InjunNose When you've reviewed a hundred or so movies, you find there really isn't much to say about the ones you love and that picking apart the ones you loathe is just tiresome. What remains interesting is how a film that isn't "good" in any objective sense can light a spark in your imagination. For me, "Blood of Ghastly Horror" (which I first saw as "Man with the Synthetic Brain" on cable TV in the 1980s) is one of those films. It's been noted elsewhere that "BGH" is a patchwork effort and that its seams are painfully visible, so I won't belabor that point. (It's true, of course, but has nothing to do with what fascinates me about this movie.) I will say that what I consider surprisingly profound about such a cheap drive-in horror flick crops up in both the "Psycho A-Go-Go" scenes shot in 1965 and the darker, grimier footage from 1972--which might or might not say something about the themes that preoccupied director Al Adamson over the years. Was he interested in Schopenhauer or Beckett? I have no idea, but there are two scenes in this film that touch on something other than the customary monster-menaces-pretty-girl fare of the genre. The first is the confrontation between Roy Morton and John Carradine. Morton's character was badly wounded in Vietnam, and Carradine's character--a doctor--performed a series of radical electrical experiments to rescue Morton from a vegetative state. He can walk and talk and feed himself again, but the experiments have also turned him into a homicidal maniac. "Who were you to play God with my life?!" Morton roars at Carradine (before killing him) in one of the most jarringly realistic exchanges of dialogue in any horror film. It's played totally straight, not for melodrama as it might be in a Frankenstein flick, and it works. The second scene doesn't arrive until the end of the movie, and it's more difficult to describe what makes it work, but I'll try. The 1972 footage looks dirty and low-rent even by Al Adamson standards, but in my opinion this worked to his advantage. As "BGH" winds down, Akro (Richard Smedley)--a reanimated corpse who performs strongarm duties for a mad scientist--learns that his days are numbered. All that remains of the formula which prevents him from decomposing are a few drops, and his master has just thrown the vial containing those drops against the wall in a fit of pique. Akro kills the scientist and then collapses, dragging himself across the floor in an attempt to lap up some of the formula. He knows it's futile, and yet...wouldn't any of us do the same thing in his place? Slowly, painfully, Akro reaches the wall against which the vial has shattered, extending his hand to catch what's left of the precious liquid. He brings his fingers to his lips, sucks at them, and dies. The scene plays out to the sound of Regina Carrol's despairing screams and a starkly urgent Harry Lubin cue (kettle drums and strings), and it's difficult for me to believe that Adamson didn't know precisely what he was doing when he staged it. These two bizarrely thoughtful moments won't be enough to make most viewers wade through what is undeniably a poor film. (Many would even argue that there is no deliberate philosophical reflection in these scenes, to which I would respond that such ruminations were turning up in unexpected quarters at the time "BGH" was made...even in hardcore porn films like "The Devil in Miss Jones".) Fair enough. But they've made me a compulsive watcher of "Blood of Ghastly Horror" for almost thirty years.

JoeKarlosi Don't ask me how I did it, but even though this is technically a botched and splicey patchwork of a movie, I had a good time with it. It's poorly made to be sure, but somehow it's also mesmerizing in its ineptness at the same time. It helps going in to know the history...It was directed by drive-in movie maestro Al Adamson (of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" fame), who originally planned a straight jewelry heist picture in 1964 until meeting up with producer/mentor Sam Sherman who persuaded him to gradually add new scenes and ideas specifically for the horror/sci-fi television market in the early '70s. It was finally sold to TV with the lucrative title of MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, but Sherman thought it could be milked further, so the movie was also played at theaters where it became known as BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR.Ultimately emerging as connected pieces of different half-baked incarnations (one of these was even called PSYCHO A-GO-GO before the music was eliminated), the movie begins with a zombified maniac running around town strangling people. Through flashbacks within other flashbacks we're treated to a background story of how a Vietnam vet named Joe Corey was wounded and then "helped" by a wacky scientist named Dr. Vanard (the always welcome John Carradine) who planted some sort of mechanism inside Corey's head and unintentionally turned him into a murderer with a taste for jewel robbing (which is how the old 1964 heist footage managed to get utilized). But this man-made killer's got an angry dad who's also a scientist and is even nuttier than Dr. Vanard. He's out to even the score for what was done to his victimized son, and that includes making a mummified and whimpering she-monster out of Vanard's sexy daughter (Regina Carrol, director Adamson's wife).This isn't a film for most audiences, but anyone who revels in idiotic or badly made exploitation films of the '60s and '70s would want to get a load of this concoction. You've got to hand it to Sam Sherman and Al Adamson, in any case... they knew how to have fun and freak out audiences. The current DVD available by Troma is badly framed, however... this cuts out some widescreen and results in an unfortunate pan/scan affair. But it's unlikely at the time of this writing that there's any better source material. * out of ****

Bruce Cook [Also released as: "The Fiend with the Atom Brain", "Fiend with the Electronic Brain", "The Love Maniac", "The Man with the Synthetic Brain", and "Psycho A Go-Go"].The Film that Wouldn't Die: a movie which has endured more surgical alterations than the Frankenstein monster. Each version has been equally monstrous, but the history of this movie is a real hoot. Behold:In 1965 Al Adamson produced and directed a very low budget quickie called "Psycho A Go-Go", in which an ex-soldier is turned into a zombie-slave-killer by criminals who implant a device in his brain. The film was a big flop.Four years later Adamson tried to jazz it up by adding new scenes and giving it a new title: "Fiend with the Electronic Brain". This new version was also a big flop.In 1971 Adamson decided the film needed more new scenes, and this time he got Kent Taylor ("The Day Mars Invaded Earth") and John Carradine to help out. Even better, Adamson persuaded his sexy wife, Regina Carrol, to play Carradine's daughter. Best of all, he got Tommy Kirk ("Mars Needs Women", "Village of the Giants") to play a police detective who investigates the murders. To celebrate the film's big upgrade, he retitled it again: "The Man with the Synthetic Brain". Even with these well-known stars and nifty new title, the film was still a big flop. So Adamson waited awhile, gave the film another new title, "Blood of Ghastly Horror", and re-re-re-released it. Naturally the film was a big flop again because it was the same terrible movie that had flopped the last time.Is that the end of Adamson's Indestructible Movie? Definitely not -- in fact, this isn't even the entire middle of this remarkable film's history. At various times the movie has also been released under the title's "The Man with the Atomic Brain" and (get this) "The Love Maniac".Maybe the next reincarnation of this unkillable film will be disguised by a really tricky title -- like "War and Peace" or "The Eleven O'clock News". Good heavens, what if we just walked into some theater and found ourselves trapped into watching . . . "X: The Unknown Movie"!

emm Al Adamson was a next-generation Ed Wood who directed many movies in the history of bad cinema, such as DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, SATAN'S SADISTS, THE FEMALE BUNCH, and lots more. Not too surprisingly, you may have noticed Regina Carroll appearing in almost every one of his films. I believe the public hasn't taken Al Adamson's name in widespread recognition too seriously, but then again, Ed Wood bounced back into popularity due to the highly-praised 1994 movie about his life and career. But enough said....Whatever you'd like to name this picture is totally beyond me! Don't complain about thinking this is a horror film, because it's not. This is a fine piece of work by a respectable genius who made something look like a collage, which complicates everything in the movie's framework. The first thing you see are zombies attacking a woman. Next comes a scene that resembles 007. Later on, a stupid mad scientist and a 10-minute long mom & daughter mountain chase makes you wonder what the hell Al Adamson was doing in making a HORROR movie! Yucksters will definitely enjoy this and his other weird films, but they usually lack the spirit of famously familiar Ed Wood material, however they are a little more modern considering they were released during the early years of the anti-social generation. BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR is okay, but Al's other movies are probably much better than what I saw.