What if you were a scientist doing brain research on monkeys and all of a sudden a dead rich tycoon's brain falls into your hands? Well in this yarn first concocted by Curt Siodmak and adapted to film several times, you'd take that brain dump into a fish tank, attach a few electrodes and then let the overpowering personality of the dead tycoon begin to control your every move. Sounds like a plan don't it.
Donovan's Brain stars Lew Ayres as the addle-pated scientist who seems bereft of common decency despite his kind demeanor. He's married to Nancy Davis who indulges her man in his every whim and assisted by Gene Evans who cannot help himself but also pick up the slack. Evans plays a doctor who is also an alcoholic and Ayres covers for him repeatedly which is a sign of a solid friend of sorts, but shows quite early in this story that his ethics are squishy.
This is a low-budget item, but there's plenty of money on hand to tell this tale of power and greed. This a workmanlike story which does just what's needed to keep the narrative moving forward and does so with decent effectiveness until the very end where it all kind of falls apart a bit. The ending is not terrible, but it's unsatisfying in many ways and I'll say little here to undermine its effect.
I do recommend this movie, it's a remarkable bit of science fiction.
Curucu, Beat of the Amazon is a movie I have fond memories of as a real chiller. In my youth, one of the local TV stations had a bunch of those Universal monster flicks which they ran on Saturdays (Tarantula, The Monolith Monsters, The Incredible Shrinking Man, etc.) and bundled in with them was this little effort by director and writer Curt Siodmak. I have not seen it since I was a tyke but remember it as a really scary effort. Getting to watch it again this past week on Svengoolie I have to say I was rather wrong. It's really a dreadful movie, and sadly my boyhood memories made much more of it than it deserved.
The plot is ridiculously simple -- a rugged and handsome fellow (John Bromfeld) goes into the depths of the Amazon jungle to debunk the myth of Curucu, a "monster" which has attacked local villagers and encouraged them to flee back to their deep jungle homes and abandon the their jobs. His name says all you need to know -- "Rocky Dean" -- sheesh! Tagging along with Rocky is spunky woman doctor named Andrea (Beverly Garland) who causes a great deal of trouble. The pair stumble up the Amazon led by Tumpanico, who clearly has an agenda. They find the monster sooner than you'd think and sadly it's pretty unsatisfying.
The movie is a mess really, with the characters forced to do all sorts of idiotic things to keep the story rolling along. Garland's character helps people a lot, in order to set up the finale and to pad out the running time. The inevitable romance between the two is so listless that when they do finally smooch it seems pointless.
According to some reports I've read the director Siodmak (who clearly needed to stick to scripts) had so much footage when he completed the movie that he quickly ginned up another one titled Love-Slaves of the Amazons to made good use of that material. I've never seen that one either, but I confess that curiosity makes me want to see it.
This artwork by Reynold Brown, which apparently was never used, does indeed represent Curucu fairly accurately and sadly only reinforces his similarity to a Muppet.
Finally got to see Donovan's Brain, a movie based on a very successful novel by Curt Siodmak. I've seen some imitators, but I've somehow missed the original brain movie. Here's the plot.
A research scientist and part time surgeon named Cory (Lew Ayres) gets his hands on the brain of a notoriously rich and independent millionaire named Donovan thanks to an airplane crash and it seems prudent to Cory to just use that brain to further his own research which up to then had been using mere monkey brains. His drunken buddy and fellow doctor Schratt (Gene Evans) helps him as does his dutiful wife Janice (Nancy Davis - yes that Nancy Davis due to become Nancy Reagan). They keep the brain alive through science but are unprepared when Donovan's Brain begins to exert control on them all especially Cory and starts to pursue his own agenda. He proves to be a dangerous sort and it all gets terribly dangerous before we get a painfully forced happy ending.
The movie is cleverly done and makes much of what appears to be a relatively small budget. The morality of the doctor Cory is pretty fiendish overall and he's a hard guy to root for, even though I got the sense we were supposed to. His drunken friend is more likeable by far and even his wife seems a better sort, though both of them seem to regard him as a paragon.
It's a movie which suffers a lot from little to do. The Brain itself cannot move (aside from jiggling in a tank of fluids) and never does it speak, save from the mouth of Cory. We learn what a lout Donovan was and sort of still is, and it seemed logical to me that he might win the day. It might've been a stronger movie if he had since thematically it made more sense, but given the rules of these sci-fi epics it probably couldn't be done.
Glad I saw it. I recommend you do too.
The story has been adapted to film two other times, in 1944 as The Lady and the Monster and in 1962 as simply The Brain. It would be fun to catch these and compare.
The Baen's Big Book of Monsters is an absolute hoot. I snatched it off the racks when I first clapped eyes on it. It's full of vintage stories of giant monsters with new material sandwiched between. The new stuff I can take or leave, but the old stories, many from Weird Tales are some I've long wanted to read.
Highest on that list was "Ooze" by Anthony Rud, which appeared in the very first issue of Weird Tales. This yarn which slowly reveals its menace is well crafted though any monster fan will see it coming a mile off.
Many of the stories in this collection seem to have been written to order because of an evocative cover. That's certainly the case with Curt Siodmak's "The Eggs from Lake Tanganyika".
That seems to be the case with Murray Leinster's "Planet of Doom" also.
Henry Kuttner's "Beauty and the Beast" works hard to create a story which will justify this cover of a dinosaur crashing into the Captiol. What I didn't realize is that this story almost certainly inspired Ray Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth, though there is no mention made of that here.
Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" is included and I'm always ready for another go at this seminal and potent monster story. Likewise "The Valley of the Worm" by Robert E. Howard which is on hand.
Also included are "The Shining Ones" by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Island of the Ud" by William Hope Hodgson, "The Monster God of Mammurth" by Edmond Hamilton (his first published tale), and "Greenface" by James Schmitz.
Having finished up the space opera on the Sci-Fi TV collection, I shifted my attention to the other series and one-shots contained on the disks. I was intrigued by Tales of Frankenstein, a 1958 pilot episode that quick research informed me was not picked up and existed as a single offbeat jewel from the time when I was a mere one year old.
The show starts up pretty dang effectively with a dark stormy night and Frankenstein in the middle of creating his infamous creature. The monster comes to awareness but having the brain of a murderer immediately wants to kill Frankenstein and only a surge of electricity downing the behemoth saves the Baron.
We then cut to the town and a couple who show up. The man, a sculptor is mortally ill and he and his wife have come to seek Frankenstein's help. They knock on his door, but after some polite chatter he rejects their plea, but it seems he might have alternate plans for them. The man dies a few days later, and Frankenstein pays the gravedigger to leave the grave open. Frankenstein wastes little time rummaging around in the grave getting the non-criminal brain he requires.
The wife though discovers the crime and confronts the drunken gravedigger who sends her to Frankenstein. She arrives just in time to meet her husband in his new body, a fact that drives him to a rampage which ultimately takes him to his grave site. She keeps him from killing Frankenstein, but then he casts himself into the grave. Frankenstein begins to cover it over when the cops arrive. But Frankenstein is undeterred and suggests his work is not over.
But it was, as I've said this pilot was not picked up.
The show is only a half-hour, but its brisk and effective for what it was. The acting is pretty good, especially strong is the wife. The only break down in the story was the very end when for reasons that didn't make sense for me, she rejects her husband's new form, apparently realizing that they wished for something they shouldn't have. It should make sense, but I don't buy it somehow given how strong her devotion to him had been and how frank and honest she'd been in the story. She didn't strike me as the kind who would let questions of vanity rule the day so. But I guess the story had to end.
What really blew me away though were the credits. Curt Siodmak was the director of this mini-epic. And the script was by Henry Kuttner and her wife C.L.Moore, all three of these folks science fiction heavyweights. It's to noted also that this was the last year of Kuttner's life and so Tales of Frankenstein must've been among his final projects. With the imprint of Hammer Films on the production, the pedigree of this show is pretty impressive.
The first episode is well worth seeing. And you can do just that by checking out the Youtube embeds below. Enjoy!