"The Brain Eaters" starring Ed Nelson

This blog was begun Tuesday night March 31st and completed the following day :

Okay, get ready, cause this one is gross. Don't say I didn't warn you. Tonight I watched a movie called "The Brain Eaters"(1958). Yucko, right? If I can claim mitigating circumstances, I selected it because it had "Brain" in the title which as you know is a habit of mine. I am usually more stringent, and insist on there being a Brain in the film, an actual Brain as a proper noun, rather than secondary characters as is the case here, where the brains are part of the human anatomy and are victims of an aggressor in the dramatic conflict. Yeah, I'm a little nutty but I have my standards. This time, though, I had to settle for just the word "Brain" rather that an actual one, because there was no Brain in the movie. Yeah, I know - you're disappointed. Sorry about that and sorry about the disgusting title, but once I tell you about the movie you won't feel so bad (I hope).

Once again we have a narrator, the son of a small town Mayor. He's telling the story in hindsight, or retrospect or whatever you want to call it. The movie was shot in Pomona, so we're kind of out in the sticks. This son and his wife are driving along a country road late one night, when all of a sudden there is a flash of light and a big kaboom off to the side. They stop the car to investigate, and as they walk out into the brush they see that all the animals in the vicinity have been killed. Further in, they come to a clearing and holy moley! - they see a tall silver cone that looks like the capsule of a rocket ship, standing straight up as if it has landed there. Well, they bail out good and proper and drive back to town, where they notify the Sheriff and the Local Scientist (great 1950s actor Ed Nelson, who also produced this film). Nelson rides back out to the site with the Mayor's son, and upon examination of the ship he determines that it's not a rocket but a borer of some type, a tunneling machine that has created a labyrinth underground.

Meanwhile, back at the Sheriff's station, two young guys wearing black turtleneck sweaters (signifying Sinister Intent) are sneaking around, carrying Big Glowing Jars underneath a blanket. One of them gets into a punchout with the Sheriff, but this is only a distraction so that the other guy can plant a Jar in his office. After that, it's not long before the Sheriff is acting Formal and Half-Zombified in the way we've described, as it pertains to these types of movies. He sends some deputies out to set up a barrier around the cone; they too encounter the Turtleneckers and wind up dead, but this time, before they can all reanimate, Scientist Nelson has a chance to examine one of the bodies. "Look at these marks on the back of his neck", he says to Senator Walter K. Powers, who's been sent by Washington to cover up the matter. "Whatever made these must be some kind of parasite". They take the deputy's body to the morgue for further examination, and discover that the parasite had attached itself to the officer's central nervous system at the base of his brain.

Senator Powers is outraged and demands action. "Whatever this thing is, can it be stopped? We can't have it getting out to the public and causing panic"!

Nelson assures him he'll do his best, but he's gonna have to go inside the cone to see where the tunnels lead. Now, this sounds like a pretty good set-up, does it not? The trouble is that "The Brain Eaters" had a budget that would make Ed Wood feel like an A-Lister in comparison, only $30,000 bucks according to IMDB. Therefore, there little in the way of special effects or hardware to give the movie that Classic Sci-Fi look. There are some good scenes of parasite victims skulking about in the darkness, ala "Night Of The Living Dead" (which this film predates by a decade), and the dialogue is interesting, as is the plot. But director Bruno VeSota (who we saw as an actor in "War Of The Sattelites) doesn't have a lot to work with, or perhaps didn't have the time to get creative with weird camera angles and tense pacing, so his direction falls a little flat. And there's not much location shooting. Most of the action takes place out in the darkness of the Pomona wilds. The biggest problem is with The Brain Eaters themselves; we don't get to see much of them, and what we do see resembles small snakes of slime that have pipe cleaners sticking out of their heads. If they could've doubled the budget, they might've been able to kick in for something along the lines of the Brain-and-Spinal-Column combinations that attacked their hapless victims in "Fiend Without A Face", a classic that was released the same year.

They do have a good script, though, which saves the picture, along with serviceable acting and an especially strong score. Maybe they spent most of their dough on the music, I dunno, but it's very heavy and dramatic, and underscores the peril Pomona could soon be in if the Things continue to multiply. And yeah, it's topical too, in a B-Movie way, which because of the context provides a much-needed bit of levity during this tenuous time. But don't laugh too hard, cause you're supposed to be scared.

Actress Joanna Lee has an important role as Ed Nelson's wife, running around in a negligee for much of the duration. I kept wondering where I'd heard her name before, and when I looked her up at the movie's end I saw she was mostly a writer, and had written scripts for many episodes of "Gilligan's Island", lol. Aha! I knew she sounded familiar.....

Finally, a young Leonard Nimoy has a small but pivotal part near the end. He will be unrecognizable, but that gives you a clue what to look for. I enjoyed "The Brain Eaters" despite it's budgetary limitations, because it takes itself seriously while all in good fun. Two Regular Thumbs Up. /////

It's now Monday evening and time for my CSUN walk. It was nice to see Pearl this morning. She is doing well and I look forward to resuming my job as her caregiver, whenever that will be. I'll see you later tonight at the Usual Time. Stay well. :):)

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)