Blood of Ghastly Horror

[Also released as: "The Fiend with the Atom Brain", "Fiend with the Electronic Brain", "The Love Maniac", "The Man with the Synthetic Brain", and "Psycho A Go-Go"].

The Film that Wouldn't Die: a movie which has endured more surgical alterations than the Frankenstein monster. Each version has been equally monstrous, but the history of this movie is a real hoot. Behold:

In 1965 Al Adamson produced and directed a very low budget quickie called "Psycho A Go-Go", in which an ex-soldier is turned into a zombie-slave-killer by criminals who implant a device in his brain. The film was a big flop.

Four years later Adamson tried to jazz it up by adding new scenes and giving it a new title: "Fiend with the Electronic Brain". This new version was also a big flop.

In 1971 Adamson decided the film needed more new scenes, and this time he got Kent Taylor ("The Day Mars Invaded Earth") and John Carradine to help out. Even better, Adamson persuaded his sexy wife, Regina Carrol, to play Carradine's daughter. Best of all, he got Tommy Kirk ("Mars Needs Women", "Village of the Giants") to play a police detective who investigates the murders. To celebrate the film's big upgrade, he retitled it again: "The Man with the Synthetic Brain". Even with these well-known stars and nifty new title, the film was still a big flop.

So Adamson waited awhile, gave the film another new title, "Blood of Ghastly Horror", and re-re-re-released it. Naturally the film was a big flop again because it was the same terrible movie that had flopped the last time.

Is that the end of Adamson's Indestructible Movie? Definitely not -- in fact, this isn't even the entire middle of this remarkable film's history. At various times the movie has also been released under the title's "The Man with the Atomic Brain" and (get this) "The Love Maniac".

Maybe the next reincarnation of this unkillable film will be disguised by a really tricky title -- like "War and Peace" or "The Eleven O'clock News". Good heavens, what if we just walked into some theater and found ourselves trapped into watching . . . "X: The Unknown Movie"!

First they filmed a crime drama. Then they decided to make it into some sort of sci-fi flick, by adding footage which explains the criminal's behaviour in terms of a synthetic brain place in the head of a soldier. Then they decide to wrap this with some incredibly trashy low-budget early 70s zombie monster footage.

"Blood of Ghastly Horror" first began life as an unreleased Al Adamson heist feature from 1964 titled "Echo of Terror," then with new footage of go-go dancers and a brutal stabbing slipped out from Hemisphere Pictures in 1965 as "Psycho A-Go-Go" (not to be confused with "Two Tickets to Terror," in reality a rerelease title for 1961's "Half Way to Hell"). Adamson shot new footage of John Carradine in 1966, resulting in a second release, as "Fiend with the Electronic Brain," playing in selected Southern states as early as Dec 1967, courtesy David L. Hewitt's American General Pictures. By 1969, still more footage was shot, with Kent Taylor and Regina Carrol (Mrs. Al Adamson), and still later Tommy Kirk, resulting in what producer Samuel M. Sherman accurately described as an 'interesting editing exercise.' The finished (?) product was issued in 1972 by Sherman's Independent-International Pictures Corporation, simultaneously playing on television under yet another new title, "Man with the Synthetic Brain." Only a devotee of outright schlock could really appreciate what remains, provided they possess the knowledge of its convoluted backstory. We begin with a zombie-like creature named Akro (Richard Smedley) committing several murders, switching gears to a police investigation conducted by Sgt. Cross (Tommy Kirk), relating the background on Dr. Howard Vanard (John Carradine, entering at the 17 minute mark), who had implanted an 'artificial brain component' into almost dead Vietnam veteran Joe Corey (Roy Morton). He succeeded in saving Corey's life, but turned him into a homicidal maniac, later avenging himself on the remorseful Vanard by strapping him into his own device and electrocuting him (at the 37 minutes mark). Sgt. Cross now follows the trail of Dr. Elton Corey (Kent Taylor), father of the dead Joe Corey, who uses his voodoo powers to create the hideous Akro, seeking vengeance now against Dr. Vanard's daughter Susan (Regina Carrol), with most of the final half hour consisting of the original unissued heist footage, and Joe Corey's high altitude pursuit of stolen diamonds. As a director, Al Adamson displays a casual disregard for narrative competence, coupled with an inability to even focus the camera in the right direction, often leaving the performers off screen as they spoke. John Carradine is the biggest name in the cast, and is accorded top billing over Kent Taylor, who only enters at the halfway point, once Carradine's bespectacled scientist bites the dust. Tommy Kirk is the other veteran actor, not what one would expect for a solemn police sergeant, but as the only actor to work with both Al Adamson and Larry Buchanan ("Mars Needs Women," "It's Alive!"), deserves a measure of respect for surviving such highs and lows in a screen career soon to fade. "Blood of Ghastly Horror" is undeniably a bad film, but "Horror of the Blood Monsters" reached a new low even for Al Adamson. Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater aired this film once, July 23 1977, paired with second feature "The Black Cat" (1941).

Al Adamson might just have been the worst film director in history. I truly think that his films are at least as bad as Ed Wood's and both men finished up their careers making porno flicks. This film, made in the pre-porno days, manages to perhaps be the worse excuse for a film Adamson ever made--even worse than Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN!! That's because this master of the super-super cheap drive-in film found a way to make this film even cheaper and cheesier than the rest--he took apart an older film he made (PSYCHO A GO-GO) and pieced it together with some new scenes to make an entirely new film!!

The original film, PSYCHO A GO-GO was actually one of Adamson's best films (though its current rating of 2.0 is hardly stellar). It was about a jewel robbery gone bad and particularly focused on a psychotic killer within the gang and his evil deeds.

Now, the same guy who was killed at the end of PSYCHO A GO-GO is back as a zombie re-animated by John Carradine with an electronic brain! And, it's up to Tommy Kirk and a bunch of other no-talents to unravel the mystery (about the murders, not why they agreed to be in this pile of bilge).

Much of the film makes no sense at all and it's all quite confusing and stupid--with very large chunks of the old film re-used haphazardly. Apparently none of this was important to Adamson. What was important, it seems, is managing to make a new film for $5.78. The only people who could enjoy this dull mess are bad movie freaks like myself who occasionally enjoy laughing at horrid films. And this one has it all--very bad acting, the director's stripper wife making yet another gratuitous appearance in one of his films, non-existent writing and terrible direction (with quite a few out of focus and poorly framed shots).

Don't ask me how I did it, but even though this is technically a botched and splicey patchwork of a movie, I had a good time with it. It's poorly made to be sure, but somehow it's also mesmerizing in its ineptness at the same time. It helps going in to know the history...

It was directed by drive-in movie maestro Al Adamson (of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" fame), who originally planned a straight jewelry heist picture in 1964 until meeting up with producer/mentor Sam Sherman who persuaded him to gradually add new scenes and ideas specifically for the horror/sci-fi television market in the early '70s. It was finally sold to TV with the lucrative title of MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, but Sherman thought it could be milked further, so the movie was also played at theaters where it became known as BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR.

Ultimately emerging as connected pieces of different half-baked incarnations (one of these was even called PSYCHO A-GO-GO before the music was eliminated), the movie begins with a zombified maniac running around town strangling people. Through flashbacks within other flashbacks we're treated to a background story of how a Vietnam vet named Joe Corey was wounded and then "helped" by a wacky scientist named Dr. Vanard (the always welcome John Carradine) who planted some sort of mechanism inside Corey's head and unintentionally turned him into a murderer with a taste for jewel robbing (which is how the old 1964 heist footage managed to get utilized). But this man-made killer's got an angry dad who's also a scientist and is even nuttier than Dr. Vanard. He's out to even the score for what was done to his victimized son, and that includes making a mummified and whimpering she-monster out of Vanard's sexy daughter (Regina Carrol, director Adamson's wife).

This isn't a film for most audiences, but anyone who revels in idiotic or badly made exploitation films of the '60s and '70s would want to get a load of this concoction. You've got to hand it to Sam Sherman and Al Adamson, in any case... they knew how to have fun and freak out audiences. The current DVD available by Troma is badly framed, however... this cuts out some widescreen and results in an unfortunate pan/scan affair. But it's unlikely at the time of this writing that there's any better source material. * out of ****