 |
 |
Review by E.C.McMullen Jr. |
||
THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN- 1968USA Release: AUG! 18, 1968 Crown International Release, Paragon Films Inc., Sans-S Rating: N/A |
||||
 |
Page 1 MADMEN OF MANDORAS |
SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLE FEATURE
In my review of MADMEN OF MANDORAS I referred to the unbelievable idea of its catchy hook. A concept so wild, yet so ignored by its original creators, that it was sold to a different audience entirely, when a strong and money spending audience, hungry for SciFi, would have gobbled it up - had they only known it existed.
That all changed six years after the release of MADMEN OF MANDORAS (Action Adventure!) when it had the chance to go to television.
MADMEN OF MANDORAS was only 64 minutes long. Networks loved stuffing a turkey movie full of commercials and had no problem editing a movie down to fit in more advertisements, but really, No one would sit for a two hour movie run time that had nearly an hour of commercials. Especially for a movie like MADMEN OF MANDORAS .
Also, the title itself isn't about what the movie is about. It doesn't appeal to the right audience. An audience that would actually want to see this movie. So let's give it a proper title and add an extra half hour or so to it. And thus, MADMEN OF MANDORAS was given new life as THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN.
So the distributors got a bunch of UCLA film students to show the world what they could do: which was crap.
|
The extra 27 minutes of padding at the beginning of THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN makes a bad movie, already in Negative Shriek Girl territory, even worse.
Instead of starting with an elephant, the movie starts with a scientist who is taking top secret papers home with him. As he is watched by a couple of business suit wearing hippies, the scientist gets into his car, which he parked at a gas station (???), and it explodes.
THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN introduces us to the long-haired, modsquad secret agent hip-cats, Vic Gilbert (who knows?) and Toni Gordon (Tari Tabakin: DEATHMASTER, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? [1991]). These two young kids, blindly feeling their way around 1960's sexual equality, wear styles that are a *facepalm* dead difference between the rest of MADMEN OF MANDORAS in 1963, when 1950s style still held sway. Vic and Hitler-head's henchmen all have thick mustaches and long hair covering their ears. Toni doesn't want to be sexually objectified and she underlines that by wearing what was known as a micro-miniskirt (hey, just because I prefer to go out dressed as a clown sometimes, is no reason to treat me like a HONK! HONK!).
Of course, as padding to the original flick, Vic and Toni can't possibly have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
Actually they could, but the UCLA film school students of 1968 weren't up to it. Or at least the bunch the distributors picked, at any rate.
So after 27 minutes of tedious shenanigans that go nowhere, everybody we've been introduced to dies and MADMEN OF MANDORAS begins. But at least we can't wait for that moment when we see Hitler's giant brain strangling people with its spinal cord, right?
 FREAKY WICKED, EH? IT NEVER HAPPENS. |
Right?
No, that never happened in MADMEN OF MANDORAS so that never happens here.
Expect to see no continuity in this movie. Car chases will go on day and night and day and night again. A car will go off the road out of control at night, become a different car as it crashes during the day, and explode on impact as a different car at night again.
The bad guy's car that was chasing it, will arrive the next day to check out the fire, which will be burning at night, and leave the next day.
When you're dealing with as much cheap stock footage as possible, you take what you can get.
Really, after the 27 minutes of padding, it's strictly a step back, 6 years in time to finish off the rest of the movie (and for 1963, one year before the introduction of the long-haired band, The Beatles, that apparently was crucial). Adolph Hitler (Bill Freed. This movie was his second and last) makes a hammy appearance, but his brain never does.
So why did THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN become the more popular of the two movies? It had to be that damn padding, right?
No! It's the freaking title change!
THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN!
That title change, so perfectly tuned to the movie's original concept, was so influential, that you see its thumbprints in many comedies that came after. From Steve Martin's DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID to his THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS.
It's the title that's been covered by The Simpson's (They Saved Lisa's Brain) and Futurama. Even the illustrious Jack Kirby was inspired by the concept to re-imagine it for introducing a new, and possibly his most horrific villain, in issue #209 of Captain America.1
TRIVIA 1 |
That title is so popular that... no, it's too much to go into. Instead, I'll link to its Wikipedia page.
That's right, just the new title alone has its own Wikipedia page and all of the history that came after!
Both movies also have the same terrible ending. An ending that was referenced in George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (Steven did it way better, though. He knew when to Stop).
And this reveals the bizarre history and journey of a bizarre movie. A movie so strange, that it was remade into a worse movie that made more money, for no other reason but that the worst of the two was marketed better using nothing more than a title change.
Even more, it was the horrendous graft-job of THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN that got the pristine new Transfer from the 35mm elements, not MADMEN OF MANDORAS. It was even sold to the unwary as the 92 Minute version! They actually used the 27 minutes of meandering crap as a selling point!
Indie film makers, take note: take a long sobering note.
Two Shriek Girls.
This review copyright 2014 E.C.McMullen Jr.
|
| GET SOME CLOTHES ON | |
FEO AMANTE'S HORROR THRILLERCreated by:E.C.McMullen Jr. FOLLOW ME @ |
| Amazon |
| ECMJr |
| Feo Blog |
| IMDb |
| Stage32 |
| Twitter X |
| YouTube |
| Zazzle Shop |