Thanks for the memories!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The ruler of the the nation of Khalid is dying, so he's secretly whisked off to the States so that Dr. Trenton can transplant his brain into a new body. The disorganized doctor starts the operation without actually having a body to move the brain to, so when his mentally challenged, extremely large, facially disfigured servant Gor screws up getting a body, the doctor puts the brain into Gor. Naturally, the patient is not happy waking up to find out that he's a giant with a badly scarred face. Mayhem ensues. Oh yeah ... the doctor's dwarf assistant keeps women chained up in the basement as blood donors (it seems that the good doctor is not worried about blood types), and one of them escapes. If I had to pick a worst director of all time, I'd go with Al Adamson. People have made worse films than his, and at least a couple of his are mildly entertaining, but he has a long career of consistently not giving a crap about any of the films he made. That said, this one is one of his better films ... barely. While it has VERY long stretches of nothing happening, it has about 10-15 minutes of inspired nuttiness. It was made around the same time as "Dracula vs. Frankenstein", so both Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) and the Frankenstein monster (John Bloom) are in this one, along with Angelo Rossito and the ever-present Regina Carrol.

I can't say I'm a fan of these 60's Blood Island Flicks (although, I wish I liked them), but in the early 70's, a knock-off, or something similar was created by Al Adamson (Dracula vs. Frankenstein) and Sam Sherman. Brain Of Blood is considered the black sheep of the Philippine gore series, mainly because Eddie Romero didn't direct, and, well, it was filmed in California, so it's an unofficial addition to the series. But whatever. Close enough. For something so shclocky and inept, we're working with a pretty decent premise, here. About the ruler of a fictional Middle Eastern country (Kaleed), who has recently discovered he is dying of a terminal disease. Amir fears for the future well-being of his beloved country. Although, there may be hope in the crazy Dr. Trenton, who believes he can perform successful brain transplants. Amir and his peeps have pretty much nothing to lose. Once Amir's brain is removed, the doctor figures now would be a good time to look for a new home for the brain. With very little time to spare, the brain ends up in the nearest available person... That's right, Gor. Gor is some kind of assistant/village idiot/monster, with a fake-looking, messed up face that makes him look kinda like the Toxic Avenger. So, yeah, Amir is now stuck in the body of a monster, and Dr. Trenton doesn't care because he now has plans of taking over the world, and there's pretty much nothing he can do about it. Although, Amir is a hulking, yet ridiculous-looking monster now, so, maybe something can be done. Yeah, so, this is genuine 70's Drive-In trash in all its inept, stock-footage-using glory. Not really gory at all, and if I'm not mistaken, this got a PG rating, but if you have a thing for the more low-budget Horrors of the early 70's, this one is one of the essentials. Highly recommended. 8/10

Brain of Blood starts as Abdul Amir (Reed Hadley) the leader of a country called Kahlid is close to death because of cancer, however if he dies Kahlid will tear itself apart without anyone to lead them so doctor Robert Nigserian (Grant Williams) & one of Amir's devotees Mohammed (Zandor Vorkov) have devised a plan to take Amir's dead body to America where mad scientist Dr. Lloyd Trenton (Kent Taylor) will transplant his brain into a fresh body & with a bit of plastic surgery no-one will ever know he was even dead. Things don't go according to plan though as when the time comes to transplant Amir's brain Trenton's freak assistant Gor (John Bloom) brings a dead body of someone that fell from a balcony, Trenton needed a strong fit living body & since there's no more time he decides to use Gor's body as a temporary stop-gap until another more suitable one can be found. Unfortunately when Amir wakes up in his new body he's not very happy at what he sees, I mean would you be if you found out your brain was inside a badly burned freak?Also known as Brain Damage, The Brain, The Creature's Revenege & The Undying Brain this cheapo exploitation flick was produced & directed by the one & only Al Adamason & quite frankly I'm offended at the pathetic 1.5 rating Brain of Blood has on the IMDb, personally I think it's terrific fun in a so bad it's good sort of way. The highly entertaining script by Kane W. Lynn & Joe Van Rodgers is as loopy & silly as they come from sloppy blood soaked brain transplants to crazed mad scientists, from 7 foot tall acid scarred freaks who play with toy cars to 4 foot tall midget medical assistant's, from basement dungeons to rooftop chases, from car crashes to assassination's, kidnaps to screaming scantily clad women, from Regina Carrol's hair-do which should get it's own mention during the opening credits to teenage girls imprisoned in the basement for blood to a laugh-out-loud hilarious ending which includes some deep meaningful speech! It's all here & Brain of Blood has quality cheese stamped all over it, if your a fan of bad low budget exploitation flicks with a sense of fun then this film should be right at the top of your list of 'must see' films. Despite it's lowly 1.5 rating I am proud to admit that I liked Brain of Blood a lot, I thought it was an absolute hoot to watch, it slows down a bit at the end with a few too many shots of people wandering around doing nothing in particular but until that point it had moved along like a rocket, at only 85 minutes it's relatively short, it's difficult to second guess the barmy plot & I just think it's loads of campy fun.This is director Adamson's masterpiece as far as I'm concerned along with Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) which he made a year before this. Those who have seen an Adamson film before will know about the none existent production values, cheap special effects & cardboard sets & that all adds to the fun, this film manages that fine between incompetence & seriousness to create a memorable viewing experience. I love the opening shot of Kahlid which is obviously just a photo of the Taj Mahal in India complete with statuesque people in the foreground! Regina Carrol's hair seems to be a separate entity on it's own, it seems to change styles between shots & is frankly horrendous, don't get me started about her make-up job either that she must apply with a a paint sprayer! There is another hilarious moment when we see Amir's body has been transported to America wrapped in what looks like ordinary tin foil, why is the question I asked myself, why!? The effects are variable, there's a terrible looking fake spider, Gor's burned make-up job is pretty bad although there is a surprisingly gory brain removal which is actually quite impressive.The budget for Brain of Blood must have been practically none existent, I must admit I thought Trenton's lab was quite good with various computers & medical instruments although the rest of the film looks cheap & nasty. The production values are low, the music was taken from another film Beast of Blood (1971) & the acting is awful but in a campy fun sort of way.Brain of Blood may have the best title for an exploitation film ever & as far as I'm concerned it's a highly entertaining piece of nonsense that I had a great time watching & laughing at. They just don't/can't/won't make them like this anymore, impossible to recommend to anyone looking for a good film but bad movie lovers should enjoy it. I liked it, but then again I'm just weird.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a film as bad as this. Awful acting, All over the place plot, terrible special effects. There are some 'so bad its good' moments in here but not really enough to maintain interest. The woman who plays Tracey looks hideous. There are some fairly worrying scenes with a dwarf which leave you feeling ever so slightly violated. On the plus side the operation scenes are fairly amusing for the special effects as is the car chase where one car is "trying to force us off the road" without actually making contact. Guess the budget didn't stretch to trashing cars. Oh and what looks like a Postcard of the Taj Mahal is shown every time they cut to the fictional foreign country.