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And what, you may
be asking, is this Brainathon '99 this idiot has been
going on about for weeks? Simply put, it is an evil
plan put together by Andrew Borntreger, the Master of Badmovies.org,
whereby seven separate review sites all gang up on the same
bad movie (I personally envision us surrounding it and beating
it with sticks, but then, I'm a Southern Boy). The plan,
desire and coordination was Andrew's, but I think it was
High Priest of Jabootu, the Reverend Ken Begg who suggested the movie we would all victimize.
And Alan Gallauresi at Oh,
the Humanity! provided the ultra-cool
graphics. If well-enough received, this might turn into
a tradition, and then no movie on Earth will be safe.
The best part for me, of course,
is that I once again have the opportunity to steal some
of Andrew's video caps from his superior system. Direct
links to the other sites in our unofficial Web Ring are
after the review; follow them around and view tonight's
offering through other eyes.
Now, without further ado, BRAINATHON
'99 presents.......
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There is one celebrity gag in It Came from Hollywood
that made me laugh, rather than sigh heavily. And that is when
Dan Ackroyd bursts through some double doors, wearing surgical scrubs
and a semi-Vincent Price moustache. He was also carrying in his
hands a human brain, which he then proceeded to thrust at the camera
while screeching, "Look! A Brain! Eek! A Brain!"
It's funny, because it's true: here is Bad Movie Philosophy in a
nutshell.
What the hell is it about brains? We learn
about them in health class, along with all the other organs that
slosh around inside us. As a lifelong horror fan, I've seen a lot
of innards tossed around, and they do rank on a kind of ooky-ometer:
kidneys get sort of an eh, intestines a eew, hearts
an eeeEEEEeeewww! (especially if still beating) and the liver
a do they really jiggle that much? But nothing beats
the superstitious dread summoned up by the brain. While all the
other organs seem slimy, the brain seems sorta gooey; the others
smooth and honest and proletarian, the brain all crinkly and duplicitous
and alien. Perhaps it is the brain's function as receptacle
of what is qualifiably us, possibly the very seat of our
souls, that gives the brain this mythic power; place a brain on
a table in the center of a room and just stare at it - yeah, right,
it may be dead, but there's always a niggling little voice in the
back of your head that's pretty sure it's still thinking. Probably
about you.
Thus there are a whole slew of movies that are content
to simply shriek at us, "Look! A Brain! Eek! A Brain!"
Most crap movie aficionados can come up with four or five titles
without a single wrinkle touching their brows. There's at least
two horror movies that claim to be about brains, but are really
about heads (The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and They Saved
Hitler's Brain, the big cheaters). Come on: I defy anyone to
name me a movie of quality that features a naked brain. Anybody?
Anyone?
Good. If you had, I would have insisted you leave.
Now let's get on with The Brain from Planet Arous.
The
movie starts with a picturesque view of a mountain in a desert vista.
What appears to be an abnormally bright star grows in intensity
- and size - as the credits roll. The first credit is "Howco
International Presents..." causing a moment of deja vu for
me. Hm... desert... Howco... now where have I.... wait.... was it.......Mesa
of Lost Women!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Sorry. I had a bit of a Blair Witch moment
there. Well, actually, had it been a Blair Witch moment,
it would have been:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
F*CK! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! F*CK!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Okay, I think to myself, Okay... calm down. We can
do this. I'm not alone. I've got six other sites backing me up on
this. So I continue to watch as the star moves across the mountain
and lands with a great explosion.
Later, 'nuclear scientist' Steve Marsh (John Agar)
is puzzled by intermittent bursts of radiation emanating from "Mystery
Mountain" (another open call: does any place in the world other
than Scooby Doo Land actually possess a 'Mystery Mountain'?) Taking
leave of his fiancee, Sally (Joyce Meadows), he and his assistant
Dan (the likable Robert Fuller) pack their desert gear and head
out for the source of the bursts.
Finding
a new tunnel freshly blasted into the mountain, the two scientists
journey ever deeper into the earth, enticed by flashes of light
where there should be none. Finally, in a dead end cave, they are
confronted by the title character, a ghostly image of a huge floating
brain with glowing eyes. It introduces itself as Gor from the Planet
Arous, who has ventured to Earth to lord it over us savages. Step
one involves killing Dan with a burst of gamma rays, Step Two is
shrinking itself down and entering the body of Steve, a process
which looks like it hurts.
When
Steve shows up at Sally's house a few days later, he's acting just
a bit... off. When Sally asks where Dan is, his reply is a guilty,
muttered "Oh, he went to Vegas...", then a kiss nearly
turns to rape, with Steve actually tearing at her clothes; the attack
is only stopped when Sally's dog, George, jumps Steve. Steve leaves
hurriedly; when Sally's father, Mr. Fallon (Thomas Browne Henry)
stops by his lab to check on Steve, the scientist melts down and
yells at him to leave. As soon as he does, Gor exits his body, and
starts makin' with the tauntin'. Not only is it going to take over
the whole world, using Steve's body, but it really likes that Sally!
Yep, having had a taste of the physical, the Brain has turned into
a real horndog. Steve throws books at (and through) the insubstantial
blob. It laughs, a motif which will continue throughout the picture.
Sally, convinced that something happened out there,
convinces her father to come with her to Mystery Mountain. There
they find Dan's corpse and yet another Brain: This one's name is
Vol, and it seems to be a officer with the Brain Police. It's here
to catch Gor and take him back to Arous. Trick is, Gor is invincible
while it's in Steve's body or intangible - it's only vulnerable
when, once every 24 hours, it has to leave Steve and become solid
enough to assimilate some oxygen. Vol needs someone to ride so he
can keep an eye on Gor until this happens. Both the Fallons volunteer,
but it is finally decided that Vol will lurk about in the dog, George.
Steve
manages to wheedle a seat at an upcoming A-bomb test; to celebrate,
(on his way to the Fallons for dinner) he looks at a plane flying
in the night sky and blows it up with his ghastly Brain Power. Whenever
Steve uses the Brain Power, his eyes go a shiny black, the picture
goes slightly out of focus, and John Agar starts laughing like a
madman. When I was a child, this image fueled my nightmares for
a week or so.
Trying to act normally, so as not to alert Gor, Sally
goes for a moonlight drive with Steve (and George in the back seat).
When caveman lust doesn't turn the trick with the lady, Steve begins
telling her how things will change after tomorrow's bomb test, and
promises her the world - literally (superior race, my patoot - they
still can't come up with a good pick-up line).
Steve almost doesn't make it to the test when the
local sheriff (Tim Graham) shows up and starts asking some hard
questions
about Dan's body. Gor finally decides "Oh, the hell with it"
and gammas the poor schnook, then traipses off to the army base,
where he finds a whole town built for the bomb to destroy (yep,
you guessed it - stock footage alert!). Steve's eyes go black
and he grins, causing the town to be blown apart without benefit
of bomb. As Steve tells the brass in attendance to have delegates
from all the major powers meet there that night, one colonel palms
a .45 and starts pegging Steve, who merely laughs and quick-fries
him to a crackly crunch.
Exhausted, Steve naps in Sally's backyard until the
meeting that night. Vol states that Gor is using a lot of energy
and will have to leave its host body soon; the Brain Cop also reveals
Gor's most vulnerable point, "what you humans refer to as the
Fissure of Rolando". That night, Steve demands the delegates
hand over the keys to the world, and just to show he's serious,
blows up another plane (and laughs. Gor sees the funny side of everything).
Sally leaves a map to the Fissure of Rolando under
Steve's pipe stand, just as he returns from conquering the world.
She hides as Gor leaves Steve's body and becomes solid. Unfortunately,
the niche she has chosen to secret herself is also where Gor placed
the Sheriff's crispy body. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!
This prompts some flying around on the part of Gor
and some half-hearted gamma bursts, but Steve has read Sally's note
and
puts an end to all this nonsense with a fireaxe (Sorely missing:
the line, "So I'm a savage, am I? EAT AXE!!!!").
Now free of Gor's control, Steve asks Sally, "How did you know
about the Fissure of Rolando?" Sally calls George over and
tells him to explain things to Steve, but Vol, just like the Lone
Ranger, has gotten his Fissure of Rolando out of there. "Ha!
Your imagination!" laughs Steve, kissing her. Hey, nuclear
scientist! How about that cubic yard of gray matter sushi at your
feet? Is that her imagination? The end.
My misgivings at the beginning aside, The Brain
from Planet Arous is actually a pretty good little movie. The
deceptively simple storyline actually opens the door for a whole
lot of drama; the fact that the fate of the world depends on Sally
convincing Gor that everything is normal, even as she bites back
tears and revulsion, is a nifty device, and handled well by Meadows.
It's a device copied, I think, from some spy movie or other, but
it still makes for an intriguing tension-builder. I almost wish
that Vol had taken over Sally; it would have led to some
interesting, multi-layered scenes.
Mike
Weldon refers to this as "the ultimate John Agar movie",
and he could be right. Agar certainly has to pull off some actual
acting in this, and hits the mark most of the time. If his supervillain
laugh is less than effective, well, his slides from tormented scientist
to smooth sociopath (in the space of a second) are, and those
contact lenses must hurt like a bitch.
Director Nathan Juran delivers a solid thriller, and
in only a few instances does the budget peek through. Juran directed
a slew of episodes of the Irwin Allen TV shows and some of the more
influential B-movies - not Citizen Kane influential, but
influential as in we've all seen them and taken them to heart. Attack
of the 50 Ft. Woman? Juran. Deadly Mantis? Juran. Don't
hold these against him, though - he also directed what are commonly
known as "Ray Harryhausen films" - The 7th Voyage of
Sinbad, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and First Men In the Moon.
He also wrote and directed what is unfairly typified as merely a
Sinbad rip-off, Jack the Giant Killer. There are some nice
directoral touches, as in the scene where Mr. Fallon is grilling
Steve, and the struggling scientist's face is viewed through the
distorting lens of a water cooler. Overt, almost ringing of film-school
cleverness; I like it anyway. In another scene, as Steve blows up
the mock town by simply looking out the army base's window, the
venetian blinds serve to blot out all the features of Agar's face,
and leave only the features which are Gor: those disturbing eyes
and the madman's grin. Nicely done, Mr. Juran.
Juran, as I said, manages
to conceal his dime-store budget much of the time, but the instances
where he cannot are the very things that 
endear
this movie so warmly to the Bad Movie Fan. The two plane explosions,
for instance - especially the second one where we see a piece of
the tail section swinging back and forth in the smoke, at the end
of its wire (and there are two plane explosions??!! Did the
Art Director happen to have a bunch of models lying around?*
Maybe Brains just hate planes. Hate them as much as they love the
hour of 8:00pm, which is the only hour Gor and Vol ever use
to set appointments. Maybe it's a Brain religion thing. Where was
I?) Most of the time the Brains are superimposed, transparent photographs
which move in a most primitive fashion - ie, by panning the camera
wihich is aimed at the photograph. When Gor is revealed as solid
in the final scene, it's quite startling to suddenly see it in three
dimensions, as it were - for instance, I had no idea he also sported
a spinal cord - but as it attacks Sally physically (why? Still mad
with Brainy lust?) we find out Gor is just a balloon wobbling about
on some black wires. Oh well.
There are other bobbles, as when the otherwise desert-savvy
Mr. Fallon (who accurately predicts the temperature at Mystery Mountain
day in and day out) goes traipsing about in the sun without any
head covering whatsoever, not even the silly pith helmets that Steve
and Sally employ. There is apparently no Barney Fife in our little
community, as there are no repercussions in the hours that follow
the Sheriff's failure to return from questioning Steve. The American
delegate certainly rolls over and plays dead quickly after Gor's
little demonstration; I'd like to think my tax dollars would at
least go for a sniper or two, if not detonating that nuke I just
happened to have lying around in the vicinity. Cripes, get
the CIA to send in some poison cigars, something! 
And
Vol must be the Brain Cop who's always getting busted down a rank
for spending too much time at the donut shop - a lot of people die
while he's out sniffing fire hydrants.
But these are minor cavils, in a field where the physics
of the real world are often violated needlessly and harshly - a
glance around the archives of any of Brainathon's sites will net
you enough dubious science, inconsistent continuity and lackadaisical
storytelling to fill any number of current summer blockbusters.
The Brain from Planet Arous is far, far from being the worst
of the offenders. It is also fun, pure and simple, and educational
to boot. If nothing else, the next time I see a massive head trauma
in a movie, I can say, "Ouch! Right in the Fissure of Rolando!"
and be perceived as even more intelligent by my peers. That
counts for something.
