Creature With the Atom Brain was an unexpectedly graphic and grisly horror movie to come out of Columbia Pictures in 1955. By that time, in the wake of increasing concerns about violence in entertainment -- especially entertainment aimed at younger audiences -- most horror movies were starting to tone down their physical violence. But in this horror opus from producer Sam Katzman and director Edward L. Cahn, there are scenes of throats being crushed and backs being broken, and other forms of brutal mayhem that are heard -- if not always seen -- in detail. It was enough to scare a lot of kids at the time, and in years since on television, which may be one reason why this movie has lingered in the memory of a lot of baby-boomer viewers. The rest of the film is fairly routine, distinguished mostly by pacing resembling that of a movie serial (of which Katzman had produced his share and then some) -- or, more properly, a movie serial edited down into a feature. There are some moments of unexpected humor amid the sometimes graphic killings, as when the mayor laments the fact that the title creatures (of which there is more than one) have appeared "during my administration." But it's difficult for those light moments to get past the savagery of the killings depicted, or the murder of an extremely likable key character midway through the movie (especially when that character turns up in much of the rest of the picture as a re-animated corpse). The film is too much of a hybrid -- part action-adventure, part horror picture, part chapterplay -- ever to be regarded as a classic, but it is great (if unsettling) fun.
by Bruce Eder
review
