Monstrosity (1963)

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A strange but entertaining Atomic Age Frankenstein story. The horror element is stronger than the sci-fi: there's graverobbing, a creepy old house, innocent women lured into captivity, a sinister demented old lady, even a monster trolling around in the woods.Actually Frankenstein's apparatus had as much scientific credibility as Dr. Frank's nuclear-powered brain surgery. The premise is somewhat similar to the vain cosmetic entrepreneur's obsession with youth in Wasp Woman. The Atomic Brain is more intense, with slightly better performances. The villian here, Mrs. March, has an overpowering presence. She's envious, bitter, and cruel; literally wanting to possess the attractive young women who become Dr. Frank's guinea pigs. The pacing isn't bad, but the movie lags in the middle. There's too much of Nina and Bea wandering around, trying not to escape (to paraphrase another reviewer's description). When we finally get to the climactic surgery, Dr. Frank turns the tables on the old hag by somehow dishing her brain into the cat. The cat motif works great all around, as Anita's character makes a lot of her cat-brain with convincing and chilling cat behavior. It's really cool that Mrs. March (as a cat) manages to destroy everything. Her escape shows that she's still a menace. When the atomic stuff blows up, though, I expected a mushroom cloud. Why not just ditch all the atomic stuff, and have Dr. Frank mix in some voo-doo or something to explain his surgery? Anyway, the best part of Atomic Brain was the smarmy narrator. Usually I can't stand narrators. They tend to make a cheap substitute for character development, plot, and dialogue. But this guy is great. He's a commentator as well as a narrator; he critiques the characters, questioning their motives and generally making fun of them. He, the cat, and the old lady are the only interesting roles. The other characters don't add up to much. There is an attempt to differentiate the three girls (actually four, including the ghoulish one from the crypt). The Victor character is nothing more than a go-fer. That's intentional, though, as it emphasizes how domineering the old lady is. This is definitely watchable. The tone is probably the best aspect; we're not to take things too seriously, but that doesn't mean that the mayhem in Atomic Brain is harmless. The lurid gaze of the narrator takes over from the generally earnest feel of 1950s sci-fi.

Campy ultra low budget science fiction/horror story about a rich old woman who plots with with a mad scientist to put her brian into the body of a young woman. The old woman hires three immigrant women as servants, who then become the unwitting test subjects for the mad scientist's experiments. In his first test, the mad scientist put the brain of a cat into one woman, who now has all the instincts of a cat, and (SPOILER ALTERT!) falls to her death while trying to climb onto the roof, because of course. I'd like to think there's an intellectual subtext to film film as a searing indictment of capitalism, with it's story or poor immigrants being exploited by rich and powerful white folk, but that would be giving this ridiculous movie way too much credit. Following the cat lady's death, the film gets even sillier and I don't want to ruin the goofy fun of it all, but there are monsters chained to walls and more weirdo experiments, which make "The Atomic Brain" enjoyable on a so-bad-it's-good level of camp entertainment, if that's your sort of thing.

A rich but unscrupulous old woman (Marjorie Eaton) plots with a scientist to have her brain implanted in the skull of a sexy young woman.This film pretty much owes anything good or bad about it to Jack Pollexfen, who was the producer, writer and even did a bit of the directing. While the film is generally thought of as a dud, this can be chalked up to it being in the public domain (meaning most copies are poor) and it being featured on "Mystery Science Theater", which tends to have people swarm to IMDb and rating it a 1 for no reason.Director Joseph Mascelli, who has only thing film on his list of credits for director, may be best known for two things: writing a well-received textbook on cinematography or for being the cinematographer of the abysmal "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?" (He apparently came out of the Arch Hall group.) All in all, this is not a terrible film, and could actually be a respected science fiction / horror piece if released in a decent version that was not faded. Horror fans might recognize villain Marjorie Eaton from "Night Tide", another film that needs a bit more love.

When a film like Monstrosity is held up for six years before being inflicted on the movie going public you can smell the gravy and cranberry sauce from your movie seats. In that sense Monstrosity does not disappoint.Where it does disappoint is in the fact this thing had the elements of being an incredibly funny satire on Frankenstein like films. Someone like Mel Brooks would have had a field day with the plot premise. A rich old cosmetics queen, someone like Helena Rubinstein, is financing experiments in brain transplantation and electronic conversion of brains to various other organs. The experiments by Frank Gerstle are inter special. You got to love him transplanting the brain of a cat into one of Marjorie Eaton's servant girls.Of course the object is for Eaton's brain to be transplanted into the body of a 20 something beauty queen so she can leave her money to herself. If she can't take it with her, she ain't leaving.In the hands of someone like Peter Lorre as the mad scientist and Phyllis Diller as the aging beauty queen, this could have been monstrously hilarious instead of in itself being one dull monstrosity.