The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 26 - They Saved Hitler's Brain

Sometimes you see a title and you know everything you need to know about a movie. Like this one. Deep character development and introspection is simply not on the on the table here. Sadly neither is anything resembling an entertaining movie.

It seems that in 1963 or so a movie was released called “The Madmen of Mandoras” intended to be a b film in a double feature it ran about 63 minutes or so but it seems that it either wasn’t released or released sparingly. Some years later – the exact number of years is not clear – somebody added some 25-30 minutes of extra footage to get the running time up to 90 minutes so it could be sold to television – before the advent of the infomercial television was constantly demanding material any material that could be shown between commercials and horror/sci fi films did better in the late night slots than other films did sooo…so the extra footage was shot.

Since the original was in Black and white the extra footage was also shot in black and white. However there was no attempt made to match the hair styles fashions even the look of the original footage so we get people in what look like 70’s get ups and hair styles farting about on screen – one of them even says “that was a waste of an afternoon’ your lips to god’s ears my dear. And their actions have only a slight connection to the original storyline – the only thing that they did make sure was that the bad guys in both sections are driving a black or dark blue Lincoln Town car (obtaining that I think blew most of the budget).

Then all these extra characters are killed off about 20 minutes into the film and we meet a whole new set of folks (the ones from the original film) which to a viewer has to be confusing because well the only time I can remember anybody jumping from following the story of one character to someone else that worked was “Psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock – and these folks are no Hitchcock.

So we are jammed into the original film – which is all about a group of Nazis who want to conquer the world using something called G gas – of which some professor – who has two daughters one married to a CID agent (it’s never explained what the CID is I have to assume it’s an FBI kind of thing but well he’s not very effectual in the film anyway) and another daughter who’s kind of a proto hippy or late beat take your pick. They all end up on the island of Mandoras where they learn the horrible secret – that Hitler’s brain – they call him Mr. H in the film – is alive.

Actually they saved his head and bit of his shoulders – which made it easier for the actor – one Bill Freed in one of this two film roles – to sit there with the jar over his head and make faces and yell from time to time. We do seem him earlier in the film walking about as someone tells the story in flashback and honestly to me he looks like the guy playing Hitler in the cafeteria in Mel Brook’s Blazing Saddles - the one that says – “they lose me after the bunker scene.”

And it doesn’t really do much – it yells from time to time – makes faces and people talk to it but it doesn’t do much. Which bothered me.

You know I’m pretty easy going about things and if people want to make a film about Hitler’s head being in a Jar well they can go ahead and do it, it’s just as I was watching this train wreck – I kept wondering why the whole Hitler’s head deal? The entire film could have been done with the Nazis trying to take over the world with this G gas thing and turning this South American Island into a private kingdom without the Hitler head thing. It didn’t add anything to the story – hell we knew the Nazis were bad before the film started. It wasn’t even the main trust plot of the film the G gas thing was. So why do it? Restoring Hitler to life was the whole point behind the boys from brazil – really if you’re going to have Hitler in a film – his overwhelming evil requires he be something more than a hood ornament any movie he is in.

Anyway it all ends well with all the bad folks dead – although the G Gas thing seems to have been forgotten in the final fight – and people who are not drinking are preparing to have sanctioned martial intercourse.

Enjoy – ha – with sharp flavored cheese pickles and German beer – anything to cut the dull crude blandness of the film.