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Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)

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Richard Denning was another actor who for better or worse got to do some truly dreadful science fiction films of the 50s. I think if you took the comparative works of him, Peter Graves, and John Agar it might be a good contest to see who did the most dreadful.

Creature With Atom Brain is among the dreadful. Denning is a doctor in a police laboratory who gets himself a pair of unusual cases, a mobster and a District Attorney killed apparently by the same man and method. Denning was only half right there, but his investigation leads to some startling conclusions.

Talk about evil combinations. Former gangland boss Michael Granger who was deported years ago with the DA’s prosecution and his former underboss ratting him out. Granger while in Europe hooks up with a former Nazi doctor Gregory Gaye who has been experimenting with dead animals by injecting the brains with radioactive electric impulses.

Having a whole army of zombie hit men sounds like one fabulous idea for any would be Mafia don. So Granger and Gaye get some dead bodies and start recruiting. Lots of possibilities here, but Granger’s going to settle some old accounts before moving on to new and better rackets.

These 50s science fiction movies, even the worst of them are entertaining in a strange way. I’ll say that the production got good value on its minuscule budget. It gets hilarious at times though.