Comments on: Mad Science inessential — The Atomic Brain

By: petronius

petronius — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:58:49 +0000

Kurt Siodmak also wrote “Der Tunnel”, a fabulous 1935 UFA SF film, where the engineer is building a high-speed rail tunnel from England to North America! It includes such strange interludes like drilling near a submarine volcano and a joint session of the US Senate and the British House of Commons via short-wave TV. Another great one was “Floating Platform 1 Doesn’t Answer”, where the engineer builds floating airstrips to refuel transatlantic planes.

UFA did an interesting thing in this era before the perfection of voice dubbing. They would film the movie three times, with different sets of actors, one German, one English, one French. So while the Germans were using the Radium Drill set for the Tunnel, the English would be setting up the US senate scene, etc. The big special effect shots were shared between them.

By: Dr. Faustus

Dr. Faustus — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 01:29:41 +0000

Looked it up, and realized that this movie is probably even better than it sounds, in large measure because it was written by Curt Siodmak, who also wrote the story for The Invisible Woman, a topic of more than passing interest around here, as well as Donovan's Brain, and -- can this be? -- a movie called Love Slaves of the Amazons? "Atom Brain" does not seem to be at the Internet Archive, sadly. Guess I'll have to hope for being sleepless on the right late night...

By: petronius

petronius — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:49:32 +0000

A similar film, only without the tubular girls, is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047960/ “The Creature with the Atomic Brain” of 1955, another gem from the UHF or Zinc age of SF. The nazi scientist revives dead bodies for the benefit of a gangster, who has the zombies rob banks and knock off the rivals who toppled him from gangland’s throne. It’s not clear what the radiation (cyclotron or otherwise) has to do with this.