The Worst Film Ever

Expected more

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Edward L. Cahn directed this wacky Science Fiction thriller that stars Richard Denning as police doctor Chet Walker, hot on the trail of a gangster who is using an ex-Nazi scientist in his reanimating experiments to resurrect his dead thugs in order to take over the city. Fortunately, the process involved leaves a trail of radiation in its wake, making it easy for the authorities to pinpoint their exact location, which leads to a climatic battle of the living good guys against the bad dead... Silly film produced by Sam Katzman has no originality or credibility at all, though it is innocuous enough to be a guilty pleasure for some viewers!

This just Misses being an Unadulterated Classic like say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), it is nonetheless, at times, a Great Looking, Sleekly Designed, Bizarro Story that Anticipated things it never Anticipated.Like the Enduring and Endless Trend of Zombie Movies. Cold War Mind Control Experiments and its Fascination to this Day. Manchurian Candidates doing the Bidding of those at the Controls. Go here. Go there. Kill Him. Come home.It is a Fantastic Film Filled to the Brim with Unforgettable Stuff. Its Creep Factor High and Fun Enough for Fans and those Slumming for Something Unusual. It is Stuck in the Mid-Fifties and Women are Sex Objects and Kitchen Dwellers. Bend over Honey (with a lingering shot of the Backside), and Whip that Cake Batter (while ignoring the Zombie in the Living Room).This is more than Your Rank-and-File Fifties B-Movie Schlock. There are some Very Violent Scenes (notice the squibs not usually found in this type of thing), a Cool Mad Lab, Children in Peril (Psychologically), and much more to Recommend. Unintentionally Influential and Made for Double Features and Drive-Ins, this one is in the Upper-Atmosphere of Atomic Paranoia Movies and is so much more Entertaining than it would seem at First Glance.

With the advent of CGI, movies have become merely formulaic exercises in headache inducing and needlessly complicated special effects. This is especially true as regards the horror genre. Nowadays, directors operate under the erroneous assumption that STARTLING an audience is the equivalent of inducing tension and dread in an audience. "The Creature With The Atomic Brain" was the second part of a horror double-header with "It Came From Beneath The Sea" as the main attraction. As kids, we came to the theater to see the giant octopus. It was touted in numerous television ads,as was the custom with horror movies in the 50s. Part of the success of "The Creature With The Atomic Brain" was that we had no expectation of what was going to transpire and the plot developments presented had not as yet, in the mid-50s, become trite. This double feature was intended to get preteen kids to drag their parents to the movie theater. This we did. By 1955-1956, when this movie had its run, we had seen "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", "Creature From The Black Lagoon", "House Of Wax", "Them". The only film that induced the same level of fear & dread in kids was "Them" because ants are everywhere and the god-awful noise the giant ants made in the the movie is replicated by engine noises emanating from ill-maintained auto engines. If you were an eight year old kid walking alone at night and you heard that peculiar warbling noise in the distance, you soiled your pants,ran home and locked the door. The atomic brain creatures were similarly fearsome because they could be anyone, anywhere. The only way to avoid them was to discern the incision scar around their foreheads and, if you saw such a scar, to haul ass out of there. This was a very minor unpretentious horror movie that succeeded in providing its juvenile audiences (and the parents they dragged along) with the delight of experiencing capably induced tension & fear.

It feels very much like a precursor to Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985), even though the original stories that was based on predates Creature by at least 30 years.Still, with a luminous serum, and re-animated corpses, it would be like if you had Dr. Hill funding Dr. Herbert West from the beginning and what would follow in their wake (anybody that knows Re-Animator knows that West couldn't stomach the idea of someone controlling his research, but let's say that he put up with it. This feels like that what if scenario playing out, which of course, is fun for someone like me).In the place of Dr. West is the ex Nazi scientist, Dr Chet Walker and in place of the Hill character is the mob boss, Frank Buchanan. Chet does the re-animating, and Frank controls the corpses with some kind of communicator (sound familiar?) for them to basically do his bidding. He not only sends them out to kill select targets, but also to terrorize the town. The final act involves a big blow out showdown with the corpses rising, facing off with the cops.Hot on their trail are police detectives trying to track them down and stop them. And other than the series of assassinations via animated corpse, the film focuses a lot on the investigation, rather than the Dr. Chet/Frank characters (they get a fair amount of screen time, enough for this film). While on the other side of the spectrum, Re-Animator focuses on the character who would pretty much get wrapped up into assisting Dr. West in his experiments and Dr. West himself and the rivalry between West and Hill becomes a key plot point as well. Also, in Re-Animator, West and Hill are both so much more alive and wonderfully over the top, and therefor, far more watchable than the Chet/Frank characters of Creature (which is why focusing less on these characters in Creature isn't such a downside. They're not bad, just not as entertaining, but they do a sufficient job).Re-Animator is also a much smaller film, sticking to a few key specific indoor locations (including its really awesome finale in the hospital morgue) and characters, while Creature is much more broad, expansive, with plenty of outdoor sequences (including the final epic showdown) and tons of characters floating around. So, the films are very different storywise and feel very different, but have some really key similarities that make it fun watching and comparing them.In the end, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator is the better film, but Creature With the Atom Brain is still a lot of fun, even if slower paced (which is not to say slower paced is a bad thing at all, but just to give a heads up to those who might consider watching this), and the final moments with what the girl names her dolly and how she feels about it just makes me smile for no real reason associated directly with anything else that goes on in the film.I could totally see these two films as an awesome double bill, maybe at a drive in theater. I'm getting chills just thinking about it.