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Brainiac
[Casa Negra]
1961; b&w
Directed by Chano Urueta
Starring: Abel Salazar, Ariadna Welter, Mauricio Garces, Rosa Maria Gallardo, Ruben Rojo, Ofelia Guilmain, Rene Cardona, Susana Cora, David Silva, Roxanna Bellini, Luis Aragon, Magda Urvizu & German Robles
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If you’re a fan of world cinema in general but your knowledge of Mexican cinema specifically pretty much starts and ends with movies containing one or more wrestling scene, like me, these recent releases from Casa Negra’s “legendary Mexican cinema” series will be a welcome sight. As the backstory goes, Braniac AKA El Baron Del Terror was originally brought to the States (along with all sorts of other Mexican made films) by producer, distributor, and maker of weird children’s films K. Gordon Murray, who had a little cottage industry of sorts importing movies from other countries. Of course, during the drive-in / grindhouse era people didn’t go to the movies to read so Murray had to take the extra step of dubbing these films into English in order to make them more sellable to an American audience, which helps to explain the kookiness of the audio track on this DVD. Before I get any more off track and / or ahead of myself, let’s get on to the movie. The credit roll features some appropriately “horrific” imagery and an equally appropriately foreboding soundtrack (plus cool old time-y lettering a la the House Industries Monster Fonts that assure you, should there be any remaining doubt, that what you’re about to watch is most definitely a horror movie) but the viewer doesn’t get too far into the festivities before starting to realize that Braniac has a little more in common with Bride Of The Monster than Bride Of Frankenstein. (Seeing as how we’re not above praising a film that considers string and paper mache to be valid prop designing tools, this will not be a problem for us.) When the movie proper opens we find ourselves in the 1600s, 1661 to be exact, witnessing the witch trial-esque inquisition of one Baron Vitelius. It would seem the Baron is evil, in league with Satan, and some dudes clad in black Klan style get-ups are about to decide his fate; at a very slow pace. This ain’t no thing but a chicken wing to the Baron, apparently, because when they actually do get around to sentencing him - to, among other things, death by fire - he calmly states that if his body is to be burned, it will be without chains. Then, presto-change-o, his leg irons disappear from his feet and reappear on the feet of the hooded guy standing next to him! For his next trick the Baron sidesteps the wooden thing he was just chained to and, just as calmly, walks out of the room. At this point you might be tempted to ask yourself “If this guy can make things disappear and reappear so easily, why doesn’t he just make himself vanish and pop back up someplace where a group of people are not waiting to burn him alive at the stake?” but don’t. It’s really not even worth getting caught up in shit like that because there are plenty of other equally puzzling and memorable moments yet to come. I mean, he hasn’t even died and returned to earth hundreds of years later in the form of a comet / paper mache rock. In order to morph back into his original form and seek revenge on the descendants of those who wronged him oh so many years ago, plus whatever random hookers cross his path, via his homicidal alter ego who hypnotizes his victims with flashing lights and the slow expanding and contracting of his head before grabbing them with his pointy lobster claw hands and sucking out their gray matter with his brain sucking forked tongue. As to whether or not this film is, as the box cover propaganda promises, the most bizarre horror movie… ever… well, I can’t quite concur. But it sure was a highly entertaining cheesy Mexican monster flick and, really, who could ask for anything more?
—Bunny
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