Daniel C. M
Solid and actually quite impressive sci-fi zombie flick with nice performances, sets, effects, and story.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
11/02/24
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CodyZamboni Z
Dumb, low budget horror sci fi, Ending images pre date zombie movie imagery.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
08/04/24
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Bill T
Waaaaaay better than average zombie / mad scientist / commie scare? film about a hoodlum who gets together with a german scientist to ressurect the dead with atomic energy and commands them to kill all of those who put him in jail previously! This was a LOT better than I was expecting, lots of fun with the zombies, the good looking cop trying to figure out what's going on, and the general hysteria of the so-called zombies (aka, insert your own commie-brainwashing symbolism here). Should be much more well known than it should be.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
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Audience Member
"The Creature with the Atom Brain" is OK. That's all. I was originally intending to give the movie a rating of only two starts, but the performances in the movie are uniformly good. The late Richard Dennis is especially good as the movie's hero Dr. Chet Walker. On the strength of some good performances I added an additional half star to my rating. The story is fine as well for the most part. The reanimated corpses are a bit silly, but for what its worth they are all well and good. The climax of the movie is well done also. Basically, despite being just a mediocre movie, there are some positive things to say about "The Creature with the Atom Brain" that make it at least entertaining and worth seeing at least once.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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Audience Member
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.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The first film I saw at my first B-Fest, so it has a special place in my heart. It's a pretty entertaining 50s B-movie.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
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