Creature with the Atom Brain

I saw Creature With The Atom Brain when I was 11 years old. To this day, no horror film has scared me more. The opening credits are shown over a view of one of the creatures lumbering through the woods with the accompanying sound of a beating heart. At the final credit we get a closeup view of the creature's face complete with the telltale stitches across his forehead. The carnage has begun I guess it was that these seemingly unstoppable creatures looked so ordinary, except for their awkward gait and gruesome stitches, that made them seem so scary. I had to walk (run) by some woods in the dark on the way home from this movie and I was quite convinced that one of these guys was going to stroll out from among the trees and break me in half just as the first creature, Karl 'Killer" Davis, did to his gangster victim in the opening scene. Nobody should enter his garage without checking to either side of the garage door to make sure one of the creatures isn't lurking there waiting to rip the steering wheel from your car before throttling you with one hand. This was not a high tech movie nor was it overly bloody, but the threat of bodies raised from the dead being able to bend the bars on a window as if they were well done noodles and take multiple gunshots without noticing was more than enough to scare the pants of of an 11 year old. Once the creature had you zeroed in, there was no hope.

One might think with the extremely low budget, the lack of true star power, and a title like Creature with the Atom Brain that this project would be nothing more than many of the same types of science fiction/horror films grinded out in the 1950s, but it is better than you might expect. Sure, it looks pretty cheaply made. Yes, Richard Denning is it when it comes to a name your average 50's movie fan might know. Like other movies of its era and genre, the film is fast-paced and to the point without a lot of expository information given to the audience. What makes this film a bit different is that the story, even though quite ridiculous in and of itself, is rather inventive and the script keeps to that inventiveness quite nicely. Both the story and script are the work of Curt Siodmak, the famed horror/science fiction writer of such films as The Wolfman, I Walked with a Zombie, and so many others. The story is simply that a gangster who had been run out ten years ago comes back with a German scientist that has discovered how to reanimate dead bodies with uranium. The gangster then commands these dead bodies with a microphone and looks at what they see through their eyes on a big screen as they are sent to avenge those men that put Frank Buchanan(said gangster) in exile. The dead bodies have super human strength but otherwise look somewhat normal except for cutting lines around their foreheads. Some of the scenes with the dead are very persuasive, and director Edward L. Cahn knows how to keep the pace tight and the action relevant. The acting including lead Denning as the man able to solve the mystery of the dead rising and taking their revenge is adequate with S. John Launer as Captain Harris, Denning's partner, standing out in an interesting role. Angela Stevens as Denning's wife has little to do, but she looks very nicely doing it nonetheless.Michael Granger and Gregory Gaye play Buchanan and the scientist respectively and are also adequate. But the real stars of this film are the script and Cahn's solid direction with limited resources. The hideout for Buchanan and the way they crawled through these blowing tubes were really inventive uses of limited means. While not a great film, Creature with the Atom Brain is a solid 50's sci-fi addition and quite possibly even a forerunner to movies like The Night of the Living Dead.

A high minded German scientist [in the 1950's??] is duped by a vengeful, deported gangster into creating atomic-powered zombies from the recently deceased, stolen from the local morgue, in order to wreak revenge upon his enemies.[Whew!] Now that is a dynamite combination! Never mind how they got six or seven bodies out of police custody; or where they got the radioactive isotopes they are waving around. This one is fun!

A classic, know-it-all police MD, with a pre-women's lib, blonde bombshell wife, and just-too-cute little daughter, is on their trail. He patiently tracks them down with the help of another scientist and his doomed police captain boss. The pipe smoking scene is hilarious; as is the inevitable science film: a trained dog being stimulated with electrodes. The villains give the doctor some scary moments. They even tear his little girl's favorite doll limb from limb. But since the German scientist is radioactive, he cannot escape the ubiquitous geiger counter that appears in all of these films. The climactic battle between the police, the army, and the zombies is to be savored time and again. This one is a classic, and worth your while!

Released by Columbia Pictures in 1955 and without trying to mention it's low budget format, Creature with the Atom Brain is quite a sophisticated attempt to resurrect the dead using atomic energy and electronic circuitry. The idea of using a TV screen to receive images from the creatures "eyes" is fantastic. This movie reminds me of fast paced comic book story with a taste of film noir. Richard Denning,the star of this film, made a number science fiction movies in the 1950's before coming over to TV as the governor of Hawaii in "Hawaii 5-0." As far as I know, this movie is not available on the market as a retail product. You can, however, probably get it from a private collector.I think sci-fi fans will enjoy it!

I first saw this film when I was about twelve years old on T.V., and at the time I didn't think it was anything special. I saw it again recently for the first time thanks to modern miracle of video. I must admit that I remember many scenes from this minor little picture more vividly than much better films I saw as a kid: atomized Karl "Killer" Davis busting into a room to break the back of a gangster, the scene where Richard Denning discovers his partner has become a zombie, and the films climax where an army of creatures with atom brains do battle with the police. Oh! and I almost forgot, the scene where walking dead "Uncle Dave" tears Richard Denning's daughters doll to shreds. In retrospect, the scene makes little sense, but it came as quite a shock.

Most of the cast is acceptable. Edward L. Cahn's direction is perfunctory but he keeps things moving. Seen today by younger audiences influenced by MST3K or cheaply cynical critics like John Stanley and Randy Dreyfus, CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN probably looks pretty bad. However, if one views this film in the right frame of mind, it is very entertaining.

Apparently CREATURE WITH ATOM BRAIN has effected a lot of people over the years. Clips from this film have turned up on few TV shows and movies. Roky Erikson (13 Floor Elevators) wrote and titled a song about this movie on his album "The Evil One". He even incorporated lines from the movie in his song "Creature With The Atom Brain."