MonsterHunter

I don’t know where all the flying brains were in this movie. If you’ve got yourself an early 1950s movie about a killer brain, it either ought to fly around or have grown to gargantuan size, preferably both. The only thing the brain in this one does is sit in a bunch of dirty water in a fish aquarium!

People were scared of the brain, but I never understood why they just didn’t go and dump an eel or crab or something in there with it and let nature take its course. Of course the movie was just about over by the time I figured out I had been tricked into watching a movie about a soggy brain controlling one of those dope scientists that’s always in his garage-lab playing God and stuff, so my enjoyment wasn’t overly hampered by the lack of a mobile and/or large brain (actually lack of a large brain has never really hampered my enjoyment of most of these movies - in fact, that probably helps) and I’d have to put this one in the “check it out” category of old time horror flicks, mainly because of what Lew Ayres (on the downward slide from his Holiday days, I’d wager) is able to do playing not only the scientist who’s kind of an obsessed boob, but also the scientist who gets possessed by the brain in the fish tank and turns into a ruthless business man.

I’m assuming that back when this was made people were a gentler lot so when Lew’s character became possessed and turned from cold scientist into this rich meanie, we were probably supposed to be put off by him. Times have changed though and the whole time I was watching Lew do this shtick I was admiring him for putting all the poor scum who get in the way of his income tax evasion scam in their place. I was also admiring how he seemed to be channeling the late Phil Hartman in several snotty scenes.

Now you can’t just up and order yourself a human brain from Amazon.com or someplace (at least the last time I checked you couldn’t), so just how does Dr. Patrick Cory get his mad scientist hands on one? It all starts innocently enough with some rather pointless animal research that involves him importing monkeys and scooping their itty-bitty brains out and putting them in some liquid and hooking up some electrodes and checking out the trusty oscilloscope. (They always use these things in movies like this to check on stuff like alpha and beta waves - it’s really good for keeping the girlfriend or wife involved because it’s simple enough that even she can read the results to her man as he keeps poking parts of the brain and saying “how about now?” over and over.)

Yes, somehow this guy has gone and got himself a wife. This has always puzzled me about these mad scientists who are intent on playing God or unlocking the secrets of the universe or getting free cable or whatever. First of all, why would they bother with a wife, second, why would she bother with him, and third, why would she stay with him when it becomes apparent that he is more interested in stimulating a monkey brain than her? Shoot, at the end of this movie when it’s all said and done and the brain has been defeated and Dr. Cory is going off to get prosecuted for re-animating evil brains, she’s there kissing him and wishing him well like he’s headed off for a day at the office. Gawd, Nancy! Quit being a doormat and get yourself a career and self respect!

Dr. Cory doesn’t just have a wife to ignore though. He also has an alcoholic doctor buddy named Frank who for some reason insists on going on his drunken binges at Cory’s house. Mrs. Cory is pretty easy going because she doesn’t seem to mind that there’s a passed out boozer laying on her living room floor first thing in the morning. Of course she’s coming back from the monkey store with her husband, so she’s probably what you’d call “unconventional.”

Somehow, Dr. Cory along with his wimpy wife (future first lady Nancy Reagan) and his wasted pal Dr. Frank, manage to get this monkey brain up and running. It sits in a tank and emits some waves that the oscilloscope picks up which indicates that it is still functioning. Later they get a call that there’s been a plane crash and they want him to go and help scrape up some of the passengers from the desert floor. Being the great scientist he is, he whines about the inconvenience of it all until his wife guilts him into to it.

He brings one of the survivors back to his office and he and Frank operate on him and try and save him. The guy bites it and then Dr. Cory gets one of those flashes of inspiration that separates the mad scientists from the rest of us. We’ve got this monkey brain working! We’ve got this body here and its brain is going to waste! Are you thinking, what I’m thinking? Dr. Frank and Mrs. Cory are both thinking that Dr. Cory is looking at five years in prison for operating on a corpse, but you and I both know that that’s “glass is half empty” thinking and luckily for fans of killer brain mayhem, Dr. Cory thinks so too.

Out comes the surgical saw and the next thing we know, the family gold fish gets its ass flushed down the commode to make room for Dr. Cory’s new pet brain! So who’s brain was this? Usually in these body part movies, it’s someone like a serial killer or something, but this time the guy (Walter Donovan) turns out merely to be a rich jerk that does crappy stuff like refuse to donate to charity and avoids his tax burden by hiding his money in bogus bank accounts. Just think how history would have been changed if Dr. Cory had lived in Iowa and ended up with the Big Bopper’s brain instead of this Donovan guy’s brain. If nothing else, the movie would have had an excuse to play Chantilly Lace a couple of times. But maybe this movie is scary enough on its own.

Dr. Cory is just like any of us when we get a new pet. We’ve got no time for our friends anymore and want to spend time only with our faithful companion, except in this case the faithful companion isn’t some cuddly dog or turtle, but is a stinky brain who is faithful in the sense that it’s trying to take over Dr. Cory’s mind to use him as its tool of evil! I was never sure how we ever made the leap from just keeping this dumb brain alive in a dirty fish bowl to having this brain gain super powers that allowed it to control human beings, but then again, I was just trying to figure out what the point of keeping a brain alive in 1953 was in the first place.

Sure, Dr. Cory babbled something about how they had transplants and stuff and this was just the next step, but I think transplanting a brain (and I think Abbott and Costello can vouch for this) is a little more involved than sticking a new liver in some drunk. People don’t usually croak because their brain goes out on them, so you’re looking at trying to find suitable candidates for the body the new brain goes into. Then you’ve got to go and harvest the brain of the other dude before it suffers irreversible trauma. Most of us don’t plan on dying when we do, so that might be a bit of a problem as well.

The most sensible thing to do is for someone to build cyborg bodies to put the brains they manage to save into, but Dr. Cory is busy being manipulated by Donovan’s blasted brain so we’ll have to leave these dilemmas to someone else. I also would guess that if keeping these brains alive past their bodies’ death turns them into super-powered monsters, you might have to look into rethinking the entire concept.

Anyway, slowly and surely this brain turns Cory into Donovan complete with limp, handwriting, and gruff manner. For some reason, the brain is using its new found ability to continue to try and cheat the government out of the taxes that the brain owes it. I think this is a refreshing change from the usual schemes these monsters cook up. No plans for world conquest or revenge on an unfaithful lover here. But if the IRS thinks it’s getting one nickel from me, they are seriously mistaken, mister!

I think the movie spent far too much time on scenes with Dr. Cory meeting with cronies of Donovan’s and flying around withdrawing all this money he had stashed away in different banks. There were moments where I almost forgot that there was a killer brain involved!

Cory’s wife and drunk friend are worried about him and Cory attempts to escape the brain’s control by getting himself run over by a truck. That didn’t work out so well, but they figure out that the brain can only control one person at a time, so they manage to concoct some type of plan involving a lightning rod and a thunderstorm while the brain is busy killing a tabloid reporter.

Obviously, this movie makes absolutely no sense, but not in a way that you were contemplating hooking electrodes to your privates to keep you interested. The movie was passable because it never tried to do too much. Everything is contained in its own little world, so you can kind of swallow the whole “experiment gone wrong” scenario. Ayres is able to use the inflections of his voice to signal when he’s evil-Cory and when he’s just mad-scientist Cory and there are nice touches like having Cory order Donovan’s favorite cigars and getting Donovan’s style of suit made for himself. That’s just the sort of stuff you would expect a disembodied brain controlling a new body to do!

Solid enough for what it is, though it’s obviously over-rated by people who liked it better than me. There’s just too many holes in the story to overlook (pretty lucky to have that thunderstorm when they did), but I liked Lew Ayres well enough in it so that my own brain didn’t end up feeling like it was floating around in filthy bilge water.

© 2008 MonsterHunter