Blood of Ghastly Horror

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Howard Vanard (John Carradine) implants a strange electronic brain component into the brain of returning soldier Joe Corey (Roy Morton) who becomes a psychotic killer. After a robbery, the money is thrown into the back of a car belonging to David Clarke. Corey returns to Dr. Vanards' lab and kills him and then follows Clarke's wife Linda and daughter Nancy, who unknowingly have the money in the car. Corey chases the pair across a snow-covered country-side before being shot by pursuing police and falling off a cliff and dying. Some years later, Susan Vanard (Regina Carrol) tells the police she's been getting mental messages from her father, the late doctor. Sgt. Cross (Tommy Kirk) who has been investigating a recent series of murders that have taken place and can't seem to find any clues. Meanwhile, a strange scientist, Dr. Elton Corey (Kent Taylor) brings to life a zombie called Akro and sets out to avenge those responsible for the death of his son. Sgt. Grimaldi tracks down the zombie but is killed and his heart is mailed to Sgt. Cross. Susan is captured by the zombie and taken to Dr. Corey who injects her with a serum that turns her into something like Akro. Sgt. Cross follows some clues left by his dead partner and finds Dr. Corey's lab, then kills both him and Akro. Susan takes a serum that reverses the process and returns to normal.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
[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.
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?
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".
Al Adamson might just have been the worst film director in history.
I truly think that his films are at least as bad as Ed Wood's and both men finished up their careers making porno flicks.
This film, made in the pre-porno days, manages to perhaps be the worse excuse for a film Adamson ever made--even worse than Dracula VS.
That's because this master of the super-super cheap drive-in film found a way to make this film even cheaper and cheesier than the rest--he took apart an older film he made (PSYCHO A GO-GO) and pieced it together with some new scenes to make an entirely new film!!
The original film, PSYCHO A GO-GO was actually one of Adamson's best films (though its current rating of 2.0 is hardly stellar).
It was about a jewel robbery gone bad and particularly focused on a psychotic killer within the gang and his evil deeds.Now, the same guy who was killed at the end of PSYCHO A GO-GO is back as a zombie re-animated by John Carradine with an electronic brain!
And, it's up to Tommy Kirk and a bunch of other no-talents to unravel the mystery (about the murders, not why they agreed to be in this pile of bilge).Much of the film makes no sense at all and it's all quite confusing and stupid--with very large chunks of the old film re-used haphazardly.
The only people who could enjoy this dull mess are bad movie freaks like myself who occasionally enjoy laughing at horrid films.
And this one has it all--very bad acting, the director's stripper wife making yet another gratuitous appearance in one of his films, non-existent writing and terrible direction (with quite a few out of focus and poorly framed shots)..
This chase scene incidentally is most of the movie, or seems like it, killer running, woman and child running, killer, woman, on and on ...
To say this is a cheesy horror film is to be generous.
awful film results from being cut and recut.
Disjointed horror film that was made from a heist film that was cut apart and had new scenes added.
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.
Sherman in his commentary said the film plays better with commercials and he ain't kidding.
Only because this movie hasn't graced MST3K, has it not received attention as the worst of all time.
I saw this film over 20 years ago and still remember it as the worst ever - without having seen it since.
And yes, I have seen "Plan 9" and "Robot Monster" and a number of the films shown on MST3K, like "Manos, The Hands of Fate" and "The Puma Man."This film, which I saw as "The Man With The Synthetic Brain," is truly terrible.
A crime film which becomes a mad scientist film, which becomes a chase film, and ends up as a zombie movie!I saw this on TV,  and when coming back from commercial breaks, I frequently thought that I was watching a different film entirely.
The suit lint would ruin everything!Only see this film if you love bad films.
Anyone looking for even a below average B-quality movie would be very disappointed by "Blood of Ghastly Horror."SCGp.s.
"Blood of Ghastly Horror" first began life as an unreleased Al Adamson heist feature from 1964 titled "Echo of Terror," then with new footage of go-go dancers and a brutal stabbing slipped out from Hemisphere Pictures in 1965 as "Psycho A-Go-Go" (not to be confused with "Two Tickets to Terror," in reality a rerelease title for 1961's "Half Way to Hell").
Adamson shot new footage of John Carradine in 1966, resulting in a second release, as "Fiend with the Electronic Brain," playing in selected Southern states as early as Dec 1967, courtesy David L.
By 1969, still more footage was shot, with Kent Taylor and Regina Carrol (Mrs. Al Adamson), and still later Tommy Kirk, resulting in what producer Samuel M.
Sherman accurately described as an 'interesting editing exercise.' The finished (?) product was issued in 1972 by Sherman's Independent-International Pictures Corporation, simultaneously playing on television under yet another new title, "Man with the Synthetic Brain." Only a devotee of outright schlock could really appreciate what remains, provided they possess the knowledge of its convoluted backstory.
We begin with a zombie-like creature named Akro (Richard Smedley) committing several murders, switching gears to a police investigation conducted by Sgt. Cross (Tommy Kirk), relating the background on Dr. Howard Vanard (John Carradine, entering at the 17 minute mark), who had implanted an 'artificial brain component' into almost dead Vietnam veteran Joe Corey (Roy Morton).
Sgt. Cross now follows the trail of Dr. Elton Corey (Kent Taylor), father of the dead Joe Corey, who uses his voodoo powers to create the hideous Akro, seeking vengeance now against Dr. Vanard's daughter Susan (Regina Carrol), with most of the final half hour consisting of the original unissued heist footage, and Joe Corey's high altitude pursuit of stolen diamonds.
Tommy Kirk is the other veteran actor, not what one would expect for a solemn police sergeant, but as the only actor to work with both Al Adamson and Larry Buchanan ("Mars Needs Women," "It's Alive!"), deserves a measure of respect for surviving such highs and lows in a screen career soon to fade.
"Blood of Ghastly Horror" is undeniably a bad film, but "Horror of the Blood Monsters" reached a new low even for Al Adamson.
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..
Al Adamson was a next-generation Ed Wood who directed many movies in the history of bad cinema, such as DRACULA VS.
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.
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.
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..
You really get 2 bad films for the price of one.Its obvious the producers put 2 turkeys together to get one dead fish.
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 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...
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.
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..
Pretty bad, even by Adamson standards..
A true mishmash of a movie, "Blood of Ghastly Horror" is an affair that was fudged with repeatedly over a period of several years.
As its associate producer Sam Sherman says, you could fall asleep while watching, and wake up thinking that you're watching a different movie.
It moves from sci-fi / "zombie" tale to serial killer feature to heist film to chase picture, and is just barely coherent.It deals with, more or less, a character named Joe Corey (Roy Morton), who was given a new lease on life by a typical Mad Scientist, Dr. Vanard (John Carradine), who implanted an electronic device in his brain.
Some time later, Joes' father, Dr. Elton Corey (Kent Taylor) seeks revenge with the help of his own special serum.Always reliable veterans Carradine and Taylor give the proceedings their best shot, but "Blood of Ghastly Horror" may be tough to stick with even for dedicated schlock lovers such as this viewer.
Producer & director Al Adamson could usually give his low budget efforts some entertainment value, but this one is more along the lines of just plain bad, rather than so bad that it's funny.Among the illustrious thespians filling out the supporting cast are Tommy Kirk (who sure came a long way since his days at Disney) as a detective, and Adamsons' wife, actress & dancer Regina Carrol, as Carradines' inquisitive daughter.There are indications that the original heist film might have been okay.
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.
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.
Poor but Fun. Blood of Ghastly Horror (1972) * 1/2 (out of 4) Drive-in master Al Adamson strikes back once again with another mix and match film.
Apparently in 1964 Adamson finished a police thriller but it couldn't be sold so he and producer Sam Sherman started filming new scenes to try and make it better.
Considering there are five or more movies on display here it's pretty hard to follow any story but it involves scientists (John Carradine) doing brain work on a killer who eventually goes out and kills.
The Carradine footage is obviously the most recent thing filmed for the movie and he does have a few campy moments, which earn a few laughs but I'm really not sure what his footage has to do with too much of the film.
The cop footage seems to come from Adamson's Psycho a Go-Go, which is also pretty bad but this film does have its charm because it moves at a nice speed and you really can't believe your eyes with what you're watching.
Tommy Kirk and Kent Taylor are also scattered around the film and what they're doing exactly is anyone's guess.
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 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.
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.
"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.
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.
(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..
It is a hodge podge of multiple plots, none really developed, part 60's crime drama, part psychedelic anti-establishment protest, and most interestingly (not by much) mad doctor horror film with poor John Carradine sinking very low in his extremely long career and somehow being the only classy element of what has to be one of the most pointless movies ever made.