head onto her body.  Bill makes a vague attempt at sustaining the pretense of doing this out of love for Jan, but when she warns him that he "must be stopped", he summarily tapes her mouth shut so that it won't disrupt his concentration for the procedure.


(Insert trenchant commentary on gender dynamics here.)

But hell hath no fury like a psychic, decapitated woman with tape over her mouth (as Aaron Burr learned to his great chagrin), and soon the unseen is seen and onscreen:


("No, Brady P. is my cousin, but I get that a lot.")

So what do we do with The Brain That Wouldn't Die?  These days it's not titillating enough to titillate, not horrifying enough to horrify, and certainly not scintillating enough to scintillate.  And of course, the concept and execution are too stupid to support any nascent hopes of passing it off as a black comedy, despite one or two feints in that direction.

But with a few surprises and a few memorable moments, one could do worse than The Brain That Wouldn't Die for idle, trashy entertainment.  And there's always this:


(This one shot, and its accompanying sound effect, justify the entirety of human cinema.)

(Well, almost.)

When the syringe is falling down, you make the best of what's still around

Since we've already posted four reviews this week, assiduous readers have probably guessed that we're playing catch-up at the moment. And rightly so: the two films in this entry were watched ("mistakes were made") back in March, and all told we've got about nine movies in our backlog. (We're a little more than halfway through the equivalent of the Horror Classics boxset, for those keeping score at home.)

However! Just as a good telemarketer answers your call in the order it was received, so too do Umbrellaheads review movies in the order we watch them (with rare exceptions). It keeps things simple, and honest too. We have to be truthful to our journey, man.

So the coincidence that marks today's entry is no contrivance. These two movies were watched one after the other, and in both of them, a key scene involves a syringe falling off of a laboratory table. With the exception of Behind the Music marathons, how often does that happen?

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The Ape (1940)

Grade: D

In this corner, we have Dr. Bernard Adrian (Boris Karloff), an outcast scientist struggling to find a treatment for paralysis so a young woman (Maris Wrixon) might walk again. If only he could find a source for the serum he needs...


("I had a yen to see you get on a leg. Or two. You dig?")

And in this corner we have a crazed ape, caged and tormented by the visiting circus, that escapes and wreaks havoc on the local yokels:


(The bad men put him in a box and now he is a mad ape. Oh, woe.)

Who wins? Well, not the viewer who has to endure the ghastly print used by Mill Creek. It looks good in still shots, but skips so much that the movie loses 3-4 minutes from its original running time. Dialogue gets hacked to bits, major plot points become hard to follow, and we start cracking up. (If you want a DVD with no skips, there's apparently a Karloff double feature that pairs The Ape with the spy movie British Intelligence.)

Who loses? To our surprise, not this guy:


("I did not wed you, so I want to do you. I am SO bad! So, are we on?")

Not only is he a shady businessman, but he carries on a blatant affair (with the woman in the picture above). When his wife gently asks him to stop, he basically tells her to go kill herself. And what happens to him? Nothing! He goes 100% unpunished! It's an interesting twist, though sometimes realism is less satisfying than the tidier option.

Anyway, the movie is watchable despite the scrambled print, but little more than that. The plot teeters between the predictable and the implausible, and a few memorable scenes and images don't really make up the difference. But if you like jerks, this one's for you!



("But you wed me, not her! Do not go yet...can we not eat in our hut, we two? You and me?"
"No way. As far as I see it, you can go eat poo and die."
"But why? Why?"
"Hey, I'm a bad man. It's who I am.")

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Maniac (1934)

Objective Grade: D
Gleam-Powered Bonus: A


("When you wish upon a syringe / Soon you'll crave a murder binge...")

Like the Ed Wood films, enough has been written about this movie that we don't need to repeat it here. Plus we don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it -- and if you haven't seen it, put it on your very, very short list.


("If you're troubled by the gleam / No behavior's too extreme...")