Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by “Nathan Hertz” (Nathan Juran)
• Written by Ray Buffum
• Starring
  • John Agar
  • Joyce Meadows
  • Robert Fuller
  • Thomas Browne Henry
  • Dale Tate
• Produced by Jacques R. Marquette

Howdy! In case you haven’t heard, this is Brainathon ‘99 — a collaboration of several of the best b-review sites on the web to inundate you with reviews for a specific movie of dubious quality. You can find other reviews for Brainathon ‘99 at Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension, The Bad Movie Report, B-Notes, Badmovies.org, And You Call Yourself a Scientist!, and Oh The Humanity!.

So anyway, on to the movie.

Ah, the fifties! A time of rampant paranoia which the movie industry displaced onto body snatchers, radioactive mutations, and various denizens of flying saucers. Yet of all these, The Brain From Planet Arous takes the cake for an unbelievable premise.

No, I’m not talking about the giant ghostly flying brain that floats like its suspended from piano wires and lusts after earth women. That part’s perfectly believable.

But think about this: A scientist working on atomic experiments for the A.E.C. (that’s the Atomic Energy Commission, for you undereducated young-uns) decides to disappear into the desert of the test zone for a full week without first informing his superiors? In any dimension remotely related to ours, security on atomic stuff was so tight in the anti-Commie ’50s that our scientist friend would find himself the subject of a joit NSA-FBI manhunt and subjected to both interrogation and body cavity searches on his return.

Nevertheless, that’s what our square-jawed nuclear physicist Steve (John Agar) does. When he and his friend Danny (Robert Fuller) discover odd period bursts of intense radioactivity coming from the subtly-named Mystery Mountain, they decide to do a little recon on their own in the Jeep without word to the brass. Leaving behind Steve’s intelligent-yet-properly-domestic fiancee Sally (Joyce Meadows), they trek to the mountain to discover an inexplicably-excavated cave, in which resides — a badly-superimposed brain! The brain, a criminal named Gor from the planet Arous (why did they name the planet something vaguely naughty?), radiation-fried Danny and possesses Steve — presumably because a human who can explode planes on sight has a better chance of ruling the world than a brain the size of a small Volkswagen.

(It’s easy to see why Gor chose Steve, though — he has the uncanny ability to tell what direction radiation is coming from when looking at a completely non-directional Geiger counter. A man with a talent like that can go far, I tell you!)

Fortunately, an interstellar cop brain named Vol has followed Gor to earth, and communicates with Sally and her father, eventually possessing the family dog George to stay close to Steve as he goes about his nefarious plans.

Most of the middle of the movie is taken up with:

- Possessed Steve not doing a very good job of acting normal. At the drop of a hat, he’s ready to burst into imprudent megalomaniacal rantings of how he’ll rule the world in the very short future. I guess that having a big brain gives you a big head.

- Possessed Steve’s repeated attempts of date rape with his fiancee (who tries desperately to pretend that she doesn’t notice anything wrong with Steve — wouldn’t want to tip the good guys’ hand, you know).

- Possessed Steve blowing up model planes on strings. I know, they’re supposed to be real planes in the sky, but if any plane I flew on wobbled like that, I’d empty my britches real fast.

- Possessed Steve setting up time-wasting meetings with Army brass and representatives from various countries (including India) to demonstrate his more-than-nuclear powers. I guess useless bureaucracies are the management style of choice on Arous, too.

We get a couple of other choice bits, too:

- Only in the ’50s would a man return from a week in the desert clean, well-groomed, and shaven.

- Again, only in the ’50s would a girl know that something is wrong with her fiance because he kisses too well.

- The local sheriff becomes suspicous about Danny’s disappearance and confronts Steve; Steve easily fries him to radioactive toast. But even in death, the sheriff’s a nice guy; you can see his corpse obliging hoisting himself onto Steve’s shoulder.

Although this flick is bad (real bad), it walks a delicate line: It’s bad enough that it’s completely laughable and suitable for parties, wedding receptions and other gatherings; but it’s not so monumentally bad that it poisons its core concept for all time to come. The idea of disembodied alien cops and criminals chasing each other made a comeback in The Hidden (1987), a damned good movie. (Compare this to Plan 9, which poisoned the alien-reanimated zombie idea so completely that only Fred Olen Ray dared attempt it again in The Alien Dead.)