The Madmen of Mandoras

I do have the Starlite mega box containing a few grindhouse classics. By opening the DVD box containing this flick I saw that there were 2 versions available. One from 1963 called The Madmen Of Mandoras clocking in at 74 minutes and another one called They Saved Hitler's Brain made in 1968 and clocking in at 91 minutes.

But what's the difference? being a hit at the drive-ins and grindhouses somebody decided to make a TV worthy. 74 minutes can't be seen on television as a full feature so they added some new shots. But it went even further. They used amateurs to make the new footage and did it on a zero budget. it shows in so many ways. Clothes and hair didn't fit in into the older version and everybody added in the new footage had to die or disappear because they didn't fit into the original one. I saw that the first 13 minutes was new and had nothing to do with the original flick. Then they picked in with the older version and recut it still in the next minutes with new shots. It just didn't work at all. Because as I said earlier, nothing looks the same, everything was wrongly done.

Still, it's really a turkey with a goofy head in a jar from Hitler. I only saw one effect worth seeing and that's the burning of Hitler's head. Overall there's much talking going on and nothing really happens. They also used news footage from WOII when they are narrating what and who Hitler was. Also strange is the use of a real footage of an elephant dying on so called nerve gas.

I can only say that it looks like an Ed Wood flick but still it do has a few moments you will never forget due being a turkey.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

This is the original 'Hitler's head-in-a-jar' movie (the more strikingly titled "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (1968) is simply a padded version of this film with some homemade-looking footage added in the late '60s/early '70s to increase running time). Briefly, a group of Nazi survivors (including der Führer's animate head) are lurking in the fictional Latin-American country of Mandoras where they are planning to use a deadly nerve gas to revisit their dreams of world conquest. The film's plot, such as it is, revolves around kidnappings and murders as the conspirators attempt to eliminate all knowledge of the gas' antidote. Their boss "Mr. H." rants occasionally but usually just rolls his eyes menacingly or leers when some nasty business is underway. Better (if only because it's shorter and has a more gruesome finale) than "TSHB" but lacking the awesome brand. Would make a great double feature with the thematically similar and equally delirious "The Frozen Dead" (1966).

Why am I drawn to bad movies like a fly to a steaming pile of excrement (this metaphor is exceptionally appropriate given the film being reviewed)? I've never really given it much thought, but I suppose it's a similar reaction people display when driving by a particularly bad car wreck…you don't want to look, but morbid curiosity is a compelling, often intrinsic, trait among humans. As far as car wrecks go, cinematic ally speaking, They Saved Hitler's Brain (1963) is a real doozy…the film is actually two movies (the original made in the late 50's to early 60's but never released for some unknown reason, and new footage filmed in the mid to late 60's) spliced together, like some twisted Frankenstein experiment. Apparently the company that owned the original film, Crown International (purveyors of schlock), got some UCLA film students to produce the new footage, and then, in an extremely futile attempt, married the two in the unholy union that is this film (director Al Adamson made a career on doing this, most notably with his 1971 monster mash Dracula Vs. Frankenstein).

The film, originally titled Madmen of Mandoras aka Amazing Mr. H aka The Return of Mr. H (before the celluloid mating) was directed by David Bradley, whose earlier films include a juvenile delinquent picture titled Dragstrip Riot (1958) and the epic sci-fi craptacular 12 to the Moon (1960). The film stars Walter Stocker (Lassie's Great Adventure) and Audrey Caire, who seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her until I looked up her credits as saw she also appeared in Joe (1970), one of my more favorite films of the early 70's. Also appearing is John Holland (The Naked Brigade), Carlos Rivas (True Grit), Marshall Reed (Ghost of Zorro), Scott Peters (Panic in Year Zero!), Nestor Paiva (The Three Stooges in Orbit, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter), and Bill Freed (who later adapted Dean R. Koontz's novel Watchers into the 1988 film of the same name) as Adolf Hitler, or, at least his head.

The film starts out with the newer footage (which actually looks worse than the older footage), relating some kind of story regarding secret agents, nerve gas, and various murders. The main character, named Vic (who looks a lot like Chuck Negron, the original lead singer from the 70's band Three Dog Night) is a secret agent assigned to investigate the death of a scientist, but he himself eventually dies in a fiery car crash (actually his death is represented by footage taken from the 1958 feature Thunder Road, starring Robert Mitchum). All of this takes about 27 minutes, and then we cut into another film, already in progress, featuring the actors I listed above (the actors in the newer footage are not listed in any credits). From here we follow the exploits of Phil Day (Stocker) and his wife Kathy (Caire) as they travel to the tiny Caribbean Island nation of Mandoras to locate Kathy's recently kidnapped father, a scientist who developed an antidote to a deadly nerve gas. Phil and Kathy soon learn a handful of Nazis, lead by Hitler's head, and their nefarious plans to take control of the world. Will Phil and Kathy be able to stop the madness, or will the Third Reich finally achieve the goals it set for itself some 20 years ago? Their plan seems pretty rock solid, so things don't look good… I'm unsure why the newer footage was added, especially since it matched up so poorly (it looked like a bunch of laid-back hippies running around, compared to the more conservatively attired characters in the original footage). The original film is actually not a bad little B film (at least, compared to the newer footage), but I suspect some of the original footage may have been lost (or never filmed), hence the addition of the newer material, as to try and provide a setting for the older material. Thing is, the newer stuff was shot so very poorly, lacking any sense of direction (hey, it's daytime…no wait, it's night…oops, it's daytime again), and I was able to piece together much of the intended story from the original footage I didn't need the newer material. And that music for the newer material…27 minutes of really crummy free form jazz…the horror, the horror…the concept of saving Hitler's head seemed kinda cool, but what was probably meant to be a shocking surprise (the whole plot of Hitler's head plotting a conspiracy) was effectively ruined by the newer title. The special effects are pretty much what you might expect, with Hitler's head, when not being carried around in a jar, sitting atop an older model videotape machine. Freed's head did look a little creepy, sort of bug-eyed and slightly emaciated, with his only dialog, as a disembodied head, being 'Mach Schnell! Mach Schnell!' (I guess one would probably get pretty cranky and impatient surviving in a jar, relying on the charity of others…I wonder which lackey got the job of trimming his little moustache?) My favorite scene has to be when Phil and Kathy get kidnapped by a mysterious Hispanic man, and as they come to a stop light, another car pulls up, shoots the Hispanic man dead, but the couple, who are in the car with the now dead man, don't realize he's dead until much later, eventually stuffing his corpse into a phone booth, the intent being someone will find him (and someone does, in the form of an impatient, rotund lady wanting to use said phone…oh the comedy!)

Cookieman108

Madmen of Mandoras, The (1963)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

They Saved Hitler's Brain (1972)

* (out of 4)

A deadly nerve gas is causing fear in the states but thankfully a Professor knows how to make the gas useless. The only problem is that crazy guys kidnap him and take him to a secret location where they are keeping Hitler's head alive. Hitler, being the nut he is, wants to use the gas to take over the world. Making a horror movie with Hitler's head coming back to life seems like it would make for some great fun but that's not the case with this turkey as it's pretty dry from start to finish without any redeeming factors. The biggest problem is that the screenplay is so poorly written that it really doesn't know how to exploit the subject matter. Instead of fun things happening we get a tiresome adventure story as our heroes must save the Professor and eventually destroy Hitler once and for all. The performances are all rather bland and that includes the man playing Hitler. Hitler's "screaming" and ranting are rather silly and comes off very stupid. What really doesn't make sense is that we've got a very silly story yet the director treats everything so serious as if we were watching some sort of documentary on actual events.

Nine or ten years later Crown International were starting to release their films to television but this one didn't run long enough so they went back and took out ten minutes worth of footage only to add twenty-five more minutes and the end result was They Saved Hitler's Brain. This features the same story as the previous film with the exception of the "new scenes", which involve two government agents trying to find out if the Professor is safe or not. Needless to say, with an original movie as bad as Madmen was, you really don't need to add extra running time. This movie here is just as worse due to the longer running time and all the added scenes do nothing to improve the film. The only good thing about this film is its outrageous title but then again that really doesn't make the movie any better.

I'm not sure what this picture was meant to be, but I'm going to give the director/writer/etc credit and say they meant it as a good time political action thriller comedy on a drive-thru budget. It is sort of those things, if you are willing to accept a very loose definition of the individual terms.

Clever Plot? Not at all (actually confusing if you stop to think about it) Believable characters? Nope ... but just as I don't kick puppies I won't beat up too much on the merits of this lovable loser. It's goofy fun and doesn't take itself that seriously. Coming in just barely over an hour, it's not too much time out of your life, and I would say probably is worth it on the 'I"m just curious' dilemma surrounding all of these campy drive thru films.

Rating: 16/40