The Brain Leeches

A message to all bad-movie fans of the world... ...HERE'S YOUR $^&#*% "PLAN NINE".

Deep-sixed for nearly 25 years, this godless home movie has risen from its long hibernation and the world will never be the same again. Fred Olen Ray launched his undistinguished but prolific schlock film career with this threadbare sci-fi/horror project...as decidedly ghetto as his body of work may be, every title on the roster is an arthouse triumph next to BRAIN LEECHES.

The story intermingles elements of "Night of the Living Dead", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", and a lot of kitsch 50s monster flicks. Bugs from another planet have taken residence on Earth, and are using mind control to make zombified drudges out of good citizens(we know who they are because they have sunglasses on). Their leader is a sock puppet resembling a turd with glowing eyes, and its minions are large rubber ants(yes...the kind you buy from novelty vending machines for a quarter). The aliens' sinister world-domination plot is eventually thwarted...I'm not exactly sure how, but something exploded.

Boiling over with inappropriate "borrowed" music, this badly shot B/W mini-feature is so indisputably a home movie that you'll suspect any scene could abruptly switch to some moonfaced family enjoying an afternoon at Yosemite National Park.

1/10...Everyone can laugh at a truly bad film, but this one separates the men from the boys. The quirky theme song "Alien Love" by Paul Jones was released as a 45rpm single on SPI records.

Move over Plan 9? Maybe, maybe not. This is either the worst movie of all time or an intentional effort to make it so. The evidence points to a clever effort to purposely make a bad movie. The audience is treated to a variety of creatively employed camera tricks, amateurish acting and intentionally poor editing to simulate inept film production, but instead, the techniques used to "dumb down" the production are so blatant that the incredulous mind begins to take notice of the unintended artistic effects.

The plot, what little can be detected, is subordinate to the artsy camera effects, including several different types of diffusion filters that give you the impression the film has been buried underground in a cardboard box for eons. At times the scenes are so murky, diffused and poorly lighted that they take on the appearance of an impressionist's painting. There is also a suspicion the producers used cheap, horribly out-of-date film stock made in the old Soviet Union in combination with a cracker jack prize, toy movie camera, but by whatever means, the effect leaves the mind wandering in a dark, moody surreal landscape populated with anonymous faces moving about with unrelated purpose or meaning.

Beware! Do not stare too long or listen too closely to the dark, enigmatic scenes in which the "brain leech" spokesman keys an obsolete electric microphone to lay out their plans for conquering earth. His electric spark gizmo, unresolved, glowing eyes form and hypnotic whispers of doom will unlock your brain, allowing one of the wiggling, rubber ant "brain leeches" to crawl up your arm, invade your hapless skull and control your mind for your own good.

Earth's only hope of salvation takes a hideous and totally unexpected turn when two horny teenagers make love and then ram their 1968 Plymouth Barricuda into the abandoned garage where the brain leech gang is hiding out.

Here's a movie with a character who's a former nuclear scientist turned pro-wrestler. If that tidbit doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, then I just don't understand you. Okay, so basically it is a home movie. But do your home movies include stock footage of a nuclear explosion? I can't really defend the movie except to say I enjoyed it. Add just a little more polish and a jot of professionalism and you might have something genuinely wretched (maybe something like Fred Olen Ray's more recent output), but there's a kind of "hey kids, let's put on a show" attitude here that works precisely because the movie's so impoverished. If the lighting were a little better, say good enough that I could actually tell what was going on in over half the scenes, I might even give this thing an 8.

This is easily the greatest film that I will never, ever see...unless of course Mr. Ray releases it one of these days. In fact, the question I have is: Is The Brain Leeches a better film than my own Attack of the Bathroom Creature? I probably wouldn't bet on it, but they seem to have several things in common. 1. both have great titles, yet, horrible plots and terrible acting; 2. the first was directed by Fred Olen Ray, who has gone on to become of the greatest film directors of all-time, and the latter was directed by Eric Spudic, who has since not sold a single script and still dreams of directing his first film for a studio. Oh well, that's all I have to say...

This is essentially a 55 minute black and white home movie telling the story of leeches from space that crash on Earth and attempt to take over the world.

Released by Sinister Cinema with the warning that this is a bad movie- this is a film that lives up to its billing.That said this movie also contains some very funny moments and knowing nods. Beginning with a funny opening credit song this movie alternates long silent passages usually of people walking or doing something, with some loopy dialog scenes (some of the dialog is clever). The film sports a lead leech that looks like a turd with eyes at a podium, rubber ants as leech stand ins, bad white paper eyes with pin holes in them for the converted humans and enough strangeness to make you wonder if these people were taking drugs when they made it.

Clearly the fact that schlock-Meister and professional wrestler Fred Olen Ray made this film got it released. For his fans thats reason enough to pick it up. For the rest of us this is a rental at best. I do like the movie as an example of a fun bad movie, and I will be inflicting it on people who like this sort of thing, but I do regret buying instead of renting it.

6 out of 10 on the bad movie scale.