AMC Monsterfest:
Cult Classics Volume One-
The Atomic Brain (1964)/ 
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die(1963)/ 
Carnival Of Souls (1962) / Night Tide (1961)
review by Thera Belle

The Atomic Brain. Shite! Mad scientist/surgeon, old lady who wants a body transplant for her brain, 3 untraceable female victims, an almost werewolf, and shoddy science under a nuclear theme. At least it’s short. Seventy-two minutes. It was terrible. Looked terrible, sounded terrible. Nothing to recommend here.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Shite! Mad scientist/surgeon, decapitated fiancé in need of a body for her brain being preserved in shoddy science and injections of some sort. She talks! Without air, without lungs, without vocal cords. Amazing! And she’s physic cause only she can communicate with that thing in the closet. Throw in some strippers and a bit of live limb
extraction and this one has Mystery Science Theater 3000 written all over it. In fact, I think it’s been done by them. If not it should be their Christmas special. Avoid it unless you see a man and two robots in silhouette at the bottom of your screen.

Carnival Of Souls. Horrorview has already done an excellent review of this. If you haven’t seen it, see it. If you have seen it I hope it looked better than this “digitally remastered” release. His review is here. He was lucky enough to get the well done version. As a matter of fact, I’d love to see the version he reviewed. I might have to look into finding it for myself. Let me just say that though I’m sure this film cost about as much as the catering bill on most shoots do today it is nothing sort of inspiring. I was very nicely surprised.

High Tide. This film stars a young Dennis Hopper as a navy seaman out for a night on the town who encounters a woman who gives him the brush off but he doesn’t take no for an answer. If he did there wouldn’t be any film here.

Her name is Mora. By night she goes to bars and listens to jazz. By day she’s Mora the Mermaid on the pier. She spends several hours in a box of illusion pretending to be a mermaid underwater. I’m not sure how this effect is achieved so if anyone knows for sure please tell me.

Mora is nice and beautiful and Johnny (Hopper) quickly falls in love with her. But there’s a problem. Mora’s last two boyfriends ended up dead, drowned, and she thinks there’s a very good reason for this. She’s one of the sea people, a real mermaid, a siren and eventually her people will lure her back out to sea to live. Until then any man she loves will die, quite possibly at her hands.

It’s amazing to watch an actor like Dennis Hopper, even 43 years ago. He’s a method actor and that phrase has taken on some negative connotations over the years. Before Brando and his school of acting everybody tried to be like Spencer Tracy. Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture. But when I was watching Dennis Hopper I just couldn’t get over how natural he
seemed and I thought to myself that each take he did was probably different, different intonations, different movements, different focus. He touched things as if he’d never seen them before and was actually interested. He used his body in such a natural way, ways that would have caused retakes in
any other actor.

While the story and production values weren’t perfect it was enjoyable to watch. I felt as if I were seeing a snapshot of the Pacific coast before I was born and I never got bored. I wondered just what the heck was going on a few times and in the end the mystery wasn’t such a shock because I did figure it out ahead of time but getting there was half the fun.

On the two disks there are no extras. The transfers aren’t good and the first two films could have been left out and it wouldn’t have hurt my feelings. But seeing Carnival Of Souls makes me want to see it again in a better version and seeing a young Dennis Hopper really makes me appreciate all over again what a great actor he really is. If you come across this collection take disk one out and hang it from the rearview mirror of your car 'cause that would at least make it useful. Watch the other disk and enjoy.