Brainiac (1961)
Starring: Abel Salazar
Director: Chano Urueta
Synopsis: Riotious Mexican monster movie makes Plan 9 seem like Citizen Kane
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

Astounding horror film from Mexico must be seen to be believed. Mind-boggling transformation scenes of gut wrenching horror. Watch a handsome young man turn into a brain slurping demon from hell. Absolutely fantastically bad. A marvelously awful movie.

Amazing scenes of mayhem as Brainiac slurps the brain out of skulls like slurping a milkshake at The Hot Spot. Colossal achievement, horrendously awful, hernia inducingly funny, truly abominable stuff. Classic midnight movie if ever there was. We give this our highest recommendation.

Proceedings begin with the trial of Baron Vitaleus during the inquisition of the 1700's by a kangaroo court of masked judges resembling members of the KKK wearing black. The trial is fixed against a defiant Vitaleus and as he is put to his death by being torched in a massive bonfire. But before he is baked into a crisp burrito he swears retribution to a mocking audience before perishing in a puff of smoke. It's a suitably dramatic opening for the mind-altering horrors that are to follow during the rest of this triumph of a horror-disaster movie. Vitaleus uses his dark powers to somehow transfer his soul into the body of a comet and swears that when the comet (actually a sparkler) returns 300 or so years later he will exact a most horrendous revenge on the jury that condemned him to burn.

Centuries pass and we move to the present time (early 60's) to the lab of an astronomer who excitedly informing his accomplices about the arrival of a strange new comet, after an orbit of around 300 years or so. As the comet crashes to some remote desert area the vengeful spirit in the form of a rubbery lump it unleashes Baron Vitaleus in the form of a ghastly blood sucking vampire like bat-thing who proceeds to search out the family of his detractors and make them pay for the injustices done to him all those centuries ago. The creatures modus operandi is to make a ghastly incision in the victims skull and then proceed to suck out their brains in the most horrific manner. After the gruesome deed is done, the body is discarded like a pair of old socks and the creature transforms into the human form of the resurrected Baron Vitaleus. One by one the beastly brain slurping creature tracks down his victims and does his thing. The question is, how can he be stopped?

The film is elevated to the master class due to a number of reasons but above all is the fact that it has given cinema one of the most endearing as well as stunningly frightening monsters in cinema history. The acting is also sublimely atrocious and the direction and back ground music is of the most lavishly over the top nature. Yet the film is a sheer delight and rightfully holds its own among such celebrated masterpieces such as Robot Monster, Plan 9, Glen or Glenda and co.