They Saved Hitler's Brain

The acting and special effects in this film are so bad as to be funny. The lack of any meaningful (or at least coherent) plot is equally hysterical. I was laughing so hard in some scenes that I had trouble getting my breath. As far as a serious horror film is concerned this is disaster but as far as a comedy is concerned it is smash hit.

Getting that awful joke out of the way, let me explain.

This film exists in two forms. THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN is the much worse of the two. Avoid at all costs.

But, MADMEN OF MANDORAS is a hilarious little sci-fi/exploitation B-movie, well worth your time. Please see my more extensive review under that title.

The film was released as MADMEN OF MANDORAS in 1963 and did play in theaters. Posters and lobby cards were made. It probably played in drive-in theaters and ratty city grindhouses on the bottom of double bills.

Around 1972, additional footage was added and the movie released again (probably to television) as THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. I guess to sell it to TV the movie needed to be a little longer. What a mess. The two different groups of footage do NOT mesh together at all.

But MADMEN OF MANDORAS, recently released by BCI in their Starlite Drive-In Theater series of DVDs, (from the original negative!) is worth getting for fans of schlocky 60's grade-Z trash. Sure, the plot is insane, the film is loaded with every cliché about Latin America that ever came out of Poverty Row Hollywood, and the Hitler head in a jar (not just brain, entire head; it actually even speaks and yells a little) isn't even remotely scary, it's just hilarious.

Fans of Ed Wood films and similar low budget trash will be in heaven here with the stilted dialog, mind-boggling plot machinations and perfunctory grade-B acting, with plenty of phony Spanish accents. MADMEN OF MANDORAS sits on my shelf with pride, right alongside Plan Nine, Robot Monster and Mesa of Lost Women. Quaff a few adult beverages, and enjoy.

They Saved Hitler's Brain: One Star

Madmen of Mandoras: Nine Stars! Get it!

I assume everyone knows that They Saved Hitler's Brain is basically two bad movies crushed together as one. The first 20-30 minutes were produced in the mid-sixties, and the rest was produced in the late fifties...a fact that really comes through in the production values.

I actually prefer the first half of the movie, and do have at least one good thing to say about this film...the editing in in the first half is excellent. The chase and crash footage from Thunder Road is edited in rather seemlessly...if I hadn't seen Thunder Road first, I would have never recognized it or realized it was stock footage.

Of course, all the characters introduced in the first ten minutes are dead by the halfway point, and the fifties-half of the movie begins, which actually takes you down to South America (or at least San Diego) to meet Mr. H, his goons, and his inane plan for immortality. We go from bad but moderately interesting sixties film to bad and boring fifties sci-fi/nazi movie.

Got around to finally watching this film the other night. Let me just say that I love bad films. I just get a kick out of them and while I am fully aware that they are bad, for the most part, they are still fun to watch. Not this one!!! I'm sure we all know the story behind this movie. It's actually two films spliced into one and combines a 1950's Nazi/Exploitation/Sci-Fi movie with some sort of espionage 1960's outing. The result is a mess and an incredibly tough experience to get through. Again, if there was a fun factor to it, I probably would have been entertained but the thing was so boring and seemed to drag on forever that I had a tough time staying awake. A lot of rambling dialogue that can be laugh inducing with a few beers I suppose but other then that, forget it. What was so weird is how the characters from the first half of the film were either disposed of or never to be seen or heard from again as the second half got going. They just disappeared as the action shifted to Mandoras. The best thing about the movie and what was really hilarious were the images of Bill Freed as the head of Adolph Hitler. The only thing he ever utters is "mach schnell! mach schnell!" and he only does that one time. Still, Freed's silent facial expressions and gyrations did have me laughing. If you want a "so bad, it's good" kind of experience, stick with Ed Wood because this one is really a total bore.

It seemed that towards the end of the Second World War the Nazi's not only came up with a game plan to escape from the advancing allies to a South American country named Mandoras to regroup their forces and wait until the time was right to launch their second attempt to take over the world. They had a far more deadlier and sinister plan in how to do it then the use of any Atomic or Hydrogen bomb. The Nazis dreamed up a most intriguing idea of how they can take their leader, Adolf Hitler, along with them by putting his head, well really his brain, in a sealed and vacuumed-packed jar and have it, the brain's, super intelligence direct and guide them to total victory.

You would wonder why his brain? or even his head? why not Hitler's whole body? A movie that has to be seen to be believed with footage taken from two totally different films spliced together to try to make some sense to what the story is all about. With the results of the movie starting out like a porno flick,without any sex, and ending up like a bunch of out-takes of a very bad imitation of "Mission Impossible".

We have Hitler's head popping up all over the movie like some jack-in-the-box giving orders to his Nazi henchmen and evilly smirking every time someone gets beaten, shot or killed by them.

It had to be a miracle of science that they could have Hitler's head severed from his body and not only live but be able to communicate with them and instruct them on how to conquer the entire world. All this when he was not able to do so when he was still in one piece during the war before he was smuggled out of Germany by them. Did somehow by him becoming bodiless make Hitler smarter?

The plot also revolves around something called G-gas being released into the air and thus making it possible for the Nazi's hair brain plan of world domination to become a reality. Theirs only one hitch to their evil scheme, they have to stop a US scientist who's working on an antidote to the G-gas that would short-circuit their entire operation.

You know what, that after all these years since the release of "They Saved Hitler's Brain' I can't for the life of me see why Hollywood hasn't made a sequel.