On a vole le cerveau d'Hitler

I assure you, as great as a movie entitled "They Saved Hitler's Brain" sounds, it does not live up to that title. It doesn't even live up to the title "They." It's just disappointing.

The plot in general is a little difficult to follow, but as I understand it, well, they saved Hitler's brain. And given that a brain is really no good without a head, they also saved Hitler's head, and a bit of a neck. That way he could live in a big glass jar and bark orders in German.

Sure it sounds fun, but we only see Hitler Head for about 5 minutes out of the 90 total. The rest of the time winds through confusing kidnapping plots, and government scientist, and formulas, and lots of boring people who speak in unnecessary Spanish accents. I never quite understood who was the main character (They sort of shift back and forth), or who was the villain (Hitler I guess, but really his role is more of a cameo). Until they get to the wacky Nazis, it's all rather unfunny, and generally uninteresting.

The movie is poorly made, and that keeps it from being a complete snooze, but with a title like "They Saved Hitler's Brain" I really expected better. Disappointing.

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.

I am a B Movie Whore. I get perverse pleasure out of really bad movies. Plus, you can learn a lot about movie making by observing other people's mistakes. Some of my favorite Bad movies include "Teenage Zombies", "Plan 9", "The Beast of Yucca Flats" and "Shriek of the Mutilated".

But nothing prepared me for "They Saved Hitler's Brain". This is a disjointed mess, with mismatching scenes (which were filmed over 10 years apart) laughable special effects and abysmal acting.

This movie was originally made in the 1950s and then some acting students purchased it and added some new scenes. But the students forget to dress as if they were in the fifties. Consequently, there are sixites hairstyles and cars in one scene, and then fifties styles and cars in another. Totally bizarre.

The special effects look as if they were created by 8 year olds for a 3rd grade school play. The scenes with Hitler's head in a glass tube are unforgettably absurd. The plot lacks any sort of coherence.

Now, some bad movies are fun to watch because you can laugh at them. But this movie just makes you stare at it with your mouth open, in stunned confusion and utter disbelief.

The scenes with Hitlers Head in the jar, especially when he is riding in the front seat of his henchman's car, are so wacky and silly, that they alone are worth suffering through this mess.

But be forewarned. This one is tough to watch. So far, it is the worst movie I have ever seen.

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.

The movie is indeed a pastiche of two separate films with separate casts, shot years apart. However, I take issue with Leonard Maltin and the others who refer to the Stanley Cortez footage (the latter part of the film) as being from the 1950s. The actors are dancing The Twist in the Dos Palabras club in one Cortez scene. The Twist became a craze in the Fall of 1960, and remained all the rage for the next couple of years. The original Madmen of Mandoras was released in 1963 (I have a 22X28 poster, complete set of lobby cards, and some stills from this flick). All this is consistent with an early '60s (probably '62 or '63) filming of the Cortez footage.

The el cheapo additional footage (the first part of the film) was probably shot sometime between 1972-1976. The "liner notes" to the Drive-In Cult Classics 2 DVD says the modification of the old Crown International Pictures for TV release began in 1972, and the first mention of "They Saved Hitler's Brain" in a TV listing was in December, 1976.

BTW, StanleyCortez was a distinguished cinematographer who was nominated for an academy award - Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons; he also photographed Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter. The professionally photographed latter part of the film compared with the totally amateurish photography in the first part of the film makes the hodgepodge all the more evident.