They Saved Hitler's Brain

Connoisseurs of bad movies rank this execration as an all-time favorite, rivaling Ed Wood's infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space as the worst film of all time. The trouble began in the early 1950s when a film called Madmen of Mandoras was shot and shelved for no mysterious reason at all. The film boasted the great cinematographer, Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons), whose gorgeously evocative photography makes a startling contrast to the inexplicable plot with which it seems to coexist. But that wasn't bad enough, so in the early 1960s some UCLA film students shot additional footage, somewhat differently styled (think Mod Squad meets cinéma vérité porno), and intercut it with the original film as if the two were meant for each other. The resultant jumble concerns a pair of modish CID agents on the trail of a kidnapped scientist, Nerve Gas-G, an antidote, the resurgence of the Fourth Reich on the Caribbean island of Mandoras, and Hitler's severed head barking orders from a jar. Here are but a few of the absurdities awaiting you: The swastika is backward, one obtuse character has to pull the car over to discover that her partner was shot even though she was present at the event, and when Hitler's head bites the big one, it melts. Critic J. Hoberman, in his seminal article, Bad Movies, observed that this film fairly makes the brain explode with ideas. Not only that, but aneurysms. You'll be screaming, "Mein Kopf! Mein Kopf!" just as Hitler's head should have, if only there had been the budget for that. --Jim Gay