CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN-Columbia-1955- I’m really a fan of the ‘50’s low budget filmmaker Edward L. Cahn. He made lots of fun classic stuff in the decade of McCarthyism, drive-ins, TV dinners, the first wave of Rock & Roll and racial unrest. He started as an editor at Universal and became head of the department in 1926.
Five years later he directed his first movie, LAW AND ORDER, a western starring Walter Huston. He kept making movies like THE GAS HOUSE KIDS IN HOLLYWOOD (1947) and I CHEATED THE LAW (1949).
He showed a little of “things to come” in 1950 when he directed EXPERIMENT ALCATRAZ featuring soon to be Inspector Henderson Robert Shayne as a hardened criminal who uses a rehabilitation experiment on “The Rock” as an excuse to kill a rival.
Then in 1955 Cahn unleashed this little opus concerning an exiled gangster’s revenge on the people who crossed him. Simple, right?
Wrong! This gangster (Michael Granger) uses reanimated dead men to do his dirty work! They have pasty white faces and stitches (ala Frankenstein) around their foreheads where the gangster’s German scientist/creator/war criminal/pal (Gregory Gaye/Gay) has planted the title device. All the gangster has to do is talk into a microphone. Through a special TV screen he can see everything his undead henchmen are doing. He can project his voice through them too. And he and the scientist do everything. They even perform the operations that turn the corpses into zombies!
Richard Denning stars as Dr. Chet Walker, a police-scientist who figures out the plot (I guess he read the script) and notices that the dead guys leave radiation trances whenever they strike. This leads to an all out confrontation between the undead gang and a small group of soldiers and policemen. Close-ups in these scenes look as if they could have influenced George Romero on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD! Actually many of these scenes are used earlier in the film to depict the first all out creature attack! Flash forwards?! Shades of Al Adamson!
In the end, Denning’s police-man/ friend (S. John Launer, now a “creature”) kills the gangster and allows our hero to destroy the atomic machine which in turn causes the creatures to drop like flies (there’s only about eight of them anyway). All’s well that end’s well as a newspaper headline exclaims: “ Creatures With The Atom Brains Destroyed”.
The titanic story and screenplay are provided by the legendary Curt Siodmak who is best known, I guess for having written “ Donovan’s Brain”. He also worked on many of the classic Universal horror movies of the ‘40’s after leaving the Germany film industry in the early ‘30’s. He scripted Karloff’s “comeback” film, THE CLIMAX.
The executive producer was none other than the infamous Sam Katzman whose credits are too numerous to name here! For some reason, “Churn ‘Em Out” Sam is uncredited. Maybe he was too busy and forgot. He produced 10 other features in 1955.
Another note is that cinematographer Fred Jackson shot the amazing EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS the next year (which Katzman produced). Mischa Bakaleinikoff did music for tons of low budget movies. This score for CWTAB isn’t very memorable. In fact, I don’t remember much music at all except during the eerie opening credits when a resurrected victim comes closer and closer to the screen. The poster (available from The Nostalgia Factory) says “Based On Scientific Facts” And in actuality some of the dialogue (especially between Walker and an egghead scientist) is based on scientific fact and theory. So in an exploitation kind of way this tag line is true!
Interestingly enough, the actress who plays Denning’s screen wife, Angela Stevens was in several low budget features but had un-credited roles in two major movies: FROM HERE TO ENTERNITY (1953) and THE WILD ONE (1954). Little Jill Bennett who plays The Walkers’ young daughter Penny wound up in FULL IMPACT (1997), a direct to video action drama starring Gary Daniels. Rounding out the cast is Tristram Coffin, a familiar character actor in tons of films and movies (he’s in “The Duke Of Gluton” episode of The Abbott & Costello Show) as a DA and one of the first victims.
Which brings us to the star of our show Richard Denning, best known to TV audiences in the re-occurring role as the governor on HAWAII 5-0. He started out in the early thirties and eventually played in some classic low budget films like TARGET EARTH and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (both 1954). He was later in Corman’s DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1956) and THE BLACK SCORPION (1957), which featured some wild Willis O’Brien stop motion animation. The same year as CWTAB Cahn also helmed BETRAYED WOMEN, a girls behind bars flick.
CREATURE is a fast, enjoyable little romp which while quite serious in tone never becomes too serious to be un-entertaining. And hey, Eddie C. wouldn’t rest on his laurels with this neglected opus. Hell, he still had THE SHE CREATURE, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU, IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE, INVISIBLE INVADERS and THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE yet to come! Plus a batch of JD and crime dramas (two with Mamie Van Doren)! This guy Cahn rules!
Side note: Punk rocker Roky Erickson did a song based on this movie. Here's a link to a You Tube tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVcK2BRvCgU
Thanks for reading!
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