Mit 1000 Volt in den Tod

I remember seeing The Electronic Monster as a lad way back when I was 11 years old and it was the second feature of a double bill. It had an interesting concept, but it was poorly executed.

Rod Cameron and Mary Murphy are a pair of Americans in the leads of this British production which is set in France. An American film star dies in a car crash and the autopsy showed he was dead before his car went out of control. Too much electric shock of the brain. Cameron is an insurance investigator employed by the film star's studio.

He discovers some other deaths of prominent people all had known the same femme fatale and all had extended stays at a 'resort'. Roberta Huby is our Mata Hari.

The resort is run by a rather cold and bloodless Peter Illing and the people are there for some kind of new psychotherapy. Dr. Meredith Edwards has investigated a kind of electric shock therapy which feeds certain erotic images into the brain and records. Kind of a Krell brain test. But Illing has seen the possibilities of mind control.

Illing is also engaged to another film star Mary Murphy who was once an item with Cameron. That's one major weakness of the movie there. He's so cold and bloodless, sinister but also a drip. What she saw in him I'll never know.

Interesting concept, but the execution was so lifeless and dull. Both the leads got a European vacation out of it so that might have been the reason they signed for The Electronic Monster.

Good a reason as any.

The Rod Cameron's fans will probably be deceived by this ridiculous movie which can only bring boredom at the worst and laugh at the best. I was bored, and not that amused. This is an awful film from a Monty Tully who has used us to better stuff. Monty Tully was a British B pictures provider, as were Vernon Sewell, Lance Comfort, all them made all kinds of plots, all kinds of genre, except westerns of course; mostly crime and dramas, some horror. No, really, this film is ridiculous, but because I am kind with movies, I will not say it is an insult to viewer's intelligence. You may try after all. It won't kill you.

In Charles Eric Maine's excellent (for its day) novel, a scientist invents a mind-tape-recorder (helmet on the head, bazillion-track tape), hoping to use it for Good, like studying mental disorders. A movie mogul gets hold of it and soon billions of people waste their lives and their savings in tanks "experiencing" recorded porn or schmaltz (ultraslow replay intensifies the sensations). The scientist decides to take drastic measures, batters the mogul to death and plays the recording to the billions, hoping to scare them back to reality. Instead they die and the book ends as he's about to be sentenced for the death of the mogul, raising the ethical question of the collateral damage.

Bear in mind that when Maine wrote this, brain waves were novel, magnetic sound recording was only about a decade old and video recording was still in the future.

In the Z-grade film, the WHOLE story is ripped out (daren't offend Hollywood) and we're left with an ordinary quarter-inch reel-to-reel recorder and a squawking electronic soundtrack that has nothing to do with the action on screen. I've completely forgotten the new plot, but vaguely remember people in leotards writhing around some cheesy gauzes to hint at forbidden pleasures.

I'd give it an award for Worst Adaptation ever.

Cheaply made and slow moving B movie, it even uses the sets from "Z cars", (which are supposed to be Scotland Yard - this is on the coast of France) twice, in two different locations, a police station and a morgue.

An American insurance agent investigates the death of a film star and suspects a psychiatric clinic in France. By a huge and unexplained coincidence he happens to find a well upholstered ex working there.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Montgomery Tully; Produced by Alec Snowden; Associate Producer: Jim O'Connolly for Anglo-Guild Productions (England), released in America as "The Electronic Monster" by Columbia Pictures. Screenplay by Charles Eric Maine, from his novel; Photography by Bert Mason; Edited by Geoffrey Muller; Music by Richard Taylor. Starring: Rod Cameron, Mary Murphy, Meredith Edwards, Peter Illing, Carl Jaffe and Kay Callard.

British science-fiction movie about unethical scientists experimenting with electronic machines for manipulating their subjects' dreams until Rod Cameron disposes of the baddies in a slambang finish.