Edward L. Cahn
I'm definitely a fan! The name of this b-movie director probably won't ring any bells, but I invite everyone here to click on his name and check out his impressive repertoire! He was an incredibly busy bee, with sometimes up to twelve movies directed per year, and active in various fields and genres like crime, western and horror. Admittedly he never made any true classics or influential milestones, but he did deliver a lot of fun movies like "It! The Terror from Beyond Space", "Invasion of the Saucer Men" and "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake". And, most of all, he – unwarily – contributed to the historic development of cinematic zombies with this unbelievably underrated and surprisingly suspenseful "Creature with the Atom Brain". This is just my own personal theory, but creation of zombie cinema roughly occurred in four phases and, as far as I know, this cool little movie kick-started phase II
Phase I started it all with the legendary pioneer movie "White Zombie", featuring what is arguably Bela Lugosi's best performance (yes, better than "Dracula"). In these very first zombie movies the living dead are portrayed as disciplined and docile slaves, solely resurrected from their graves to work for evil plantation owners. To a lesser extent, "I Walked with a Zombie" and "King of the Zombies" also fit into this initial phase. Then we have phase II with this "Creature with the Atom Brain". The zombies are still just slaves, but now they are brought back from the dead to serve as controllable murderers with superhuman strengths. The idea is brilliant, as far as I'm concerned, and results in a handful of truly suspenseful and innovative sequences. "Invisible Invaders", also directed by Edward L. Cahn, also belongs in phase II and here the zombies are controlled by extraterrestrials. Phase III – a very short one – almost exclusively contains the very first adaptation of Richard Matheson's monumental novel "I Am Legend", retitled "The Last Man on Earth" and starring genre icon Vincent Price. After a worldwide deadly plague, the dead rise again and act entirely by themselves for the very first time, but they are more reminiscent to vampires since they only come into action after dark. Then, of course, we have George A. Romero to thank for phase IV, as he made zombies to what they still are to this date with "Night of the Living Dead": vile and merciless undead monsters that hunt down the living in order to feast on their flesh and brains.
So, I'm probably exaggerating a bit, but I personally think that "Creature with the Atom Brain" is a historically relevant little B-movie. But more importantly, it's a very clever and entertaining '50s horror gem with action and suspense. Frank Buchanan, a nation-wide feared mafia gangster enlists the help of a brilliant former Nazi-scientist to extract vengeance on all the people responsible for his conviction. Through zombies that are brought back to life with atomic energy and remote-controlled through brain wave manipulation, he kills off prosecutors but also fellow gangsters that betrayed him, while he remains within the safe and heavily isolated walls of his mansion. The screenplay of "Creature with the Atom Brain" is very talkative and many of the dialogs are quite tacky, but the underlying ideas of the film are compelling and – as stated above – quite renewing. The film does remain a low-budgeted '50s Sci-Fi/horror production, so naturally the special effects are cheap and cheesy. Still, the close-up zombie hit men are rather uncanny. Edward L. Cahn also maintains a grim atmosphere throughout and even the sequences with the head investigator's 6-year-old daughter aren't that irritating. Good movie, strongly recommended to horror fans with an open-minded mentality.
So, I'm probably exaggerating a bit, but I personally think that "Creature with the Atom Brain" is a historically relevant little B-movie. But more importantly, it's a very clever and entertaining '50s horror gem with action and suspense. Frank Buchanan, a nation-wide feared mafia gangster enlists the help of a brilliant former Nazi-scientist to extract vengeance on all the people responsible for his conviction. Through zombies that are brought back to life with atomic energy and remote-controlled through brain wave manipulation, he kills off prosecutors but also fellow gangsters that betrayed him, while he remains within the safe and heavily isolated walls of his mansion. The screenplay of "Creature with the Atom Brain" is very talkative and many of the dialogs are quite tacky, but the underlying ideas of the film are compelling and – as stated above – quite renewing. The film does remain a low-budgeted '50s Sci-Fi/horror production, so naturally the special effects are cheap and cheesy. Still, the close-up zombie hit men are rather uncanny. Edward L. Cahn also maintains a grim atmosphere throughout and even the sequences with the head investigator's 6-year-old daughter aren't that irritating. Good movie, strongly recommended to horror fans with an open-minded mentality.