Throughout cinema history, there has been a plethora of titles that live up to their name to tell an audience exactly what they are getting into. From Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask to The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies to arguably the showdown ever to grace the big (or via YouTube small) screen Bambie Meets Godzilla (winner of the best title sequence in Hollyweird history). However, nothing could ever give you a better description of what you will suffer through as you watch the movie Monstrosity (aka The Atomic Brain) but boasts quite possibly the mightiest noun to grace a greasy, scratched, and ripped-to-shreds poster 42nd street ever displayed! It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to conjure other nouns for the film that might have been better titled: Junk! Trash! Garbage! Smells! Vintage Stinks! Yet the filmmakers have something in common – it takes a doctor years to earn their degree, just like it took years for this film to see the light of day! They say a cat has nine lives, but after suffering through this catnip pile of neutered celluloid, it might only have one-in-a-quarter left to shut off the Sony Betamax Stereo Videocassette Recorder SL-5600 before it becomes another casualty of motion picture brain biopsy bingo (go ahead and put an X-rating on the free space).
It’s too bad for producers Dean Dillman Jr. and Jack Pollexfen, who passed away in the early 2000s, as they could have had a neat lawsuit against Jordan Peele and the producers of Get Out, as both films have a very similar plot in regards to mind swapping and such. However, the lawsuit would be laughed at by a judge and thrown out of court because Get Out was Oscar-worthy (and winning) and Monstrosity needs more than a thesaurus to fix the cranial fossas in the script! Murphy’s Law (not the amazing Chuck Bronson movie, but the actual theory) states anything that can go wrong will go wrong (unless Chucky is there to make your deathly wishes come true), which seemed to be the mantra for producer Pollexfen while making the film. If it could go wrong it did, from amateur actors and crew making mistakes that led production costs to rise from $25,000 to over an estimated $45,000 to the film being finished in 1958 but not eventually released until 1963 (hope they had good insurance). By the time the film rolled into theatres most of the cast and crew disassociated themselves and asked for names to be removed. However, like most films from this era, not everything takes the length of an emergency exploratory laparotomy to be appreciated, such as cinematographer Alfred Taylor’s (D.P. for such films as Blood Bath and Killer Klowns From Outer Space) unique camera movement and one of the last (certainly not so great) performances from legendary actress Marjorie Eaton who not only worked with the Three Stooges but happened to play the first version of the evil Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back (before Lucus went to the dark side with the special editions).
The atomic age was weird, daddy-o and this kool-kat named Dr. Frank developed a successful way to transplant brains, though the most success he has had is making a grown man into a snarling man/wolf (talk about barking up the wrong tree). However, old Mrs. March (Eaton) has been made aware of his wild experimentations and decides to fund his experimentations, with the goal of one day Dr. Frank making her young again with brain switch-a-roo with a younger woman (oh, you’re a rich/bitch girl
). Setting up his atomic radioactive science lab in the basement of a brick house (don’t ask for the science of how this works in a science fiction film). To help in Dr. Frank’s endeavors, March and her kitty-whipped younger husband Victor seek to hire three beautiful kittens to help around the house. Little do they know they are being picked off for the winner to do a Freaky Friday with the old hag. To demonstrate his work, he takes the brain of Xerces the cat and wastes one life pawing its brain in her litter brain box. But unknown to Mrs. March, Dr. Frank has a few tricks up his sleeves (talk about being the cat’s meow). Will the innocent residents of the House of Dr. Frank(dumb-stein) be able to stop Victor and his feline companions from killing it in the scientific community or will the villains go nuclear in one of cinema’s strongest (or weakest) (cat)astrophes?
Doing a Craniotomy on your eyes at a (sx)ty-four minutes, and the only (co)directing credit for Joseph V. Mascelli (who went on to be a cinematographer himself for films like Wild Guitar and The Thrill Killers), this figurative (adjective) and literal monstrosity would be released on television broadcasts under the title The Atomic Brain. Boiling in a giant vat of Public Domain soup, you can sip this film on most streaming platforms, but try to find the hilarious (and painful for them) episode of MST3K. It doesn’t take six years and several degrees to understand this frisky flicker is an F at best, yet those who watch bad movies regularly might find the formula to stay young at heart by understanding horrifying stinkers such as this minor Monstrosity never get old(er)(noun)!