Blood Of Ghastly Horror (1967)

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Three people whose careers saw better days star in Psycho A Go Go. John Carradine, Kent Taylor, and Tommy Kirk are the stars and the rest of the cast of this monstrosity are a bunch of never wases. Carradine plays a scientist who puts an electronic pulse in the brain of a wounded Vietnam vet who becomes a psychotic killer. Taylor is another scientist and Kirk the homicide cop assigned to catch this deranged killer.It's sad to see someone like Kent Taylor in this stuff, he had a respectable career in some decent roles in B pictures. Like so many when the studio system collapsed he took work where he found it. Carradine just didn't care, he would sign for anything at this point of his life. And we all know how Walt Disney had Tommy Kirk blackballed with the major studios because he discovered he was gay. This was all he could get.This one doesn't even have the saving grace of an overacted Carradine performance, no special moment like he had like in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with that spread eagle oratory. He just took the money and ran. Hopefully all their checks cleared. There ain't a spark of anything in the three dull faced stars.You name it, it's bad, acting, direction, camera work.Skip this one if at all possible.

Disjointed horror film that was made from a heist film that was cut apart and had new scenes added. It has something to do about a zombified people going around killing. The original film was a crime caper film about a jewel heist. Watching the film for the first time in years, and for the first time without commercials I found it to be an absolute disaster area of a film. Its awful. Its films like this that make me hate Al Adamson films because they are such patchwork messes with new and old footage mingling freely. After listening to the commentary on the DVD I have to temper my criticism of the film since its clear that the scenes from the original heist film were actually really good. Had that film been released (it couldn't get released because it had no stars) I'm pretty certain that it would have had a nice reputation and Adamson might have gone on not to be a hack. The trouble was that Adamson was willing to sell his film short and shoot and reshoot and cut apart the heist film. Producer Sam Sherman who does the commentary takes the blame for ruining the film with the re-cuts and rewrites. The film as it stands now seems to be about four films blended together, which is about right since the heist, the cops, the zombie and what ever else all seem to be in different films made at different times. Sherman in his commentary said the film plays better with commercials and he ain't kidding. Watching this on TV you can blame the station for hacking it up, however seeing it sans commercials you realize what a nightmare it is. Awful

I watched this Z-grade excuse for a "movie" under its title "The Man with the Synthetic Brain", but I can assure that any form of brain activity is the absolute last thing you should expect to find here. Now I am aware that one shouldn't anticipate much when selecting a movie directed by the notoriously incompetent director Al Adamson (his other "highlights" include 'Blood of Dracula's Castle', 'Satan's Sadists' and 'Brain of Blood') but this worthless excuse for a motion picture is literally insufferable. The first 3 minutes are the only ones worth mentioning, actually. During this falsely promising intro, we witness a Frankenstein-type monster savagely strangling no less than five people. What an awesome opener, you'd think … but then Adamson suddenly opted for a completely retarded and incoherent narrative structure, involving long & confusing flashbacks and unrelated sub plots. Don't even ask to summarize the concept, as it quickly got so boring and uninteresting that I lost all attention. Apart from during the intro, there's absolutely no other action or bloodshed, the acting performances are almost painful to observe and not one of the dialogs makes a slight bit of sense. John Carradine looks really fatigue in his umpteenth role as unstable scientist (and cause of all horror) and Adamson's direction totally lacks style and inspiration. Even horror fanatics that have a weakness for 'so-bad-it's-good' cinema shouldn't view this dud, as it's too terrible.

First they filmed a crime drama. Then they decided to make it into some sort of sci-fi flick, by adding footage which explains the criminal's behaviour in terms of a synthetic brain place in the head of a soldier. Then they decide to wrap this with some incredibly trashy low-budget early 70s zombie monster footage.