Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going to
Speaker 3: be covering a movie from the nineteen fifties about evil
Speaker 3: scientists who want to use long distance electrodes to power
Speaker 3: the brains of dead men to do their bidding. No,
Speaker 3: not Plan nine from outer Space, not The Bride of
Speaker 3: the Monster. It's another movie with a very similar premise.
Speaker 3: This was sort of in the air. Apparently. This is
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five's Creature with the Adam Brain.
Speaker 2: Which has always been a confusing title because I think
Speaker 2: for a while I even just would read it as
Speaker 2: Creature with the Atomic Brain, because what would Adam brain
Speaker 2: even mean other than possibly super small brain.
Speaker 3: Obviously, Yeah, it seems like an advance on the insult
Speaker 3: Pea brain. You know, you go down to pe brain,
Speaker 3: and then what's below that Atam brain?
Speaker 2: I guess, Yeah, but no, it's essentially in the same
Speaker 2: vein as atomic brain. But yeah, but not only is
Speaker 2: this like perhaps an idea of a reduced brain, also
Speaker 2: reduced runtime. This one comes in at a slim sixty
Speaker 2: nine minutes. The one of the reasons we picked it
Speaker 2: for this week was that we had a super long
Speaker 2: movie last week and we had a short week this week,
Speaker 2: so it seemed like a good time to dip back
Speaker 2: into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Sixty nine minutes. That's I don't know, that's kind of
Speaker 3: on the long side for these movies. I think a
Speaker 3: Attack of the Crab Monster is more like sixty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Some of those Corman and Corman as pictures come
Speaker 2: in at an hour or less, so yeah, they can
Speaker 2: get shorter now. The other fun thing about this pick
Speaker 2: is that it inspired a Rocky Ericsson song. Rocky Erickson
Speaker 2: was a, if not the textan psychedelic rocker who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven through twenty nineteen, did a number of
Speaker 2: songs that were inspired or referenced horror movies or horror
Speaker 2: movie themes, and so it's kind of a treat to
Speaker 2: get to talk about a movie that he strongly and
Speaker 2: directly references. I think another one we've talked about is
Speaker 2: possibly nineteen fifty nine's The Alligator People. But yeah, today's
Speaker 2: movie inspired the Rocky ericson track of the same name,
Speaker 2: Creature with the Adam Brain, which you can find on
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty one album The Evil One.
Speaker 3: I first heard this album, I'm pretty sure, in the
Speaker 3: summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college. I
Speaker 3: was hanging out with a friend and he put this
Speaker 3: on while we were playing chess, and it quickly became
Speaker 3: one of my favorite albums of all time, though it's
Speaker 3: one that I think is apparently not for everybody. I
Speaker 3: thought it was just great, but I took The Evil
Speaker 3: One like back to school with me in the fall,
Speaker 3: and you know, I was playing it for all my friends,
Speaker 3: and I feel like a lot of them just weren't
Speaker 3: into it. But it's one of my favorite rock and
Speaker 3: roll records ever. Two Headed Dog, The Wind and More,
Speaker 3: Bloody Hammer, Cold Night for Alligators, Night of the Vampire Creature,
Speaker 3: with the Adam Brain, the Hits Never Stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I Think You You originally turned me on to
Speaker 2: Rocky Erickson, and it took a little while for it
Speaker 2: to really get it hooks into me this album in particular,
Speaker 2: but eventually it did, and come back to it pretty frequently.
Speaker 2: They're they're pretty often pretty hard hitting songs. There's been
Speaker 2: pretty heavy stuff at times, and the lyrics are tremendous fun.
Speaker 3: But I want to say, while a number of songs
Speaker 3: on this fantastic album, the album is very monster themed overall,
Speaker 3: and while a number of songs on the album make
Speaker 3: oblique reference to identifiable monster movies, for example, the Alligator People,
Speaker 3: there's a song on there called It's a Cold Night
Speaker 3: for Alligator as it talks about how the dogs choke
Speaker 3: on their barking when they see alligator persons in the
Speaker 3: bog and fog. I'm pretty sure the song Night of
Speaker 3: the Vampire must have something to do with a particular
Speaker 3: vampire movie. That's the one where if it's raining and
Speaker 3: you're running, don't slip in mud because if you do,
Speaker 3: you'll slip in blood. That's just logic. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: a lot of these other songs, the references are kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, oblique illusions. But this one is just head on.
Speaker 3: The song is called Creature with the Adam Brain. It's
Speaker 3: about a movie called Creature with the Adam Brain, and
Speaker 3: the song at multiple points just Rocky starts reciting dialogue
Speaker 3: from the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's pretty dead on. And I looked around.
Speaker 2: I've never read any books, you know, dedicated biographies about
Speaker 2: Rocky Erickson, but I found an article an interview from
Speaker 2: The Quietness. I'm not sure what year this is, but
Speaker 2: titled getting to Grips with Rocky Ericson and there's a
Speaker 2: part where they ask him. The interviewer says, what's your
Speaker 2: favorite horror movie? And Rocky Erickson says, quote, I like
Speaker 2: the Creature with the Adam Brain, and I like the
Speaker 2: Giant Cricket. I like them too a lot. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: we have that to go on the Giant Cricket. I think.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure he might be referring to nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: seven's beginning of the end, but yeah, pretty strong on
Speaker 2: the Creature with the Adam Brain here. Maybe there's some
Speaker 2: other interviews where he goes into it more. But there
Speaker 2: is something it is interesting to think about because on
Speaker 2: the surface, if you watch this movie not knowing it
Speaker 2: was anyone's favorite, you might guess that it is no
Speaker 2: one's favorite. Like, there are a lot of fun things
Speaker 2: about it, but it doesn't necessarily scream top tier fifty
Speaker 2: sci fi horror. But it does some things extremely well.
Speaker 2: You know, there's some moments that are far creepier than
Speaker 2: you might expect. Them to be, and the ones that
Speaker 2: I kept coming back to were these moments where our
Speaker 2: antagonist Buchanan, who will get into and who is referenced
Speaker 2: in Rocky's song, is using super science to compel the
Speaker 2: dead to do things or speaking through the dead, And
Speaker 2: I don't know, I kept coming back to that thinking
Speaker 2: about trying to figure out what Rocky found so fascinating
Speaker 2: about this movie.
Speaker 3: I agree with that assessment. I totally had a great
Speaker 3: time watching this, but I don't think it is top
Speaker 3: tier in any dimension. It's not like a truly great
Speaker 3: fifty sci fi film in terms of being scary or
Speaker 3: having interesting science fiction premises or in human drama any
Speaker 3: of that. It's also not one of the most notable
Speaker 3: in terms of excesses of cheese, Like it's not in
Speaker 3: Edward territory. You know, this is a competently made film,
Speaker 3: but nevertheless, it does have some things that are working
Speaker 3: in both directs and overall it's a fun ride and
Speaker 3: it just moves right along. This is not a slow
Speaker 3: or dull film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does. It does really really move right along.
Speaker 2: So anyway, it'd be interesting to keep all this in mind.
Speaker 2: And again, we also have to drive home. You don't
Speaker 2: have to have any kind of like specific reason to
Speaker 2: champion a particular horror movie or sci fi movie that
Speaker 2: no one else does. I don't know, you know, this
Speaker 2: is just one that's stuck with Rocky ericson and he
Speaker 2: made it into a great song.
Speaker 3: So there you go. Sorry, I just put this together.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that. So he said the other one that
Speaker 3: might be his favorite as the Giant Cricket. And you
Speaker 3: think that might be beginning of the end if that
Speaker 3: is correct. Beginning of the end is a bird Eye
Speaker 3: Gordon film.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, just had to flag that there might be
Speaker 2: something else that could be classified as the Giant Cricket.
Speaker 2: But this is the main one I came across, and
Speaker 2: it seems to be in that sweet spot of fifties
Speaker 2: films that he's into.
Speaker 3: This is the one. It doesn't it have like one
Speaker 3: of the special effects shots in it is a bird
Speaker 3: Gordon had a regular sized cricket crawling over like a
Speaker 3: postcard of the New York Skyline. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's smart.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, elevator pitch for the creature with the
Speaker 2: Adam brain. The best I could come up with is
Speaker 2: popular Science Magazine, June nineteen fifty five. The horror movie.
Speaker 2: That's good, Yeah, because there is a real feel of
Speaker 2: I just caught up on the latest, you know, bleeding
Speaker 2: edge science, and now I'm going to write a script
Speaker 2: for a horror movie that we have to make next week.
Speaker 3: You know, I've got another take on it. So if
Speaker 3: Edward originally sold Bride of the Monster as Bride of
Speaker 3: the Atom, this is like they're exploring more stuff in
Speaker 3: that space. We already did Bride of the Atom. Whatso
Speaker 3: how about entry level employee of the Atom? And I
Speaker 3: think that that's sort of the premise here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and listen to that
Speaker 2: trailer audio. This is pretty good.
Speaker 4: One fish and science creates an electronic monster so terrifying
Speaker 4: only screams can describe it.
Speaker 5: Come back Home, Come back Home. According to the evidence,
Speaker 5: Hennessy was murdered by a creature with adam rays of
Speaker 5: superhuman strength and a creature that cannot be killed by bullets.
Speaker 5: I said I would live to see you die. I
Speaker 5: just came from the bureau and checks the murderer's fingerprints.
Speaker 3: His name is Willard Pierce, and.
Speaker 5: Let me have it from the finals petty theft for
Speaker 5: three months in prison. Rule I could have took burcular
Speaker 5: then they have strength enough to break those bars like that?
Speaker 3: Do you think that's something? Answer this one? How could
Speaker 3: a dead man have strength enough to do it?
Speaker 4: Fantastic? But based on scientific fact.
Speaker 5: Please, hello, your fly you will stop all planes and
Speaker 5: trucks searching for radio activity. If you do not, many
Speaker 5: people will be killed. There will be no other warning.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hello, they hung.
Speaker 2: Up before put a trace around us.
Speaker 5: Slow down, Dave, Dave Date, No, well them kill him?
Speaker 2: There you go. Based on scientific fact, this is a
Speaker 2: This is a film that screams to be viewed.
Speaker 3: This is hard science, hard science. This is like it's
Speaker 3: like Asimov.
Speaker 2: All right, if you're before we go any further, if
Speaker 2: if you would like to watch this movie before you
Speaker 2: get into the discussion, well you can.
Speaker 3: You can.
Speaker 2: You might catch a stream or two here or there,
Speaker 2: but the surefire way to view it is to pick
Speaker 2: up some physical media. There are a couple of nice
Speaker 2: collections that include it. One is the four DVD pack
Speaker 2: Icons of Horror collection Sam Katzman, which you can buy
Speaker 2: wherever you get your discs, that features the giant Claw
Speaker 2: creature with The Adam Brain, Zombies of Mara Tao, and
Speaker 2: the Werewolf. Arro Video also put these four movies out
Speaker 2: on Blu Ray in the set titled Cold War or
Speaker 2: Creatures for Films from Sam Katzman, and I included a
Speaker 2: picture of the whole spread. Here, Joe, this one looks
Speaker 2: really nice. This is not how we watched it, but
Speaker 2: this looks splendid if I can't even look at it
Speaker 2: too closely. Otherwise I'm gona tempted to buy this thing,
Speaker 2: and I don't have.
Speaker 3: The shelf space gorgeous. Maybe I'm gonna buy it.
Speaker 2: And then look at that that adom brained creature right
Speaker 2: there on the cover.
Speaker 3: Beautiful. I gotta say the original posters for the creature
Speaker 3: with the Adam Brain are very good because they have
Speaker 3: a sort of like a green guy wearing a long
Speaker 3: coat with his arms outstretched walking towards you, and then
Speaker 3: instead of having him carrying an unconscious woman, they just
Speaker 3: have like an upside down woman at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the poster. They're like, oh, yeah, okay, we'll have that
Speaker 3: in there somewhere, but she's just like floating in white space.
Speaker 3: But then the green guy, his head is a drawing
Speaker 3: of an atom.
Speaker 2: So yes, there you go. Yeah, like the symbol of
Speaker 2: the Adam just super imposed over his skull. All right, well,
Speaker 2: let's get into the connections on this one. So normally
Speaker 2: we would of course start with the director, but we're
Speaker 2: going to break tradition here and start with the producer
Speaker 2: since we just mentioned him, and I think maybe it's
Speaker 2: fitting for this sort of release as well. And we've
Speaker 2: never talked about this a producer before, but this is
Speaker 2: producer Sam Katzman, who lived nineteen oh one through nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three American film producer and director, famous for his
Speaker 2: ability to pump out low budget features and serials that
Speaker 2: actually made money. The genres were all over the place,
Speaker 2: as you might expect, but they obviously included horror movies.
Speaker 2: Not only did he do some beat nick films, but
Speaker 2: I've seen some film historians credit him with the creation
Speaker 2: of the term beat nick. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: accurate or not, but at least he was in there
Speaker 2: enough that some people think he might have just come
Speaker 2: up with the term. He only directed five films, all
Speaker 2: of them released in nineteen thirty seven, but he produced
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty four films and Some of the
Speaker 2: more well known titles include some very fun B movies
Speaker 2: that I think are much beloved. There's nineteen forty one's
Speaker 2: The Invisible Claw in nineteen forty two's The Corpse Vanishes.
Speaker 2: Those are both Bela Lagosi films. There's nineteen fifty six
Speaker 2: is The Werewolf, nineteen fifty seven's The Giant Claw. That's
Speaker 2: a giant bird movie. As I recall nineteen fifty sevens
Speaker 2: The Zombies of MARITAO and nineteen sixty sevens Kissing Cousins
Speaker 2: starring Elvis.
Speaker 3: Oh oh boy, is this one okay question? I haven't
Speaker 3: seen all the Elvis movies. Does he sing in all
Speaker 3: the movies? Or sometimes does he just act?
Speaker 2: You know, I've never watched an Elvis movie all the
Speaker 2: way through, but I assume he does. Why don't you
Speaker 2: put Elvis in your movie if he's not gonna sing?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Elvis was handsome, surely? Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think they make movies with singers where they don't sing.
Speaker 2: They do they do, And you know, I think we've
Speaker 2: certainly watched some things that had singers in him and
Speaker 2: they don't sing.
Speaker 3: Does Chris Christofferson sing in Blade? I think he does.
Speaker 2: He does not used every Elvis movie I've seen a
Speaker 2: part of includes him singing. But yeah, I mean maybe
Speaker 2: he didn't. I just don't know if he sings in
Speaker 2: all of them. Right in, let us know, all right.
Speaker 2: The director is Edward L. Kahn, who lived eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine through nineteen sixty three. I've seen him referred to
Speaker 2: as the one week Wonder because he could apparently absolutely
Speaker 2: pump these movies out. He was a kind of your
Speaker 2: go to guy. You got a B movie that needs
Speaker 2: to be made, it's definitely got that B movie budget.
Speaker 2: This is the guy that will get you across the
Speaker 2: finish line. He was all about quantity over quality and
Speaker 2: was highly prolific in the low budget film scene for
Speaker 2: three decades, directing one hundred and twenty eight films, a
Speaker 2: lot of B movies. Certainly didn't win any Oscars or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but there's some really fun movies in
Speaker 2: the mix. You might know him from some of his
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties horror and sci fi films, some of which
Speaker 2: have actually wound up on Mystery Science eight or three
Speaker 2: thousand and the like over the years. There's nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: seven's It The Terror from Beyond Space, which is often
Speaker 2: cited as being very influential and in particular influential on
Speaker 2: Dan O'Bannon's alien work in the decades to come.
Speaker 3: How many different movies have we cited as likely inspiring Alien.
Speaker 3: We're getting to the point where I don't know if
Speaker 3: it makes sense to say it's inspired by because if
Speaker 3: it's inspired by like seven different movies, then that's just synthesis,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I agree. Yeah, there's a whole list of
Speaker 2: them at this point, but I don't know. I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it. The Terror from Beyond Space. It be interesting
Speaker 2: to see exactly exactly what texture or detail he could
Speaker 2: have conceivably taken from that. Other films from this director
Speaker 2: include Invasion of the Saucer Men, The Zombies of Marital
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, is The She Creature, fifty nine's The
Speaker 2: Invisible Invaders, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. He
Speaker 2: did a lot of westerns action films, bikers, various social
Speaker 2: exploitation films of the thirties, forties, fifties, and very early sixties.
Speaker 3: I have seen a description of his movie The Invisible
Speaker 3: Invaders as being pretty much the same premise as creature
Speaker 3: with the Adam Brain, except instead of a gangster and
Speaker 3: a scientist, it's aliens who are using the who are
Speaker 3: reanimating the remote controlled corpses. Nice.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got a winning concept, you keep doing
Speaker 2: it all right? Well that brings us who are the
Speaker 2: writer of this piece? And this is a writer we've
Speaker 2: discussed previously on Weird House. This is Kurt Cidmack, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen oh two through the year two thousand. He
Speaker 2: wrote the screenplay for nineteen forty six as The Beast
Speaker 2: with Five Fingers starring Peter Lorii, which we talked about.
Speaker 2: He also wrote a novelization of that particular screenplay. He
Speaker 2: was a German born novelist, screenwriter, and director who left
Speaker 2: Germany for first the UK and then the US due
Speaker 2: to concerns overrising anti Semitism under the Nazis. His German
Speaker 2: output was already pretty successful prior to all. This included
Speaker 2: sci fi film titled FP One Doesn't Answer about a
Speaker 2: sort of sci fi aircraft carrier base. He did British
Speaker 2: war thrillers in some comedies, but then he struck it
Speaker 2: big with his nineteen forty one screenplay for The Invisible
Speaker 2: Man Returns and his original screenplay for forty one's The
Speaker 2: Wolfman starring Claude Rains, Bell Lagosi, and Lon Chaney Junior.
Speaker 2: He went on to write a whole lot of screenplays,
Speaker 2: including Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman forty three, I Walked with
Speaker 2: a Zombie from forty three, Son of Dracula also forty three,
Speaker 2: House of Frankenstein from forty four, and many more. He
Speaker 2: wrote the forty two sci fi novel Donovan's Brain, which
Speaker 2: was adapted three times. Also, his brother, Robert Cimac, was
Speaker 2: a director known for nineteen forty six as The Killers
Speaker 2: and The Spiral Staircase, among others.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that he wrote the movie I Walked with
Speaker 3: a Zombie from nineteen forty three. I Walked with the
Speaker 3: Zombie is also the name and pretty much the entire
Speaker 3: lyrical content of another song by Rocky Erickson on the
Speaker 3: album The Evil One, which just repeatedly proclaims I walked
Speaker 3: with the Zombie last night. Great stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely go go listen to some of this album
Speaker 2: after you listen to this podcast episode. As far as
Speaker 2: the script for this movie goes, you know, perhaps nothing
Speaker 2: special on the grand scheme of things, but I think
Speaker 2: it does seem legitimately interested in creating something inspired by
Speaker 2: the frontiers of science of the day, maybe on a
Speaker 2: tight schedule and a limited budget, obviously, but I also
Speaker 2: thought the dialogue is mostly pretty snappy, even if on
Speaker 2: the whole the movie feels very explanatory and procedural. Reminds
Speaker 2: me of some of the serials I've seen from this
Speaker 2: time period, but better pace, better acted, and so forth.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the cast here. Our star
Speaker 2: is Richard Dinn, playing doctor chet Walker. Dinning lived nineteen
Speaker 2: fourteen through nineteen ninety. Now you might well recognize this
Speaker 2: lean cut of fifties leading man here, because he did
Speaker 2: work quite a lot, and he's probably best remembered though
Speaker 2: for one particular creature feature. His credits go back to
Speaker 2: the late nineteen thirties with various adventure films, comedies, and
Speaker 2: so forth. But in nineteen fifty four he starred in
Speaker 2: Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 3: Was he one of the forgettable humans in it?
Speaker 2: He's the forgettable human in it? Oh okay, if you
Speaker 2: look up for some reason, you're looking up stills from
Speaker 2: a Creature from the Black Lagoon and you don't focus
Speaker 2: on that fabulous monster costume, you'll probably see Richard Dinning
Speaker 2: standing around, you know, shirtless boat or on a boat
Speaker 2: with a shotgun, comforting a woman.
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. I would say, Richard Dinning is
Speaker 3: not bad in this movie, but not great either. He's
Speaker 3: sort of there, He's fine.
Speaker 2: It's a very warkhorse performance, Like does he do anything now?
Speaker 2: Is there anything bad?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: Is there anything where you're like, Yeah, you really leaned
Speaker 2: into that and made it more interesting than it should
Speaker 2: have been. It's hard to make a case for that,
Speaker 2: but absolutely fulfills the role here. So after a Black
Speaker 2: Lagoon he continued to act in war in action films,
Speaker 2: and really most of his output is not sci fi
Speaker 2: or horror. But it's just one of those quirks where
Speaker 2: I think a mean creature from the Black Lagoon casts
Speaker 2: a far greater shadow than perhaps anything else he was in,
Speaker 2: certainly in terms of things we're likely to discuss on
Speaker 2: Weird House, but he was also in nineteen fifty seven's
Speaker 2: The Black Scorpion. I know this is a monster movie
Speaker 2: you've been tempted to do before, Joe, because it has
Speaker 2: a kind of aridunculous looking monster in it.
Speaker 3: I've the name sounds familiar, but I've forgotten what this
Speaker 3: monster is. I must have sent it your way. Let
Speaker 3: me look it up. Oh yes, okay, yeah, we may
Speaker 3: have to return to this someday. Sorry. I got briefly
Speaker 3: because there's apparently another unrelated movie called Black Scorpion from
Speaker 3: the nineties that looks like some kind of uh, I
Speaker 3: don't know, erotic action movie or something. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: seeing a lot of shiny leather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's some sort of like syndicated female superhero thing. Now,
Speaker 2: this one was like a desert monster movie with a
Speaker 2: big goofy scorpion monster in it.
Speaker 3: That sounds right, Okay, yeah, yeah, well I have to
Speaker 3: take a look again.
Speaker 2: He was also in nineteen fifty five Is the Day
Speaker 2: the World Ended and if you're if you're looking outside
Speaker 2: of genre. He also had a pretty i think third
Speaker 2: billing in nineteen fifty seven's Unaffair to Remember, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty big picture, but not creature level. Not creature level.
Speaker 3: I'd say his role in this movie is somewhat likable, actually,
Speaker 3: except he's somewhat flip about danger to his child. We
Speaker 3: can come back to that later, but he really needs
Speaker 3: a dry martini and he is really into his wife. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wasn't really prepared for just how all over each other.
Speaker 2: These two are the married couple that we have in
Speaker 2: the film of Doctor Chet Walker and Joyce Walker.
Speaker 3: It is an enthusiastic marital relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even though I think they have the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: like single pair of single beds in the bedroom those
Speaker 2: four Yeah, so yeah, that was interesting. But yeah. Joyce
Speaker 2: Walker is played by Angela Stephens, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: five through twenty sixteen. Nineteen fifties blonde bombshell who pretty
Speaker 2: much only acted during that decade, retiring fairly early on
Speaker 2: for family reasons, but she did a nice smorgas board
Speaker 2: of b cinema, westerns, horror, women in prisons, jungle adventures,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. This may well be her biggest role,
Speaker 2: but she also has an uncredited role in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six is the Harder They Fall? Now, what does she
Speaker 2: do in this film aside from you know, being doctor
Speaker 2: Chet's loving wife. You know, again, the for the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties especially, they're kind of all over each other.
Speaker 3: They are, and she also like she's really keeping up
Speaker 3: with the news and with the caper, because there are
Speaker 3: multiple points where like she reveals a detail to one
Speaker 3: of the investigators or even to the bad guy in
Speaker 3: the form of an adam brain zombie who is sitting
Speaker 3: in her living room playing with her child that ends
Speaker 3: up moving the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I think that's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she's not nearly as minimal a presence as you might
Speaker 2: find the hero's wife in many of these films from
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties and so forth. All Right, our movie
Speaker 2: does have a German mad scientist, and it is doctor
Speaker 2: Wilhelm Steig, played by Gregory Gay who lived nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety three. He was a Russian born actor
Speaker 2: who left after the nineteen seventeen October Revolution. His first
Speaker 2: screen role was an uncredited role as an officer in
Speaker 2: John Barrymore's teen twenty eight silent movie about the final
Speaker 2: days of Czarist Russia, Tempest, but he went on two bigger,
Speaker 2: small roles, bigger supporting roles, often playing Russians or Germans,
Speaker 2: often playing diplomats. I think he even shows up on
Speaker 2: the sixties Batman series at one point playing a Russian diplomat. Uncredited.
Speaker 2: Some of his more visible roles include a bit part
Speaker 2: of a German banker in nineteen forty two's Casablanca, a
Speaker 2: casino owner in nineteen sixties Oceans eleven, and he also
Speaker 2: pops up in nineteen sixty one's Blue Hawaii. This starred
Speaker 2: Elvis and was filmed at the hotel from Death Moon,
Speaker 2: the Coco Palms Resort.
Speaker 3: It just occurred to me, I can't believe they never
Speaker 3: made an Elvis werewolf movie. Can you imagine how he
Speaker 3: could howl? Oh?
Speaker 2: Man? Yeah, I off the top of my head, I
Speaker 2: don't yeah. I don't think any Elvis movies get into
Speaker 2: into horror sci fi. They're all they're all based more
Speaker 2: in just kind of teeny boppy comedy and drama.
Speaker 3: X Presley starring in The Werewolf of Makeout Beach.
Speaker 2: It would have been good. All right. We have another
Speaker 2: villain in this and it is Frank Buchanan. This is
Speaker 2: the character whose name is reference in the Rocky Ericson song.
Speaker 2: This character is played by Michael Granger, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three through nineteen eighty one. He is our and
Speaker 2: we'll have to come back to this. I guess he's
Speaker 2: our deported American mobster who was wandering around Europe, found
Speaker 2: himself a German mad scientist, and now has returned to
Speaker 2: seek vengeance on both sides of the law with super science.
Speaker 3: How does one like acquire so you need a doctor
Speaker 3: Fritz to make zombies for you? How do you acquire one?
Speaker 3: You just you.
Speaker 2: I took it to be like the situation where he
Speaker 2: found this guy. He started financing his work, and then
Speaker 2: you know, once you've been financed by someone like this,
Speaker 2: after a while, you know what they're gonna do. They're like,
Speaker 2: it's time to move this project back to the States
Speaker 2: and begin the next phase, which is Project Vengeance, Project
Speaker 2: Personal Vendetta.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, Granger is pretty interesting because he's an American actor
Speaker 2: of stage and screen who mostly worked small parts on
Speaker 2: the on the screen in the likes of nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: three is The Big Heat and the Magnetic Monster, one
Speaker 2: of only a handful of movies that Kurt Siodmca actually directed,
Speaker 2: as well as nineteen fifty eight Murder by Contract. But
Speaker 2: he was also very active on Broadway and was in
Speaker 2: the original Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof. Oh,
Speaker 2: now it's been it's been a long time since I've
Speaker 2: seen Fiddler on the Roof. I think I saw it
Speaker 2: as a child, so I haven't watched it in a while.
Speaker 2: But he plays a character the butcher named Lazarre Wolf.
Speaker 2: Not laser Wolf, I assume, but Lazarre Wolf. And this
Speaker 2: would have been from like nineteen sixty four through nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you know, I do remember it being emphasized
Speaker 3: as laser Wolf.
Speaker 2: Really Okay, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know if that's how they would actually say it
Speaker 3: in Russia, but I remember it like scans that way
Speaker 3: for the lines in some of the songs. Wolf is
Speaker 3: the So the oldest daughter, Zetol, is engaged to laser Wolf,
Speaker 3: but she doesn't love him. She loves what's his name?
Speaker 3: The other I think a muttle, the tailor. And so
Speaker 3: there's this whole like like Teva wants to find a
Speaker 3: way to get his daughter out of that uh engagement
Speaker 3: so she can marry the guy she really loves, and
Speaker 3: so he has to come up with this scheme where
Speaker 3: he makes up a dream with a bad omen where
Speaker 3: where laser Wolf's wife will come back as a wraith.
Speaker 3: And do you remember any of this?
Speaker 2: No, man, I don't remember it wraiths or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like I just remember, I literally just remember the
Speaker 2: same There's there's someone does sing on a roof? Right
Speaker 2: or is that a fabricated never plays a fiddle on
Speaker 2: a roof? That's okay, that's the part I remember.
Speaker 3: No, Okay, well, yeah, I remember. It's actually a great subplot.
Speaker 3: So basically, the guy he wants his daughter to be
Speaker 3: able to marry the guy she loves instead of the
Speaker 3: guy she's engaged to, and in order to do so,
Speaker 3: he makes up a fake death omen dream.
Speaker 2: Hmm, okay, I need to see it again. That's it,
Speaker 2: or I almost see it for the first time. Anyway, Granger,
Speaker 2: I really liked him in this. He has a voice
Speaker 2: that's just as smooth as crushed velvet, and he gives
Speaker 2: way more charisma to this role than I think anyone
Speaker 2: was asking of him. He's quite good. I don't want
Speaker 2: to take anything away from Dinning, because again, he's solid,
Speaker 2: hits all the right notes. But Granger brings that nice
Speaker 2: bit of something extra to the role. Like the dialogue
Speaker 2: is already nice and snappy, but he breathes just a
Speaker 2: little extra malice and machination into everything, which is especially
Speaker 2: potent when he is speaking into the minds of the
Speaker 2: dead or through the dead, because I think if memory
Speaker 2: serves the voice we hear come out of most of
Speaker 2: the walking dead the Atom creatures is the voice of Granger,
Speaker 2: the voice of Buchanan, and yeah, it's eerie and effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Later they like upgrade their technology so that the
Speaker 3: Adam Brain zombies can speak with their own voice, but
Speaker 3: they only do that for.
Speaker 2: Day if I think, yeah, which is I think more
Speaker 2: plot oriented than anything. We'll get into the end of Dave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know exactly how it works that when
Speaker 3: the earlier ones talk, they speak with Buchanan's voice because
Speaker 3: they would still be using their vocal chords. But I
Speaker 3: don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, special effects, which I guess are not that impressive
Speaker 2: in this particular film, are worth noting here just because
Speaker 2: they're by Jack Ericson, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight special effects a guy who worked with Ray
Speaker 2: Harryhausen the same year on It Came from Beneath the Sea,
Speaker 2: which was also part of the double feature with this
Speaker 2: very film.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ericson also has a special effects credit on The Galaxy
Speaker 2: Being episode of the classic Outer Limits series that episode
Speaker 2: starred Cliff Robertson, but more notable than Robertson, it featured
Speaker 2: one of the series more memorable aliens. This was this
Speaker 2: kind of like weirdly glowing creature. That. Yeah, if you
Speaker 2: go back and watch any Outer Limits episode from this
Speaker 2: time period, that's the one to check out, because the
Speaker 2: creature absolutely pops Galaxy being.
Speaker 3: I can't help but imagine that title inspired the title
Speaker 3: of the later Dawn Dollar film Galaxy Invader.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely it did. Love Galaxy Invader. That
Speaker 2: one's good.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: Finally, just a note on the music here. It's all
Speaker 2: stock music, so there's somebody to single out here, just
Speaker 2: all stock music. Nothing remarkable about it. No, all right, Well,
Speaker 2: shall we get into the plot.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. You know what, quite strong opening. In fact,
Speaker 3: I would say I think the best looking shot in
Speaker 3: the film is the very opening shot. So we come
Speaker 3: up on a kind of a silent alley way in
Speaker 3: the nighttime, with trees and shrubbery crowding in on both sides,
Speaker 3: and then in the background in the distance in the shot,
Speaker 3: there is moonlight pouring in from above in a kind
Speaker 3: of shaft, and that moonlight is falling on the dark
Speaker 3: shape of a man shambling slowly toward the camera as
Speaker 3: nothing but a heartbeat pounds on the soundtrack, and then
Speaker 3: the credits roll as he wanders in our direction. It's
Speaker 3: very very strong opening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't waste any time. You know, it's screaming kids,
Speaker 2: stop making out and watch your I guess second helping
Speaker 2: of the double feature.
Speaker 3: But as I said, I don't think any other shot
Speaker 3: in the movie is as artistically composed as this one is.
Speaker 3: This is the best looking thing we're going to get. Now,
Speaker 3: with my post George Romero expectations, I thought this was
Speaker 3: going to be a decaying zombie coming toward us because
Speaker 3: of his shambling gait. But no, it is a man
Speaker 3: in a suit and a tie who looks actually pretty normal,
Speaker 3: except his expression is sort of vacant. He is a stocky,
Speaker 3: square featured fellow. He walks like right up in our faces.
Speaker 3: And then the next thing we see is him driving
Speaker 3: a four door sedan around some kind of winding mountain roads.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking, wait a minute, is he a
Speaker 3: zombie or not? Because zombies, as generally understood, cannot operate
Speaker 3: motor vehicles, with the exception, of course, of Jason Vorhees,
Speaker 3: and Jason takes Manhattan because I stand by my assertion
Speaker 3: that Jason does drive the boat.
Speaker 2: Well, as we'll learn, this is a special kind of zombie.
Speaker 2: This is a super science zombie, so maybe different rules apply.
Speaker 3: Right. So the zombie non zombie guy, whatever he is,
Speaker 3: he parks his car beside a street lamp outside some
Speaker 3: large building that Rob I wonder, what did you initially
Speaker 3: think this building was. I was like, okay, is he
Speaker 3: at like city hall or a nice hotel or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looked a more official like that. I was
Speaker 2: a little surprised when it turned out to be more
Speaker 2: of a like a criminal underworld location as opposed to
Speaker 2: anything concerning like that, you know, the city government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought maybe, oh, maybe this is a bank,
Speaker 3: but I think it's supposed to be a casino, and
Speaker 3: maybe like an illegal underworld casino. So I don't know
Speaker 3: why it's so fancy looking, but yeah, So he gets
Speaker 3: out of the car, he shambles towards the building. Inside
Speaker 3: we see cashiers closing up money changing stations, and then
Speaker 3: we see a lackey in a tuxedo taking a bag
Speaker 3: of money into a spacious office decorated with Nick Knax,
Speaker 3: like there's a big easter island head and this is
Speaker 3: the office of mister Hennessy, who is the number one
Speaker 3: head guy in charge of this hotel, City Hall casino.
Speaker 3: The lackey reports that the take for the night was
Speaker 3: twenty grand. Hennessy seems pleased with this, and Hennessy opens
Speaker 3: up his wall safe and starts counting the money and
Speaker 3: narrating into his dictaphone as he does so. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: he's not counting in terms of He's not like counting
Speaker 3: the money. He is counting the numbers of individual bills.
Speaker 3: So he's like, this many hundred dollar bills, this many
Speaker 3: fifty dollars bills. Is that normal criminal behavior? I don't know. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: outside the window, the zombie driver keeps staggering toward the building,
Speaker 3: and then we see through the zombie's eyes, and then
Speaker 3: there's an interesting transition. We see through his eyes on
Speaker 3: a TV screen on screen. So now we're somewhere else
Speaker 3: in a laboratory. They make it easy to know where
Speaker 3: you are by like having electrodes emit zapping sounds, and
Speaker 3: there's a TV showing the zombies eye view, and there
Speaker 3: are two guys watching it. You've got a stout gangs
Speaker 3: gangster looking man in a suit and a bespectacled scientist
Speaker 3: in a white lab coat, and the gangster guy is
Speaker 3: holding a microphone up to his mouth while the scientist
Speaker 3: is fiddling with knobs. Back at the casino, the zombie
Speaker 3: bends the bars outside the window to Hennessy's office. He
Speaker 3: just you know, grabs him with his hands, benson back,
Speaker 3: and then smashes through the glass. He actually basically he
Speaker 3: just like flathand outward pushes through the window.
Speaker 2: There are numerous stunts where like a sort of roundish
Speaker 2: man goes through a plate of glass a glass window
Speaker 2: in this movie. And I was looking at some of
Speaker 2: the stunt players and one of the guys did this
Speaker 2: I think, pretty much the same stunt in The Wizard
Speaker 2: of Oz as the Cowardly Lion. So I guess it
Speaker 2: was just like printed on this guy's business card, like
Speaker 2: you need like a slightly rotund actor to go through
Speaker 2: a window, I'm your guy, and.
Speaker 3: I'll do it just by pushing the glass out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously it's trick glass, but still specialized skill.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know if I can tell
Speaker 3: trick class. Just by looking at it, I will assume
Speaker 3: this was a safe set. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: the guy comes through the window. He goes up to Hennessy.
Speaker 3: He says, in a mechanical voice, I told you I'd
Speaker 3: come back. And here we're getting into one of the
Speaker 3: bits of dialogue that Rocky ericson. Just sits in the song,
Speaker 3: and the zombie says, remember Buchanan, and Hennessy says, but
Speaker 3: you're not Buchanan. The zombie says, I may not look
Speaker 3: like him, but I am him. Don't you recognize the voice, Jim.
Speaker 3: I promise to see you die and I will. Then
Speaker 3: Hennessy he whips out a pistol tries to shoot the zombie,
Speaker 3: but of course it does no good. The zombie grabs
Speaker 3: Hennessy lifts him up over his head and then we
Speaker 3: see only a shadow of the two figures cast upon
Speaker 3: the wall, and in the shadow, the zombie just folds
Speaker 3: Hennessy like a wallet. He just snaps him in half
Speaker 3: backwards like a kitcat bar crunch. It is brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this. This is a great use of
Speaker 2: shadow and implying the physical violence. There's another example of
Speaker 2: this later on in the film, but this is the
Speaker 2: best example of it. It just lifts him up in
Speaker 2: a gorilla press and does this breaker death move. And
Speaker 2: as this was occurring, as he was like setting this up,
Speaker 2: especially where you see an actual zombie grab a good dude,
Speaker 2: grapple him and lift him up, I was like, I
Speaker 2: bet this guy's a wrestler. Sure enough. This role is
Speaker 2: played by former pro wrestler Carl Killer Davis aka Crippler Carl,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh eight through nineteen seventy seven. I
Speaker 2: was not familiar with this guy, but apparently it was
Speaker 2: a big heel in the thirties and forties. He got
Speaker 2: his first acting break playing one of the I think
Speaker 2: ten strongmen who opposes Mighty Joe Young in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: nine's Mighty Joe Young, alongside fellow wrestler turned actor Tora Johnson,
Speaker 2: as well as some other big guys like Italian boxer
Speaker 2: wrestler of the day Primo Canara. Anyway, this led to
Speaker 2: a whole career of heavy roles for Davis, and here
Speaker 2: he is a zombie.
Speaker 3: He's got a great look for film too, though he's
Speaker 3: got a very kind of square head and sharp features.
Speaker 2: He's good yeah, unlike tor I think he mostly played
Speaker 2: like heavies and like you know, enforcers and so forth,
Speaker 2: as opposed to outright monsters.
Speaker 3: Wait, this wasn't one of the communist saboteur wrestlers in
Speaker 3: The Mighty Tobar, was it.
Speaker 2: No, that was a different guy. But that was another
Speaker 2: one where you could tell, like the way he was
Speaker 2: I think it was the bumping in that one, like
Speaker 2: the way he was falling down. You know, you could tell, Okay,
Speaker 2: this guy's a wrestler. He's got to be, and you know,
Speaker 2: sure enough, once you know the signs, it's pretty clear.
Speaker 3: All right. Well, so anyway, after the zombie just breaks
Speaker 3: Tennessee in half like a cracker, Hennessy's goons run in
Speaker 3: the start shooting at the zombie, but he seems unbothered
Speaker 3: by bullets. I think there are some squibs in this
Speaker 3: scene that look pretty good.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, there are a number of effects in
Speaker 2: the film where people are like shooting through zombies and yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks believable. A lot of films would just have
Speaker 2: the maybe you're having the gun actually fire blanks, and
Speaker 2: the rest is just implied.
Speaker 3: It's just a mid shot. You don't like see it,
Speaker 3: but this was like you see, like the squibs exploding
Speaker 3: out the back of the zombies souit jacket. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 3: zombie goes out the window, he gets in the car
Speaker 3: and drives away. Meanwhile, we see back in the laboratory
Speaker 3: where the two guys are watching zombie ITV. The guy
Speaker 3: holding the microphone starts saying, come back home, come back home.
Speaker 3: So it's clear what's starting to become clear what's going on.
Speaker 3: This is like a remote controlled zombie or somnambulist or
Speaker 3: something here. And then there's a kind of funny moment
Speaker 3: where the other guy grabs the microphone, like the scientist
Speaker 3: takes it from the gangster guy, and he starts saying
Speaker 3: in a German accent, get in the automobile, Get in
Speaker 3: the automobile, the automobile. Get inside. So eventually the zombie obeys.
Speaker 3: And then the gangster guy this is Buchanan, and we
Speaker 3: already know that because he was the one talking through
Speaker 3: the zombie. Remember Buchanan, I am him, and the scientist
Speaker 3: this is doctor STI. They chatter about how the zombies work.
Speaker 3: Buchanan is afraid that the zombie won't make it back
Speaker 3: because of his gunshot wounds, but Steig says that as
Speaker 3: long as he still has an ounce of fluid in
Speaker 3: his body, he'll keep moving. And when these creatures are
Speaker 3: damaged or run low on power, they automatically return to
Speaker 3: the home base like a room. Oh yeah, like that.
Speaker 3: But there's also you can see emerging some conflict between
Speaker 3: Buchanan and Stig at zombie mission control. Buchanan is pleased.
Speaker 3: He's like, all right, that was the first of them,
Speaker 3: first of the people on my murder list. But there
Speaker 3: are more we have to send our zombies after and
Speaker 3: then Steig kind of breaks into a lament. He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I invented these remote control zombies, hoping that
Speaker 3: they could be used to help humanity because they could
Speaker 3: do tasks that were dangerous for living workers. But now
Speaker 3: that I'm working with Buchanan, he's like, all you want
Speaker 3: to do is see people die. But Buchan one in protests,
Speaker 3: He's like, look, I don't just want to see people die.
Speaker 3: I want to see particular people die, and I'll get
Speaker 3: them all. After this, Buchanan and Steig go into the
Speaker 3: first of many in the movie almost ritualistic scenes of
Speaker 3: dressing in these lead lined suits with respirator hoses and
Speaker 3: crawling through a plastic lined tunnel into the operating room,
Speaker 3: which we I think we assume must be flooded with radiation.
Speaker 3: This is kind of the storage room for more zombies
Speaker 3: like our spine cruncher friend, and these are the titular
Speaker 3: creatures with the atom brains. Now, while in the radioactive room,
Speaker 3: they have to decommission a couple of Adam Brand dudes
Speaker 3: who have deteriorated beyond use. Because Steig explains different parts
Speaker 3: of the body die at different times, and buchanans like,
Speaker 3: does the brain still die first? And Steig says always,
Speaker 3: the brain always dies first.
Speaker 2: They didn't have an acid vat for this, though, this
Speaker 2: was been a great time to have an acid fat
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know you think.
Speaker 3: That the they say it so portentously, you almost think
Speaker 3: that the brain always dies first is going to become
Speaker 3: a plot point. But I don't think it does.
Speaker 2: That's I think that this is something we can chalk
Speaker 2: up to, but not only the script of the performances here,
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of lines like this that
Speaker 2: that work far far better than they They probably that
Speaker 2: they could have or certainly should have. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like this is not an important detail, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's still kind of zings and sticks with you. And
Speaker 2: I don't think this is Granger speaking this line. I
Speaker 2: think this is uh, this is the doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But all right, that's sort of the setup
Speaker 3: for the film. You start to see, like what the
Speaker 3: supernatural or science fiction premise is what comes next in
Speaker 3: this kind of movie. Police arrive on the scene, of course, investigators,
Speaker 3: and one of them is our hero, who seems to
Speaker 3: be I'm going to say that that the hero character
Speaker 3: is the product of a compromise in the writer's room.
Speaker 3: They went something like this, It's let's see, should our
Speaker 3: leading man be a cop or a scientist? What if
Speaker 3: he was both? So our hero, chet Walker, is some
Speaker 3: kind of science cop. He is a cop, but he
Speaker 3: heads up a forensic laboratory full of microscopes and glass
Speaker 3: slides and Geiger counters, and he seems to be I
Speaker 3: don't know, like a mister wizard detective. He's like where
Speaker 3: the police come to consult his genius in order to
Speaker 3: solve murder cases, but they also don't just refer evidence
Speaker 3: to him. He's like always first on the scene investigating
Speaker 3: the crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of like the the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: version of CSI. I guess you know where you have
Speaker 2: the forensic expert. He's also just very, very and perhaps
Speaker 2: unrealistically front and center of any investigation.
Speaker 3: All right. So Chet and colleagues are on scene at
Speaker 3: the casino where Hennessy got crunched like a ritz cracker,
Speaker 3: and they discover several interesting things. They say, whoever broke
Speaker 3: in was able to bend back the iron bars outside
Speaker 3: the window with his bare hands. They noticed the perpetrator
Speaker 3: did not bother to steal the money from the safe.
Speaker 3: They say he was shot, leaving behind a trail of
Speaker 3: blood and yet was still able to escape. And then
Speaker 3: finally they discovered that his blood, his fingerprints, and his
Speaker 3: footprints all glow in the dark. Also in this scene
Speaker 3: there is the beginning of a theme where Chet is
Speaker 3: followed around by a gang of I don't know, like
Speaker 3: five to seven excitable and fairly credulous reporters who are
Speaker 3: all slobbering for a story. And so the reporters are like,
Speaker 3: how did he bend those bars? And Chet says, maybe
Speaker 3: he ate all his vitamins and the reporters like vitamins
Speaker 3: like he thinks, So maybe this is a real scoop.
Speaker 3: I don't know about vitamin vitamins behind iron Bar killing,
Speaker 3: I think. In the scene we also meet Chet's friend Dave,
Speaker 3: who is some other kind of cop. Is he supposed
Speaker 3: to be like FBI or something or police captain? He
Speaker 3: seems in some way separate from whatever Chet is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can never completely nail it down. I
Speaker 2: will throw in that. Dave is played by s John Loner,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen through two thousand and six. Mostly did
Speaker 2: small roles, but appears in Hitchcock's Marnie from sixty four.
Speaker 2: Mommy dearis from eighty one, and was also in both
Speaker 2: The Werewolf in fifty six and I was a teenage
Speaker 2: Werewolf from fifty seven.
Speaker 3: So back at the lab, Chet analyzes the luminous residue
Speaker 3: and the blood left behind at the crime scene. He
Speaker 3: discovers that the blood is not blood at all, It's
Speaker 3: some kind of artificial concoction containing microscopic crystals. And then
Speaker 3: the question is why does it all glow? Well starts
Speaker 3: holding a Geiger counter up to it, and it starts
Speaker 3: it's going nuts, and doctor Walker's like this so called
Speaker 3: blood is radioactive, Dave says, dangerously, So Chet responds plus nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't he throw in like you wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: be around this stuff for long. SE's back on the
Speaker 2: desk and his conversation.
Speaker 3: They just put it on the desk, you keep talking. Yeah. So,
Speaker 3: while leaving the lab, Chet is again intercepted by the reporters.
Speaker 3: They demand a story, and Chet tells them that Hennessy
Speaker 3: was killed by quote, a creature with adam rays of
Speaker 3: superhuman strength and a creature that cannot be killed by bullets. Uh.
Speaker 3: And the reporters are angered by this because they think
Speaker 3: he is pulling their leg and one of the reporters
Speaker 3: threatens to misspell chet Walker's name, which this sent me
Speaker 3: down a rabbit hole of what would be the best
Speaker 3: way to misspell chet Walker. I'm gonna say, like cheb Wonker,
Speaker 3: m M.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a delicate balance because you don't want to
Speaker 2: put anything in the paper that I'll get you in trouble.
Speaker 2: He's got to get it, get it, you know, the
Speaker 2: right level of insulting without being profane. But anyway, I
Speaker 2: like this one little back and forth here because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll just tell you straight up what's going on with
Speaker 2: the zombie and dare you to print it? Dare you
Speaker 2: to take me seriously.
Speaker 3: So the next morning, Dave comes to Chet's house and
Speaker 3: he's greeted by Chet's wife, Joyce. This is when we
Speaker 3: first meet Chet's family. We find out he's not just
Speaker 3: any science cop. This is a science cop with a family.
Speaker 3: So he's got a wife named Joyce and a daughter
Speaker 3: named Penny. Penny has a cherished doll named Henrietta, and
Speaker 3: this leads to a weird exchange where Dave, who I
Speaker 3: think is like trying to feed either Penny or the
Speaker 3: dolls serial, but Dave is like, you know, I used
Speaker 3: to go with a girl named Henrietta. And Penny says
Speaker 3: what happened to her? And Dave says, what happened to her,
Speaker 3: shouldn't happen to your doll. She married a con man.
Speaker 3: Day strange, but anyway, this is not a so so
Speaker 3: she'll call Dave is here to discuss work. He has
Speaker 3: some alarming news. They got back a match on the
Speaker 3: fingerprints found at the crime scene. They belonged to a
Speaker 3: convicted criminal who died in jail twenty four days ago.
Speaker 3: From here we go to let's see, it's been a
Speaker 3: few minutes since we had a murder in this movie.
Speaker 3: We've got to have another Adam Brain murder. So now
Speaker 3: we cut to district attorney McGraw, who we met at
Speaker 3: the first crime scene earlier. I think he had a
Speaker 3: line that was something like, look, I'm just a district attorney,
Speaker 3: not a chemist. McGraw is getting in his car in
Speaker 3: his garage when he is startled by a strange man
Speaker 3: in a mechanics jumpsuit. It looks kind of like Michael
Speaker 3: Myers without a mask. And the man says, I'm from Buchanan.
Speaker 3: If you know that, you know why I'm here. It's
Speaker 3: no use McGraw. And then he reaches into McGrath's car
Speaker 3: and yanks the steering wheel out of its housing, and
Speaker 3: he says, I said I would see you die. I
Speaker 3: am watching you now. I think there's like an implied therefore,
Speaker 3: like he's saying I said I would see you die,
Speaker 3: I can see you now. Therefore you're going to die.
Speaker 2: Well, Buchanan knows he only has so much time to gloat.
Speaker 2: He's got to get to it with this remote death
Speaker 2: via reanimated corpse.
Speaker 3: Right, So this Adam brain lifts McGraw up by the
Speaker 3: neck and then crunches him somehow, does another crunchy thing.
Speaker 3: So Chet and Dave arrive at the murder scene in
Speaker 3: the garage, and there is a doctor on site who's like, yes,
Speaker 3: of course, I already gave his wife a sedative. It
Speaker 3: is nineteen fifty five. I know what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 3: But he also concludes that McGraw was killed by having
Speaker 3: his bones crushed by a single hand. I can deduce
Speaker 3: that by looking at him somehow. And this leads Chet
Speaker 3: and Dave to conclude that it was the same murderer
Speaker 3: as Hennessy. But that doesn't make sense, they say, because Hennessy, see,
Speaker 3: he was some kind of gangland boss, and McGraw was
Speaker 3: a district attorney, so that was like cop and criminal.
Speaker 3: They're on opposite sides. How would they share a common enemy. Well,
Speaker 3: there are more clues. McGraw's car is radioactive now, and
Speaker 3: the fingerprints of the murderer match a man who died
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago, So another dead man's fingerprints around
Speaker 3: the scene, and the reporters show back up again. They're
Speaker 3: you know, they go up to Chet and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: were you actually serious about these murders being done by
Speaker 3: a thing with a brain charged by Adam Rays? And
Speaker 3: Chet's like, yes, I was serious. And then the reporters say,
Speaker 3: hot dog, you know we had a scoop. We didn't
Speaker 3: even know it, And then they all run off together.
Speaker 3: I'm like, is that a scoop if all nine of
Speaker 3: you got it at the same time? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are they all working for the same papers? The budget
Speaker 2: for this newspaper is a dating question.
Speaker 3: They also they don't like stop to get a quote
Speaker 3: or ask any follow up questions. They just he just
Speaker 3: confirms it was Adams and they're like, okay, we got
Speaker 3: a story, and they run off confirmed. Yeah, okay. After this,
Speaker 3: we go to one of my favorite characters in the movie.
Speaker 3: Who is Is his name Dick Cutting?
Speaker 2: Dick Cutting?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, okay, So we go to Dick Cutting is
Speaker 3: a man who looks like he should be playing like
Speaker 3: a commander in the Galactic Empire in Star Wars. He
Speaker 3: has that kind of he should be Admiral Cutting played
Speaker 3: by Richard H.
Speaker 2: Cutting, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy two. Wait,
Speaker 2: that's his real name apparently, Yeah, he was also an
Speaker 2: attack of the crab monsters in South Pacific.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't recognize him from crab monsters? See which
Speaker 3: one was?
Speaker 2: He?
Speaker 3: Is he the scientist in it? I'll have to come
Speaker 3: back and doctor James Carson. Okay, okay. So he's got
Speaker 3: a news monologue which is just tremendous. His scenes are
Speaker 3: some of my favorite stuff in the film. So he says, hello,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen. He's sitting at like a very nice
Speaker 3: looking and then behind him there's a shelf full of
Speaker 3: what looked like very old books. You know, they're like
Speaker 3: I don't know, first editions or something. He says, hello,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen. This is dick cutting with today's commentary
Speaker 3: on the news. As you know, today's story hinges around
Speaker 3: the killing of District Attorney McGraw, whose body was found
Speaker 3: today in his garage, murdered in much the same manner
Speaker 3: as Hennessy was. What connection can the murder have to Hennessy,
Speaker 3: who was obviously a gangland boss is unknown at present.
Speaker 3: Doctor chet Walker of the Police Laboratory has given out
Speaker 3: a fantastic story so incredible that one can lend it
Speaker 3: little credence. Doctor Walker is of the opinion that these
Speaker 3: crimes are being perpetrated by dead men. Yes, I said,
Speaker 3: dead men restored to life in some unknown manner by
Speaker 3: being charged with atom Ray's, which gives them superhuman strength
Speaker 3: and makes them impervious to bullets. Well, if you want
Speaker 3: to believe that story, you can, and then cut to
Speaker 3: Buchanan switching off the TV angrily.
Speaker 2: There'll be more from Dick Cutting here in a bed.
Speaker 2: It gets even better.
Speaker 3: Today's commentary on the.
Speaker 2: News filmed in what just looks like a lawyer's office
Speaker 2: as opposed to a TV studio or something.
Speaker 3: Except there are curtains on the wall in the background.
Speaker 3: H Yes, yeah, So Buchanan is mad that I guess
Speaker 3: they figured out the whole scheme. And now, even though
Speaker 3: dick Cutting does not lend it any credence, he's mad
Speaker 3: just to hear it being spoken by the lips of
Speaker 3: Dick Cutting, even if to be dismissed. Yes, so, Buchanan says,
Speaker 3: this doctor Walker has quite the imagination, and then Steig
Speaker 3: says the kind of imagination that could prove dangerous to us,
Speaker 3: And then Buchanan says, you mean the kind of imagination
Speaker 3: that could prove dangerous to him. Ooh, Buchanan is ruthless.
Speaker 3: Now next we get another what I thought was a
Speaker 3: highlight of the film, which is the meeting at city
Speaker 3: Hall scene. This is like twenty two twenty three minutes
Speaker 3: in Walk meets with the mayor and a bunch of
Speaker 3: big wigs, including a General Saunders, and oh my god,
Speaker 3: this guy's line deliveries. I don't know if you found
Speaker 3: them as hilarious as I did, but they're just perfect.
Speaker 3: He's I don't know if I can do an impression,
Speaker 3: but you know, they're they're introducing everybody, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm from the military called just concerned me. So Chat
Speaker 3: explains the creature with the Adam brain theory of the
Speaker 3: case by talking about Faraday's experiments with a frog's leg,
Speaker 3: you know, animating it with electricities, Like what if we
Speaker 3: could do the same thing but with a human with
Speaker 3: atomic rays and that, you know, basically like Colonel Sanders
Speaker 3: is oh wait, no, is that his name? Colonel? No? Sorry,
Speaker 3: General Saunders. The genuine mistake here, Okay, General Saunders, he says,
Speaker 3: oh sorry. Chat requests trucks and planes that can detect
Speaker 3: radiation so that they can find the headquarters of the
Speaker 3: Adam Brain monsters and General Saunders is like oil got
Speaker 3: through your.
Speaker 2: Plans, oh man, So now the investigation into the atom creatures,
Speaker 2: the Adam Brain creatures is about to have military support.
Speaker 3: This is I think we've talked about this before, but
Speaker 3: this is a way that a lot of stories from
Speaker 3: this era are structured that makes them I think not
Speaker 3: nearly as thrilling or high tension as they could be
Speaker 3: just in the plot wise, because it basically has the
Speaker 3: heroes aligned with like powerful forces and many you know,
Speaker 3: lots of backup, like the police and the military are
Speaker 3: aligned with the heroes helping search out the isolated, besieged
Speaker 3: bad guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of the lawful good agencies are going to
Speaker 2: align and will overcome the I guess lawful evil or
Speaker 2: maybe chaotoic evil forces of the villain. Like there's not
Speaker 2: really there's no conflict among them, there's no question of confidence.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of time.
Speaker 3: Really, all right. So somewhere in here there is a
Speaker 3: plot where Buchanan and Steig send a road assassin after
Speaker 3: chet Walker. They figured out that he's onto them, and
Speaker 3: they get this guy in a car like trying to
Speaker 3: chase him down and run him off the road, but
Speaker 3: instead they just follow him to a military airfield where
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, actually we need to do surveillance. This
Speaker 3: guy's got something big cooking. But next there is a
Speaker 3: scene at Chet and Joyce's house, and I thought the
Speaker 3: sequence of this whole scene, the arc here is hilarious.
Speaker 3: So first Chet comes home, Chet and Joyce are all
Speaker 3: over each other, of course, then they announced it's time
Speaker 3: for dinner. Then Joyce sees a newspaper has a banner
Speaker 3: headline do dead men walk city streets? Authorities tracking down
Speaker 3: all clues? Also some other headlines. I see building code
Speaker 3: under fire.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I feel that that was going to be
Speaker 2: the lead, but then this dead man walking the street
Speaker 2: thing popped up exactly.
Speaker 3: So Joyce gets the paper. She says, it's not true,
Speaker 3: is it? I assume she's not talking about the building code.
Speaker 3: She means like, is it true about the dead men?
Speaker 3: And Chet says better hide it from Penny. Say, I
Speaker 3: could use a really nice cold martini, So Joyce makes
Speaker 3: him one, and then as she is making him a
Speaker 3: nice cold martini, she's like, well, Pennies out playing in
Speaker 3: the street where the atomic brains are? Is that safe,
Speaker 3: and doctor Chet says, there seems to be some sort
Speaker 3: of definite pattern. Can't put my finger on it, but
Speaker 3: I do know that Hennessy and mcgral were killed for
Speaker 3: a reason. And then Joyce is like, well, it's all right.
Speaker 3: Then he didn't really answer the question, and Chet says, well,
Speaker 3: for a while, I don't think they've gotten around to
Speaker 3: indiscriminate killings yet.
Speaker 2: That's not even part of the plan has been described
Speaker 2: by Buchanan. They have very specific killings. These they're not
Speaker 2: random killings either, are specific vengeance killings.
Speaker 3: But so Chet seems to be like, yes, it is
Speaker 3: okay for Penny to play in the street with the
Speaker 3: Adam Brains. And then Penny comes inside. She asked for
Speaker 3: the newspaper because she wants to read the funnies, and
Speaker 3: they lie and tell her it didn't come today. Then
Speaker 3: she wants to turn on the TV, and they lie
Speaker 3: and tell her the TV is broken. You know, it
Speaker 3: must be new tubes or something. Then Chet gets his
Speaker 3: martini and he's like, ooh, I've been thinking about this
Speaker 3: all day, and then Dave arrives. Captain Dave here arrives
Speaker 3: to explain more Adam Brain news and then they send
Speaker 3: Penny to her room so she can't hear the conversation,
Speaker 3: and they have a whole big argument about it. Penny's like,
Speaker 3: you know, oh, I you know, I promise not to
Speaker 3: bother them. They're like, no, you must go. I think
Speaker 3: they tell her to go to her room and like
Speaker 3: punish Henrietta the doll or something. So there is this
Speaker 3: persistent theme about them systematically hiding knowledge of danger from
Speaker 3: Penny while actually not protecting her from the danger itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course I think you could make a
Speaker 2: lot out of that too as a commentary on people
Speaker 2: growing up in the nineteen fifties and even some subsequent decades.
Speaker 2: You know, not so much as it concerns the threat
Speaker 2: of adam brained walking corpses, but various other issues in life.
Speaker 2: You know, this sense of being overly protective in one
Speaker 2: way but not preparing a child at all for the
Speaker 2: realities of well, in this case, the walking dead.
Speaker 3: Right, So Dave has some information. He explains the backstory
Speaker 3: that he pieced together that could make sense of all this.
Speaker 3: There was this guy Buchanan, the old crime boss in town,
Speaker 3: who many years ago was tried and convicted of crime
Speaker 3: and then sent into exile in Italy. What was this
Speaker 3: like a common punishment in the nineteen forties, So you're
Speaker 3: convicted of being a mafia boss and instead of going
Speaker 3: to prison, you're sent to Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had the same head scratching situation with this detail,
Speaker 2: and I was looking it up and I can't find
Speaker 2: anything that would support this as an actual reality. I
Speaker 2: think you can get instant just some murky stuff about
Speaker 2: US states being able to exile people from a given state,
Speaker 2: But I didn't come across anything regarding like judicial exile,
Speaker 2: like unless Buchanan was an Italian national, I guess maybe
Speaker 2: that would make sense, but there's nothing to indicate that
Speaker 2: he is or was this is his name is Buchanan? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a Scottish name. Yeah, So I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe there's just something lost in and rewrites to the script.
Speaker 2: Like it's one thing if he was living in exile
Speaker 2: because he fled the law, like that seemed to match up.
Speaker 2: But this idea of being exiled, even in like the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, to another country because you were a criminal
Speaker 2: career a criminal, I just don't know if that makes
Speaker 2: any sense at all.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, Apparently when he was convicted, he stood up
Speaker 3: in court and swore revenge on Dia McGraw and everybody
Speaker 3: else who had testified against him at trial, which included Hennessy,
Speaker 3: who is his number two, but also included three other guys,
Speaker 3: and we'll meet them in a minute. We also will
Speaker 3: eventually learn via these repeated cables that they received from
Speaker 3: police in Rome, that while Buchanan was there, he made
Speaker 3: friends with a German scientist named Stig who did weird
Speaker 3: experiments on dogs, cats and monkeys involving atomic radiation. So
Speaker 3: it's all coming together now for the police investigators. But
Speaker 3: they think, okay, these other three guys who testified against Buchanan,
Speaker 3: they are in danger, so we got to round them up.
Speaker 3: And then at the very end of the scene, there's
Speaker 3: a strange thing where Joyce offers Chet a second Martini
Speaker 3: to take in the car with him. He turns it down,
Speaker 3: so she chugs it and then has a coughing fit.
Speaker 3: So it's like she can't.
Speaker 2: Hang stretch Like, even if it doesn't make sense, it's
Speaker 2: like the script is economic. They're fitting a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: Then there's no ways in space, even if we don't
Speaker 2: really understand what the point.
Speaker 3: Is, right, But we know what's gonna happen next, right,
Speaker 3: Buchanan's going to be sending Adam brainiacs to kill the
Speaker 3: three more guys, the others who testified against him. The
Speaker 3: police offer to let those guys stay in jail for
Speaker 3: their own protection, but they turn it down. They're like, no,
Speaker 3: I I'll be at home now.
Speaker 2: We're about I think at the thirty four minute mark
Speaker 2: here and there's we're gonna check back in with Dick
Speaker 2: Cutting for just an absolutely perfect newscast that brings to
Speaker 2: mind the newscaster from The Simpsons. You know, there's this
Speaker 2: great sort of issuing of an apology concerning the Adam
Speaker 2: brain creatures. I, for one, welcome our new Adam brain overlords,
Speaker 2: according Dick Cutting, so he says, And with the murder
Speaker 2: of Jason Oh so, one of the guys, one of
Speaker 2: the three guys gets murdered, Dick Cutting says, And with
Speaker 2: the murder of Jason Franshat last night, I must apologize
Speaker 2: for my recent skepticism regarding these atomic creatures.
Speaker 3: It seems they do exist and they are prowling the street.
Speaker 3: I love it, but I think there's a subtext also,
Speaker 3: which is like, but please do allow your children to
Speaker 3: continue to play in the street. We don't want them
Speaker 3: to know there could be any danger. And now a
Speaker 3: message from our sponsor, you know, healthy lung cigarettes.
Speaker 2: I do feel like this movie was sponsored by pipe smoke.
Speaker 2: There there's a lot of like Chat is always smoking
Speaker 2: a pipe. There scenes where two characters having conversations smoking
Speaker 2: pipes at the same time. I haven't seen this much
Speaker 2: pipe smoke since Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: We're going to get to a pipe scene in a minute, so,
Speaker 3: but first, there are those planes and trucks that the
Speaker 3: Chat requested earlier. They've got radium finders equipped and they're
Speaker 3: scanning the city to Adam Brain HQ. And there's a
Speaker 3: scene where Steig is out on the town. I think
Speaker 3: he's out getting medicine to treat his radiation poisoning. And
Speaker 3: he ducks into a bar to hide from the military
Speaker 3: because they're like doing a house to house with their
Speaker 3: bayonets out. I guess looking for I don't know any scientists.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what they're running around with. I
Speaker 3: guess they've got Geiger counters. Maybe they're scanning people to
Speaker 3: see like are you radioactive. So he runs into a
Speaker 3: bar to hide, orders a beer and then runs out
Speaker 3: through the back door, leaves radiation on his beer and
Speaker 3: they find that there. But they're like, oh, okay, so
Speaker 3: we're looking for this German accent guy. Then there is
Speaker 3: a research segment of the film rob I think you
Speaker 3: recently alluded to there's a like in each campaign of
Speaker 3: Arkham Horror, there's like a research segment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, this is our research segment for sure.
Speaker 3: Chet goes to consult a neurologist friend of his about
Speaker 3: Stig and his research. He learns all about Adam brain experiments.
Speaker 3: Actually not Adam brain experiments he learns about so I
Speaker 3: think the thing is he learns that there have been
Speaker 3: experiments that you can use electrodes to remotely control the
Speaker 3: behavior of other creatures like dogs. So they watch a
Speaker 3: film strip with an electric dog. That is the cutest
Speaker 3: thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yes, you'll never see fictional footage of dog mad science experiments.
Speaker 2: That is so adorable, because yeah, there's the implication on
Speaker 2: some level is that this is cruel and monstrous, but
Speaker 2: you don't get that from the footage because it's clearly
Speaker 2: like somebody's beloved pet dog with a couple of wires
Speaker 2: attached to its collar or something, or maybe just kind
Speaker 2: of like tucked into its fur, and then it's just
Speaker 2: doing dog stuff. They're like, look it barks on command,
Speaker 2: Look it sets down, and so forth.
Speaker 3: How can you imagine a dog doing something on command?
Speaker 3: But no, they're doing it by controlling its brain. But
Speaker 3: also it's fun because the dog is like, they're like,
Speaker 3: you here, by flipping this electrode, you can make it
Speaker 3: vicious and then it goes er. But it's the cutest dog,
Speaker 3: so it is. It's cute viciousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is like I don't know what kind
Speaker 2: of dog, like a bingee dog, you know, yeah, that
Speaker 2: level of dog.
Speaker 3: So that's the like electric control. But then I think
Speaker 3: they make the bridge to the atom brain thing by saying, oh,
Speaker 3: but could you control a dead person with this kind
Speaker 3: of method? And the guy's like no, because you wouldn't
Speaker 3: have the energy to power the body if they were
Speaker 3: no longer alive. But then Chad is like, what if
Speaker 3: you used atom rays? And then the guy's like, oh no,
Speaker 3: I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, we're not there yet, but kind of
Speaker 2: implying like it's a good idea though, like this is
Speaker 2: a good way to use corpses. But we're just not
Speaker 2: there yet.
Speaker 3: But this whole scene, they're just digging into some pipes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just so much pipe smoking. They both have
Speaker 2: one going.
Speaker 3: It's like, try some of my tobacco blend.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now from here there is a subplot where Buchanan and
Speaker 3: Styg resort to terrorism. They're trying to get the army
Speaker 3: to stop scanning with their radium finders, so they have
Speaker 3: one of the Adam brains call in from a payphone
Speaker 3: to the Army I guess to call somebody and say, like,
Speaker 3: stop your investigation or there will be disasters. And of
Speaker 3: course the authorities don't negotiate with Adam Brains, so they
Speaker 3: don't stop. And then we are treated to stock footage
Speaker 3: of like trains derailing and mountains exploding and stuff. We
Speaker 3: see a headline in the newspaper that says plane, bus
Speaker 3: and rail crashes stir public.
Speaker 2: Really in this calculation on the canon's part, because he
Speaker 2: always doing is antagonizing the military at this point, if
Speaker 2: he really wanted the heat to die down, they should
Speaker 2: have just stopped doing Adam brains for.
Speaker 3: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also, doesn't he have just like three more murders
Speaker 2: left to complete his his agenda? Here?
Speaker 3: I think he did one of the three, So he's
Speaker 3: got two more.
Speaker 2: Two murders left, and you're gonna go ahead and rile
Speaker 2: up the military. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like he should keep his eye on
Speaker 3: the ball, like they're really getting sidetracked. I feel like
Speaker 3: it would be harder to accomplish plane, bus and rail
Speaker 3: crashes than to just finish his business. Yeah, but oh no.
Speaker 3: Then we get to a scene where Dave Chet's friend
Speaker 3: gets Adam brained. He gets attacked by I think the
Speaker 3: one of the three guys who was on the murder list,
Speaker 3: the accountant, the former accountant of Buchanan. He gets killed
Speaker 3: in his house by an Adam brain. He gets turned
Speaker 3: into an Adam brain. He kills Dave in Dave's car,
Speaker 3: and then Dave gets adam brained.
Speaker 2: And we get to see the is this the Adam
Speaker 2: brain itself? Could? I couldn't make out all the detail
Speaker 2: when I was viewing it. It's just some sort of implied,
Speaker 2: some sort of like thing with wires on it. It's
Speaker 2: going to go into the open cranium because I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do we mention that all the Adam brains have like
Speaker 2: what appears to be stitching across their forehead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that their head has been opened up like a
Speaker 3: pet's dispenser and something is inserted in it. The thing
Speaker 3: is some kind of electrode brain plates. I think they
Speaker 3: install the plate in the brain to send electrodes down
Speaker 3: into the brain tissue to control the body remotely, and
Speaker 3: then they power it with the Adam rays. So they
Speaker 3: Adam brain Dave, and then they get Dave talking. They're
Speaker 3: like testing him out. They find that he can use
Speaker 3: his own vocal cords, so he won't sound like Buchanan
Speaker 3: when he talks. He'll sound like Dave. But they're like
Speaker 3: get you. They're like, you know, Captain Harris, say your
Speaker 3: name and he goes, my name is David Harris, Homicide Squad.
Speaker 3: And then they tuck a knife in his pants and
Speaker 3: they send him on his way. I think they're sending
Speaker 3: him to try to go kill chet Walker, the main guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since he can talk like Dave, he's more of
Speaker 2: an infiltration unit at this point.
Speaker 3: So there is a scene that I think is supposed
Speaker 3: to be very tense, but actually was mostly funny. Where
Speaker 3: Dave goes to Chet's house. Chet's not home, but Joyce
Speaker 3: and Penny are there. He comes to the door and
Speaker 3: Penny's like, who is it, and he goes, my name
Speaker 3: is David Harris, Captain Harris, homicide Squad. And she lets
Speaker 3: him in and Joyce is like, oh, why so formal, Dave?
Speaker 3: You sound terrible? Are you coming down with a cold?
Speaker 3: And he's playing with pennies Dolly while Penny goes into
Speaker 3: the kitchen to talk to her mom, and then Joyce
Speaker 3: just happens to let slip. She's like, oh, Chet had
Speaker 3: a brainstorm this morning, Dave something about giving out phony
Speaker 3: information to Buchanan about where the men in protective custody
Speaker 3: are when actually they are at the county jail. So
Speaker 3: now not realizing that Dave is actually Adam brain Dave,
Speaker 3: and now Buchanan has that information, you know where he's going.
Speaker 3: He's going to the county jail to get his revenge.
Speaker 3: But the end of the scene finally made sense sort
Speaker 3: of some of the lyrics from the Rocky Ears and song,
Speaker 3: which again I'd never seen the movie before, so I
Speaker 3: didn't know what this referred to, but there are some
Speaker 3: lyrics that say threw the doll right down, ripped its
Speaker 3: guts off, and threw it on the ground. And at
Speaker 3: the end of the scene, Penny comes back into the room,
Speaker 3: Dave is gone, but she finds her doll just smashed
Speaker 3: to pieces on the floor.
Speaker 2: If you're not familiar with the lyrics of rocky erics
Speaker 2: and songs, they often do have this kind of like
Speaker 2: stream of consciousness kind of quality to them, and they
Speaker 2: seem kind of cryptic and hard to decipher and don't
Speaker 2: always include proper grammar, but often uses improper grammar in
Speaker 2: ways that feel intentional and important to whatever he was
Speaker 2: trying to get across.
Speaker 3: Right, like the preposition ripped its guts off instead of
Speaker 3: out interesting and it doesn't have guts, it's a doll. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So Adam Brain Dave goes to get his revenge. Buchanan
Speaker 3: sends him to the jail where he he kills the
Speaker 3: other two witnesses. And then after that, Adam Brain Dave
Speaker 3: tries to kill Chet because Chet gets into a car
Speaker 3: with him and then they're like, crash the car, smash
Speaker 3: it to pieces, but Chet jumps out of the car
Speaker 3: in time to save himself. Though I don't know. If
Speaker 3: you jump out of a speeding car, that's you're gonna
Speaker 3: get hurt. That's not good for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not in movies. Though in movies you can just
Speaker 2: jump out of them and you're fine.
Speaker 3: It's the same principle as like if you jump up
Speaker 3: right before the crashing plane hits the ground, you'll be okay.
Speaker 3: But after this crash, the police recover Adam Brain Dave.
Speaker 3: Adam Brain Dave is damaged, so he's no longer following
Speaker 3: orders from Buchanan. But so they like they check him
Speaker 3: out and they're like, oh wow, look at all the
Speaker 3: electrodes in his brain. But he recovers some functionality. While
Speaker 3: in the hospital, does another window stunt, like he pushes
Speaker 3: the glass out of a window and then jumps out
Speaker 3: the window to shamble back to Adam Brain HQ. This
Speaker 3: leads the police in the military right to the bad
Speaker 3: guys and we have our final showdown. Buchanan gets mad
Speaker 3: at Steig for some reason. I don't remember why. Actually,
Speaker 3: Buchanan just kills Stig.
Speaker 2: I think the Stig finally is like I can't take
Speaker 2: it anymore. This is too much murder. I wasn't in
Speaker 2: it for the murder. I was just in it for
Speaker 2: the resurrection of the dead. And so he brains him
Speaker 2: with a with a some sort of eye ranch or
Speaker 2: something before he can destroy the machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Buchanan then he gets all of his Adam
Speaker 3: brains active at once. There's like ten of them, and
Speaker 3: he's like, go out attack the police kill them all.
Speaker 3: So there's a big fight where the police are all
Speaker 3: fighting with Adam brains on the lawn and then Chet
Speaker 3: has to go inside and smash up the machine. But
Speaker 3: before he can do that, Buchanan corners him and there's
Speaker 3: like a there's a showdown there. But ultimately Buchanan is
Speaker 3: destroyed by his own wrath because one of the Adam
Speaker 3: brains comes in and grabs it. I think it's the
Speaker 3: Adam brain Dave maybe come in and grabs Buchanan and
Speaker 3: strangles him. He kills him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, destroyed by his own Adam brains. A fitting ending there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then they destroy the Adam Ray machine and
Speaker 3: that powers down all of the Adam brains on the
Speaker 3: lawn and and good prevails over evil.
Speaker 2: Pretty pretty solid ending mostly by the books. I loved
Speaker 2: the battle on the lawn between the Adam brains and
Speaker 2: law and military.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: It was better than I expected it to be. And
Speaker 2: again you get the people, you know, firing bullets through
Speaker 2: the Adam brains and a lot of like crunching and
Speaker 2: so forth. But then we close things out though with
Speaker 2: the family unit at the dinner table with with with
Speaker 2: Chet and his family.
Speaker 3: And that's enough of that. Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: We get this super weird ending where the little girl
Speaker 2: what's her name, Henrietta.
Speaker 3: No, Henrietta is the doll that got get stripped off.
Speaker 3: The girl is Penny.
Speaker 2: Penny, yes, sorry, Penny is asking about Uncle Dave. She's like,
Speaker 2: where's Uncle Dave? And they don't tell her that he's dead.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, he's gone for a little while, Which
Speaker 2: is crazy, right, because it's one thing to you know,
Speaker 2: obviously you want to keep it age appropriate. You don't
Speaker 2: have to tell her that a career criminal and a
Speaker 2: mad scientist murdered him and then stuffed his brain with
Speaker 2: electrodes and reanimated his corpse and made it do murders.
Speaker 2: But to just be like, oh, the Uncle Dave went
Speaker 2: away for a little bit. He's on a vacation. No, No,
Speaker 2: Uncle Dave is dead, Like, at least tell her he's dead.
Speaker 3: He went up to an Adam farm upstate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so weird and perhaps you know, telling of
Speaker 2: how you know we approached the protection of our children
Speaker 2: in previous decades. I don't know.
Speaker 3: All right, Well that's all I got to say about
Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain. Why is he acting so strange?
Speaker 3: It's because he is a creature with an Adam brain.
Speaker 3: The mystery is solved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fun one. If you enjoy fifties B movies,
Speaker 2: this is a solid and entertaining good time.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's again it's not not top tier for genre and
Speaker 2: time period, but pretty solid. It's never boring. There's a
Speaker 2: lot a lot to love here. As always, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on the movie of the week, Creature with the Adam Brain,
Speaker 2: if you have thoughts on the music of Rocky ericson
Speaker 2: as it relates to this movie, or just in general,
Speaker 2: well yeah, right in we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 2: about that as well. A reminder that we're primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast here at Stuff to Blow your mind with
Speaker 2: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on weird House Cinema. If you want to
Speaker 2: see a complete list of the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years here for weird House Cinema, you can go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E
Speaker 2: or boxb dot com. We have a profile there called
Speaker 2: weird House and we have a list of all the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered, and you can do all sorts of
Speaker 2: neat filters to see like what decades and you know
Speaker 2: what genres and so forth. And I also blog about
Speaker 2: visasimmutemusic dot com. I'll definitely do a blog post for
Speaker 2: this movie, because I want to make sure that I
Speaker 2: throw in somewhere where you can stream that Rocky ericson
Speaker 2: song and compare it to the film.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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