I picked up the latest BCI collection of Crown International flicks at Best Buy for a ten spot. I'm only interested in CREEPING TERROR, TERRIFIED, MADMEN OF MANDORAS and THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN, but they were enough to justify the price. Most of the films are full frame, except three of the later films. CREEPING TERROR will never look great, but it has been remastered. Although it's much shorter than THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN, MADMEN OF MANDORAS has a much lengthier and more explicit climax.

The set includes a nice 7 page insert about the films. The author updates some of the details surrounding the mysterious production history of THE CREEPING TERROR.

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (1968)—Directed by David Bradley and Don Hulette. Stars Audrey Caire, Walter Stocker, Bill Freed, John Holland, Nestor Paiva. The Internet Movie Database claims a 1968 release date for this Crown International film, but I’m not so sure. It’s the 1963 turkey MADMEN OF MANDORAS with almost a half-hour of newly shot footage tacked to the beginning, probably to stretch the picture to a two-hour television timeslot. The protracted prologue could have been filmed in 1968, judging from the hair and fashions, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it happened as late as the early 1970s. Hulette (BREAKER! BREAKER!), the director of the new footage, makes little attempt to match the MANDORAS film directed by Bradley (TWELVE TO THE MOON), except for the laughable inclusion of an Eisenhower portrait in a government office.

The opening finds government agents Vic and Toni (after the requisite “I didn’t know you were a woman” kneeslapper common to ‘50s/’60s genre cinema) investigating the murder of Dr. Bernard, the developer of G-Gas, a super nerve gas that can fell an elephant in seconds. Hulette stages the killing by having Bernard leave a top-secret government lab and get into his car, which is hilariously parked at a nearby filling station (!), just so Hulette can cut in stock footage of a different exploding car from who knows what other movie.

The actors portraying these characters are either uncredited or buried in the titles, so I won’t even guess who plays them. Doesn’t matter much anyway, because Toni and Vic, who are terrible at their jobs, are knocked off quickly, and THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS gets underway. It’s easy to differentiate between the two directors’ work (a couple of Bradley’s scenes are cut into the prologue), because MANDORAS was shot by A-list cinematographer Stanley Cortez (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS) and really looks nice.

Looks nice, but is still inept filmmaking, though the story is irresistible by fans of trashy pulp fiction. Another government agent, Phil Day (Stocker), and his wife Kathy (Caire) travel to the South American country of Mandoras to find Kathy’s father, Professor Coleman (Holland), who is the only man able to create a G-Gas antidote. They discover Nazis (“slappers of women and torturers of old men”) are planning to use the nerve gas to conquer the world and are still following the one and only Adolf Hitler (Freed), whose head has been removed from his body and kept alive in a cake holder. Sometimes the Ratzis take him for a drive. He finally blows up in Bronson Canyon. This film would be amazing if it weren’t so dull.

I've seen this other movie and wish I could remember the title. The other car crash is, of course, from THUNDER ROAD.

Agent Toni Gordon was played by Tari Tabakin, who also portrayed one of Robert Quarry's hippie/vampire family members in DEATHMASTER.

According to the IMDB, Tari also appeared in the fun TV remake of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, but I wasn't aware of her being in that.

THE CREEPING TERROR (1964)—Directed by Art J. Nelson. Stars Art J. Nelson, William Thourlby, Shannon O’Neil, Brendon Boone, John Caresio, Byrd Holland. THE CREEPING TERROR routinely appears on Worst Film of All Time lists for a very good reason: it’s terrible. It’s also boring, the worst sin any film can commit. Considering the backstage drama, perhaps it’s no surprise TERROR came out so poorly. According to co-star Thourlby, director/writer/producer/star Nelson vanished during shooting with a bunch of investors’ money. Thourlby managed to snatch the negative and finish the film, but there was probably no saving this badly produced, indifferently acted, clumsily directed, and flatly photographed clunker. The monster really does look like a matted shag carpet, and characters don’t understand they could easily avoid being eaten by the slow-crawling “terror” by just stepping away from it.

Nelson’s biggest mistake, if just one can be chosen, was to lay pointless narration over the picture, describing what characters are doing or saying to one another. The local sheriff (Holland), his chief deputy Martin (Nelson, billing himself as Vic Savage), and Martin’s newlywed wife Brett (O’Neil) investigate what they initially believe to be a plane crash. Discovering a strange undamaged craft, the sheriff slips inside and is killed. Martin calls in the military and a scientist named Bradford (Thourlby). Meanwhile, the space creature wanders around the countryside eating people, including a girl in a bikini who crawls inside Jon Lackey’s laughable monster suit while the same screaming sound effect is repeated on the soundtrack.

What little dialogue is in the movie is badly dubbed. Sometimes the actors’ lips are moving, sometimes not. But usually the dialogue is expressed by the omniscient narrator, who describes it over scenes of two people talking. There’s a weird and pointless scene in which Martin invites his fellow deputy Barney (Boone) over to his house and then makes out with his wife in front of him. One wonders whether director Nelson just wanted to kiss a pretty actress. You may recognize Boone (billed as Norman Boone), who appeared in a lot of TV shows later and was a regular on GARRISON’S GORILLAS.

And yet I watched it many times as part of syndicated horror packages; Philly's Channel 48 showed it often. Bad but fascinatingly so.

TERRIFIED (1963)—Directed by Lew Landers. Stars Rod Lauren, Steve Drexel, Tracy Olsen, Stephen Roberts, Denver Pyle. Landers wrapped up his thirty-year career directing serials, westerns, mysteries, and other B-pictures and television episodes with this low-budget scare flick released by Crown International. Landers probably would have continued making TV shows at least, but he died at age 61 before TERRIFIED even came out. Students Marge (Olsen), David (Drexel), and Ken (Lauren) snoop around an old western ghost town at night and find the caretaker dead. While Marge and David drive off to get the sheriff (Pyle, later on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD), Ken is pursued by a laughing masked killer in a suit—the same madman who buried alive Marge’s brother Joey in a pit of wet cement and drove him insane (in an effectively directed prologue). The middle section is pretty cool with the killer playing games with Ken—hitting him on the head or choking him and leaving him bound in an easy-to-escape deathtrap. Credit Landers and writer Richard Bernstein (FROM HELL IT CAME), who produced TERRIFIED for his own company, with creating some moody intrigue and moments of surprise. However, a major weakness is that there’s really no question who the masked killer is, and the unveiling is a real dud. Still, TERRIFIED is an interesting little movie that does a good job filling in character backstory through internal narration and using its backlot setting effectively.

I did a search through Newspaper Archive and the earliest TV showing I could find for THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN was April 1976. Meanwhile, the original MADMEN OF MANDORAS version had no more airings after 1977.

As for why Crown bothered to create expanded versions of this and BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE, I can only figure that they had a package of movies intended for two hour time slots that was short a couple of titles, so they did these cheapo expansions.

There are also alternate versions of BLOOD MANIA, POINT OF TERROR and HORROR HIGH (as TWISTED BRAIN) that were in that TV package from '76.

Another film that may have been in the Crown TV package was SHOCK HILL, which was an expanded version (without the knowledge of some of the original west coast crew) of the barely-released ANGELS FLIGHT (1965). William Thourlby was the star of that film.