FANTASIA OBSCURA: Is Hitler’s Severed Head Just as Dangerous as the Man Himself?
[SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! If you’re headed to LunaCon in Tarrytown, NY, this weekend, catch Fantasia Obscura’s James Ryan on a panel all about cult films on Saturday at 6:00 PM!]
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, we get to see why it’s a bad thing when those who do not know, teach.
The Madmen of Mandoras (1963)
(Dist.: Crown International Pictures; Dir.: David Bradley)
“Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.” – Alexander Pope
By all accounts, David Bradley was a great instructor on the art of movie making. His students at UCLA certainly got a lot of insight into the medium; some of that came from the extensive personal collection of films — which he gifted after his death in 1997 to Indiana University –that he’d screen for them, while some came from his own experiences in the business. His work for MGM on adaptations of the plays Peer Gynt and Julius Caesar certainly suggest at least some level of craft early on in his work.
Which makes it hard to explain why his 1963 film, which appears to have been presented to Bradley direct by writer/producer Steve Bennett (his only credit listed online) as an independent package project, seem like the work of someone who never handled a camera before. It’s hard to explain how this instructor came up with something so beneath his potential.
Unless you want to blame it on the Nazis. Hey, that could work.
And by 1963, there were certainly a few left over from the end of the war to blame anything on. A few years beforehand, Adolf Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina and spirited to Israel for trial, and stories about ODESSA, an SS program that supposedly smuggled Nazi leaders out of Germany before V-E Day, were quite common. Some of the wilder stories suggested that one of the leaders spirited away was Adolf Hitler himself, who left behind a double in the bunker and might be plotting a comeback.
These stories sprung many films out of this fear of the return of the Nazis. The nightmare of the escaped Nazis still out there gave us 1969’s pilot for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, 1974’s The Odessa File, and 1980’s The Formula. Meanwhile, fears that Hitler himself may be waiting to reenter the stage gave us 1978’s The Boys From Brazil, a thriller that earned three Academy Award nominations.
Unfortunately, though, it also gave us this…
Our film opens in the modern era, the early 1960s, when haircuts were pretty short. Professor John Coleman (John Holland) is discussing “G-Gas,” a virulent nerve gas agent that’s quite deadly over large areas in small quantities. His audience is told how deadly it is and how he’s got the antidote for it, which there’s only one copy of in existence.
(Okay, this is an era before peer papers could be uploaded online, granted, but really? You have something that important that can save the world, and you don’t make copies? Who do you think you are, Doctor Erskine…?)
So, the good professor finishes sharing his findings with a group that includes federal agent Phil Day (Walter Stocker), who happens to be his son-in-law. Which, in the final analysis, means nothing, as the plot contrivances spin the story so badly off axis just to get Phil and his wife Kathy (Audrey Caire) to make a trip to the fictional Latin American country of Mandoras to rescue Coleman from Nazis who have stockpiled G-Gas and want to keep the antidote all to themselves until after they wipe out the rest of the planet.
But not just any Nazis! Oh no, they actually have their leader with them… or at least his head, played by Bill Freed. Sputtering ersatz German and failing to look nasty as needed (or much like Hitler in many shots) by the thread-bare script that the more you try and follow it, the worst your head hurts.
The film’s a total trainwreck. Bradley, who you’d think should have done better, makes what he can of this mess. But the lack of budget and inability to effectively use what he has at hand in service to a horrible script dooms this from the start.
It’s Bradley’s own Operation Barbarossa; his actors have no chemistry with either each other or the camera, and his effects could never be called “special” even under pain of death. It’s just a disaster.
And as bad as the film was, it got much worse later on.
The same way The Wasp Woman was extended to make it easier to schedule into a two-hour TV time slot, Bradley added 17 minutes to his film in 1968. He shot those later sequences in the new modern era, the late 1960s, when haircuts were much longer.
The difference between the new and old footage is so glaring, it’s like only some parts of town had never heard of the Beatles as the agents of Mandoras sweep through on their missions. And while the hair was longer, the people wearing the haircuts were just no better.
The film got a longer run time, as well as a new title: They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Not that they could save ours after watching it.
Which raises the question: How could this have happened? And what can we get from looking at this, other than some form of contact poisoning?
If nothing else, it’s testament to the fact that when making a film, you need more than just technical understanding. You can give any filmmaker no budget and the same story, and whereas a Roger Corman has a decent chance of turning it into a capable film, and an Ed Wood Jr. might give you something you’ll remember, you’re likely to end up with nothing if there’s no spark or animus. Bradley could understand and discuss film, but by this point in his life, he simply could not make one.
In the end, he proved he just didn’t have the Reich stuff.
NEXT TIME: The day in the office was nothing compared to the ride home. I hope it was home, at least…
