BRAIN OF BLOOD (1971)

aka THE OOZING SKULL

Reed Hadley is the benevolent ruler of a Middle Eastern country. Dying of cancer, he is worried that his death would cause great turmoil and move the country backwards, but he and his associates (Grant Williams and Zandor Vorkov) have a plan. When Hadley dies, he is wrapped in foil (!) and shipped to the United States where Williams and Vorkov take him to mad scientist Kent Taylor who claims he can transfer Hadley's brain into a suitable body—one that resembles Hadley—so he can continue to run the country. Of course, everything that can go wrong does. First, a mysterious man tries to run them off the road. At Taylor's lab (which looks like a cheap suburban doctor's office) one of his assistants, a hulking deformed man-child named Gor (John Bloom) has gone out to find an appropriate body but messes up and instead Taylor must use Gor himself, who of course, looks nothing like Hadley. Taylor's other assistant, a dwarf (Angelo Rossitto), seems like he's trying to sabotage the operation. Not to mention the sexy young woman kept chained up in the basement.

Director Al Adamson is famous (or imfamous) in the world of grade-Z horror. Before this, the only one of his movies I’d seen is BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE which was cheap looking but not awful. This one is cheap *and* awful, and fairly gory, though the blood which decorates many scenes looks more like red paint. The plot is ludicrous and at times feels improvised; the settings look all wrong; the makeup on Gor is ridiculous, with the actor's hair peeking out from under a silly bald cap. The whole thing has a unwholesome, sleazy feeling, which may be a plus for some viewers. Poor Grant Williams (THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, the Hawaiian Eye TV show), in one of his last movies, is clad in silly clothes and seems terribly uncomfortable in his low-budget surroundings. B-movie warhorse Kent Taylor gets by OK, but John Bloom as Gor gives the best performance once he has Hadley's brain in him; unfortunately, he also has a pathetic flashback scene showing how he became disfigured. If you must see this, see it as "riffed" by the Cinematic Titanic folks under the title The Oozing Skull. [DVD]