Edward L. Cahn was a director who got work done. There's his work on American-International Pictures, his Our Gang comedies and a movie that inspired Alien - which inspired a lot of movies in its wake - called It! The Terror from Beyond Space. He also made Invisible Invaders which has pretty much the same plot as this film.
A killer with the fingerprints of a dead man that leaves radiation behind? Yeah, that's the kind of mystery that we can get into. Mob boss Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger, who was the original Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof) was kicked out of our country by his own gang, but found a German scientist and Operation:Paperclip'd him into his service. Now, when he needs revenge or someone killed, he uses his atomic powered brained zombies to do his wetwork.
Luckily, perennial scientist hero Richard Denning is here to save the day. He's Dr. Chet Walker here, but he also played Dr. Mark Williams in Creature from the Black Lagoon, geologist Dr. Hank Scott in The Black Scorpion and another geologist named Dr. Rick in Day the World Ended. He was also the radio husband to Lucille Ball before I Love Lucy made it to TV. He was also married to Evelyn Ankers, who was menaced by Universal Monsters in The Wolf Man, Ghost of Frankenstein and Son of Dracula.
The love interest in this one - Joyce Walker - is played by Angela Stevens, who appeared in several Three Stooges shorts and nearly had her career ended by the attack of an ocelot at a dress shop. This really happened.
Creature with the Atom Brain inspired a song by Roxy Erickson, which is pretty great as well. It even has voiceover samples from this movie. It comes from his album The Evil One, which has the songs "If You Have Ghosts," "I Think of Demons," "I Walked with a Zombie" and "Night of the Vampire."
You have to love any movie with the tagline "Terror true to science, based on laboratory experiments described in national magazines!" What magazines? True Detective?
While this may have been the first movie to use squibs for bullet wounds, it was also an incredibly low budget film. How low? So low that Chan shot it with as few breaks and edits as possible, which means that characters are constantly sitting, standing, pacing and doing anything to keep the long shots from seeming like lengthy shots, even going to other rooms with no cuts whatsoever.
Second version: Director Edward L. Cahn started by directing Our Gang shorts but made some of the most important science fiction movies of the 50s, including Invasion of the Saucer Men and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. It was written by Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, I Walked With a Zombie and Donovan's Brain.
Gangster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) has taken advantage of Operation Paperclip by getting Nazi scientist Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye) in his employ and using the man to bring back people from the dead with atomic radiation so that they can kill for him. They leave behind atomic fingerprints and how amazing is that?
Made by Sam Katzman's Clover Productions for Columbia, this was one of the first movies to use squibs. Cahn would make pretty much the same movie all over again as Invisible Invaders.
This movie is memorable to me because it's the inspiration for the Roky Erickson song of the same name:
Creature with the atom brain Creature with the atom brain Why is he acting so strange Do you think he's one of them?
Threw the doll right down Ripped it's guts off And threw it on the ground Creature with the atom brain.
A killer with the fingerprints of a dead man that leaves radiation behind? Yeah, that's the kind of mystery that we can get into. Mob boss Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger, who was the original Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof) was kicked out of our country by his own gang, but found a German scientist and Operation:Paperclip'd him into his service. Now, when he needs revenge or someone killed, he uses his atomic powered brained zombies to do his wetwork.
Luckily, perennial scientist hero Richard Denning is here to save the day. He's Dr. Chet Walker here, but he also played Dr. Mark Williams in Creature from the Black Lagoon, geologist Dr. Hank Scott in The Black Scorpion and another geologist named Dr. Rick in Day the World Ended. He was also the radio husband to Lucille Ball before I Love Lucy made it to TV. He was also married to Evelyn Ankers, who was menaced by Universal Monsters in The Wolf Man, Ghost of Frankenstein and Son of Dracula.
The love interest in this one - Joyce Walker - is played by Angela Stevens, who appeared in several Three Stooges shorts and nearly had her career ended by the attack of an ocelot at a dress shop. This really happened.
Creature with the Atom Brain inspired a song by Roxy Erickson, which is pretty great as well. It even has voiceover samples from this movie. It comes from his album The Evil One, which has the songs "If You Have Ghosts," "I Think of Demons," "I Walked with a Zombie" and "Night of the Vampire."
You have to love any movie with the tagline "Terror true to science, based on laboratory experiments described in national magazines!" What magazines? True Detective?
While this may have been the first movie to use squibs for bullet wounds, it was also an incredibly low budget film. How low? So low that Chan shot it with as few breaks and edits as possible, which means that characters are constantly sitting, standing, pacing and doing anything to keep the long shots from seeming like lengthy shots, even going to other rooms with no cuts whatsoever.
Second version: Director Edward L. Cahn started by directing Our Gang shorts but made some of the most important science fiction movies of the 50s, including Invasion of the Saucer Men and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. It was written by Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, I Walked With a Zombie and Donovan's Brain.
Gangster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) has taken advantage of Operation Paperclip by getting Nazi scientist Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye) in his employ and using the man to bring back people from the dead with atomic radiation so that they can kill for him. They leave behind atomic fingerprints and how amazing is that?
Made by Sam Katzman's Clover Productions for Columbia, this was one of the first movies to use squibs. Cahn would make pretty much the same movie all over again as Invisible Invaders.
This movie is memorable to me because it's the inspiration for the Roky Erickson song of the same name:
Creature with the atom brain Creature with the atom brain Why is he acting so strange Do you think he's one of them?
Threw the doll right down Ripped it's guts off And threw it on the ground Creature with the atom brain.