Creature with the Atom Brain

1955 "Here is horror that can happen NOW... TO YOU!"
5.5| 1h9m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 01 July 1955 Released
Producted By: Clover Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them. A police doctor's investigation of the deaths leads to the discovery of an army of dead criminal musclemen restored to life, remotely controlled by a vengeful former crime boss and a former Nazi scientist, from the latter's laboratory hidden in the suburbs.

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Director

Edward L. Cahn

Production Companies

Clover Productions

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Creature with the Atom Brain Audience Reviews

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.
FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
verbusen This is a solid, and over the top film, with a super villain's atomic zombie monster army plot. I decided to watch this after looking up Richard Denning's lit of credits. He was really good in a Western film I was watching and reminded me a lot of Robert Young (Father Knows Best, Marcus Welby MD). I loved the title being a fan of a film with a similar name "The Atomic Brain", a film with a much lower rating in the two's, I enjoyed it both original soundtrack or when riffed by Mystery Science Theater 3000, that's the film where the cat's brain goes into the human's and vice versa (using atomic power to make it work). This film would be awesome to watch riffed but on it's own it is fun to watch. The zombies are super strong and can take grenades and bullets! How can scrawny doc Richard Denning defeat this world-wide menace? Stay tuned! 8 of 10, for 50's sci fi or monster film fans.
santuccivito With the advent of CGI, movies have become merely formulaic exercises in headache inducing and needlessly complicated special effects. This is especially true as regards the horror genre. Nowadays, directors operate under the erroneous assumption that STARTLING an audience is the equivalent of inducing tension and dread in an audience. "The Creature With The Atomic Brain" was the second part of a horror double-header with "It Came From Beneath The Sea" as the main attraction. As kids, we came to the theater to see the giant octopus. It was touted in numerous television ads,as was the custom with horror movies in the 50s. Part of the success of "The Creature With The Atomic Brain" was that we had no expectation of what was going to transpire and the plot developments presented had not as yet, in the mid-50s, become trite. This double feature was intended to get preteen kids to drag their parents to the movie theater. This we did. By 1955-1956, when this movie had its run, we had seen "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", "Creature From The Black Lagoon", "House Of Wax", "Them". The only film that induced the same level of fear & dread in kids was "Them" because ants are everywhere and the god-awful noise the giant ants made in the the movie is replicated by engine noises emanating from ill-maintained auto engines. If you were an eight year old kid walking alone at night and you heard that peculiar warbling noise in the distance, you soiled your pants,ran home and locked the door. The atomic brain creatures were similarly fearsome because they could be anyone, anywhere. The only way to avoid them was to discern the incision scar around their foreheads and, if you saw such a scar, to haul ass out of there. This was a very minor unpretentious horror movie that succeeded in providing its juvenile audiences (and the parents they dragged along) with the delight of experiencing capably induced tension & fear.
Bob-45 Richard Deming has always been one of my favorite, if underrated actors. He lends credibility to one of Sam Katzman's most ludicrous projects, "Creature With the Atom Brain". What can you say about a movie where the Police Medical Specialist (Deming) immediately identifies the blood from one of the creatures as being "blood from some type of atomic creature" and reports this to the press (sure to cause a panic). How about a movie where the first two victims do not even have first names (so they are identified by a radio broadcast by their last names only). How about an Italian gangster with the name "Buchanan" or a scientist "dropping" potentially lethal doses of radioactive particles wherever he goes? How about Deming warning the Army not to use explosives or fire because fire "might burn up the lead shielding"(!), followed almost immediately by soldiers using hand grenades; or zombies walking into machine gun fire but not being pushed back by the force of multiple rounds? Shotguns would have taken these creatures apart, but no shotguns are used. Finally, the LEAST qualified man to take on the zombies and the gangster (Deming) manages to make it into the house for a showdown with the gangster. There is one other howler regarding Deming's actions with the radium, but that would be a spoiler.Production values are pretty good for a movie of this era. My only quibble was the closeups of Deming and the Helicopter pilot. For one, I believe Deming is sitting in the RIGHT seat, which is the pilot's seat on a chopper. The other is the rotor drive is rotating at a much lower speed than the blades.Deming and director Fred Sears ("Earth vs. the Flying Saucers") do pretty well with what they have. Unfortunately, what they have is not much.I give "Creature With the Atom Brain" a "4".
lemon_magic From what I understand, writer Curt Siodmak basically hacked this story out, as opposed to the more careful,serious novels and stories he built his reputation on. Even so, and even with some of the more carelessly thrown together elements of the movie, the strength of the story comes through. As a fried of mine who watched the movie with me commented,you can almost always tell when a real writer had a hand in the story.I've also heard that this director was something of a minor talent, but he tended to rise or fall to meet the level of quality of the story he was telling. He keeps things moving briskly here. Aside from a few obvious filler sequences involving driving or necessary exposition, there isn't really any dead space in the movie...so the viewer doesn't get a chance to really think about the absurdity of the premises or some of the unwise story choices that might otherwise detract from enjoying the movie.I've always enjoyed watching Richard Denning in various roles in and out of movies and TV - he can give a smart, humane, energetic feel to his heroes and seems instantly likable as an actor. The actor who plays the gangster Buchanan and the hapless Captain who gets zombified are also quite good at what they do and in the way they play their characters.I'm still not sure why a gangster who had control of a small army of atomic powered zombies would waste his energy and time on revenge when he could have his minions rob any bank in the city and use terrorist tactics to make millions, but we'll skip right over that, and over the part where the heroes neglect to inform the army detachment that backs them up that the zombies are essentially immune to anything but head shots...and over the facts that both the gangster and the professor who aids him should be long dead of radiation poisoning before the final events of the movie (the professor steps out for a beer, and it is discovered that everything he has touched is hotter than a pistol.) Good move, great fun. If I had been 10 years old when I first saw it, I am pretty sure I would have thought it was better than "Gone With The Wind".