Mark of the Movie 2: The Atomic Brain

The Atomic Brain (1964)

Comments

There is just nothing at all like a good old fashioned atomic paranoia movie. This one has the added bonus of featuring the archetypal unethical mad medical doctor. Not bad. The heavy use of narration gave it a sort of documentary or mocumentary feel. I tend to suspect there was more than a little Twilight Zone influence there, too. 72 minutes and only two plot holes. The doctor (Dr. Otto Frank, really, I could not make this stuff up) has an “assistant” produced by a previous experiment that I'll call the dog-faced boy. Supposedly this was the result of grafting a dog brain into the body of a recently deceased young adult male. Fine. Later a cat brain is transplanted into a human female, but there is no accompanying transformation. I was disappointed by this; the dog-face make-up was pretty darn good given how much this movie was likely made on. However, the cat girl didn't live long, so maybe we can justify this “hole” as there not being enough time for the cat DNA or whatever to take hold.

The second hole is less negotiable, but comes at the end of the movie. I don't want to give it away for the two of you on the planet who are concerned about spoilers here, but it has something to do with the relative sizes of a brain and a skull...

On the whole The Atomic Brain is a much better tale then our next film.

Gaming Hooks

Three words. Son. Of. Ether. Or, a rogue Technocrat. For some reason the dog-faced boy and the cat girl immediately had me thinking of Edges and Hindrances from Savage Worlds, so I think I'll stat them up. Amongst all the rest of the antagonists, I think only the doctor really qualifies as a Wild Card, but maybe his old widow “benefactor” could be one, too.

It's either bad summer sausage or more of UncleBear's insidious influence, but I suspect that if I ever expand on my Savaged THEM! Idea it will have to include a 1950's Dr. Moreau Dr. Frankenstein mash up.