User Reviews

"Disembodied Head Movies" are a strange lot. A head is removed for some reason, such as execution ("The Thing that Couldn't Die"), medical reasons ("The Thing With Two Heads"), experimentation ("The Incredible Two Headed Transplant"), or accident ("The Brain that Wouldn't Die"). No matter the reason for decapitation, the living head is generally in a pretty foul mood and makes life miserable for just about everyone. Here, Hitler's head is removed so the Führer can dictate again another day. So…you're a group of Nazis who have successfully removed Hitler's head and secretly taken it to a South American island. You're hanging around on the island, so what's your next move? It's to poison the world with "Nerve Gas G", of course!

This movie is actually two spliced-together ones, each with completely different actors and locations. The earlier footage, from the 1950s or early 1960s, is actually very well photographed and atmospheric in spots. The latter, late 1960s footage is extremely shoddily and cheaply made. The plot concerns Nazis living on the island of Mandoras and their plan to conquer the world by gassing everyone, then taking over. They test the nerve gas on a poor elephant, and then kidnap an American scientist to accomplish their goal. The scientist's daughter follows his trail to Mandoras, whereupon her good-guy accomplices attack and defeat the Nazis before they can release the deadly gas, finally annihilating them on a beach with explosives. Hitler (shown as a plastic head) satisfyingly burns up at the film's ridiculous climax.

This picture should have been entitled "They Saved Hitler's Head and Shoulders", because that's what you see hooked up to ominous-looking life-support machinery. Bill Freed (who plays Hitler) keeps a straight face while sitting under a glass dome and barking orders to his Nazi underlings. Actor Carlos Rivas provides the funniest parts of the film, grimly describing in flashback how the head of "Mr. H" was removed for posterity and secreted out of Germany. No matter how you look at it, this film is a one-of-a-kind movie with a plot that's very unlikely to be reused anytime soon. It's good for some remarkable belly laughs and some rather jaw-dropping scenes.

When watching this movie, I seriously thought there was something I missed. A lot of movies come off as incomprehensible to me, but this seemed even more so than usual. I really was trying hard to figure the plot out and I was confused seeing as how from one source I heard this movie was twenty minutes shorter. I now realize I was watching an even worse extended version filmed years after the original ended. This is one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen in my entire life. When watching this movie, I couldn't tell who was who and what anyone was even doing. Again, it's mostly because of the horrible filming. "They Saved Hitler's Brain" is even WORSE than it sounds.

Speaking of filming, the camera work in this movie is among the worst I've ever seen. A lot of the pictures come off as really stilted and slanted for some reason. I don't even know if it was intentional, or some mistake with the camera crew. A lot of times the scenes just wobble around, literally. It's some of the worst editing I've ever seen and it's just unpleasant to even look at. The characters in this movie say some of the dumbest lines I've ever heard. One guy says, "With a wife like that, who needs a girlfriend?". What does that even mean? Seriously? Later, an obnoxious woman says, "They were really nice. They pulled a gun on me!". Yes, that's more or less exactly what she said. Who would say that? There's even a scene where the wife's sister makes out with her husband over and over and nobody cares. Or maybe that wasn't the husband? Was it some other character? Who cares? Hitler's brain doesn't even appear until over two thirds in the movie and has only a few minutes of screen time.

This doesn't even work well as a B-movie. They could have had this goofy Hitler head but even the head does practically nothing. There's not even any reason to have him. The Nazis could have done just fine. There's one scene where they mention that everyone was eliminated and then say that someone lived. What? On another occasion, they claim that the Nazis have been working for 18 years. World War II ended in 1945, but they would have worked on it for 23 years. Can these people not even count? Maybe there was something I was missing with all this dialogue, but I didn't care at all. They defeat Hitler by throwing bombs at him and you see three shots of his face melting. I couldn't even tell who was dead or alive at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if this was featured on the first episode of the new "Mystery Science Theater 3000". It's boring, stupid, pointless, and every other bad plot point I can think of. This gets zero stars now and forever.

Professor John Coleman (nicely played by John Holland) gets abducted by a group of evil Nazis. Coleman's decent, morally upright son-in-law Phil (likable Walter Stocker) and his sweet wife Kathy (lovely Audrey Claire) go to the South American country of Mandoras to save him. They discover the living disembodied head of none other than Adolph Hitler (a hilariously manic portrayal by Bill Freed), who plans on taking over the world with a deadly nerve gas that only Professor Coleman knows the antidote to. David Bradley's competent direction maintains a steady pace throughout and effectively develops a colorful south-of-the-border atmosphere. The acting is generally solid, with especially stand-out turns by Nestor Paiva as polite, friendly, cigar-puffing police chief Alaniz and the delightful Dani Lynn as wacky slang-slinging beatnik hipster chick Suzanne. Film noir veteran Stanley Cortez's gorgeously sharp'n'slick cinematography gives the movie an attractive glossy look. The booming'n'bombastic stock library score is pretty funny. Ditto the priceless scene where a dead body falls out of a phone booth. Although a bit slow and talky, this notorious Grade Z schlock camp classic nonetheless radiates a certain cruddy charm that's both amusing and entertaining in equal measure. The BCI Eclipse DVD offers both the superior and more coherent original picture along with the extremely muddled and dreadful alternate version "They Saved Hitler's Brain."

Longer version of Madman of Mandoras (which correctly has its own entry) was created by taking on 20 minutes of new footage concerning CID men trying to run down people interested in a new nerve gas (The plot has a group of Nazi's with the living head of Hitler hoping to use the gas to take over the world). The new footage, clearly shot some ten years after the fact, doesn't match the older footage in film grain, clothing style or anything else and is just awful. The idea was to take Madmen, which was too short for TV airing and fill it out. In all honesty the new footage takes what's a good bad movie and turns it into a bad bad movie. I was trying to see the two versions of the film essentially back to back and after watching Madmen, I put They Saved on and found that I was unable to really watch any of the new footage. Worse it took the watchable good bad film that this Frankenstein monster of a film was created from and turned it into a turkey that is not worth seeing. Somehow the new footage strips away any possible good will and throws it into the toilet. Given the choice (which you'll probably have since most DVDs out there now have both versions) I'd avoid this longer cut and watch the shorter original one.

Or….the movie that will not end! The filmmakers were certainly ambitious with such a plot yielding non-stop developments despite a budget of peanuts. If you though a nagging bitch's head in a jar in "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" was absurd, wait until you see Hitler's head in a jar snarling and making weird smiles! I'll try my best to keep it short in regards to a synopsis. A gas and its anecdote are known by only one man since a geneticist was blown up with the formula documents in a car…that is a scientist named Professor John Coleman (John Holland). During WWII, the German Third Reich surgically removed Hitler's head, keeping it alive in a case connected to a machine! Held prisoner by a third world Latin American town named Moricano, this will be the location where the fate of mankind hangs in the balance! Coleman's daughter and her beau (Audrey Caire and Walter Stocker, pretty dull heroes to follow for a movie's remaining hour) will search for him in Moricano as a number of characters emerge to either help or harm them. The premise has characters introduced, only to be killed off not long after, such as two "CID" agents (in place of CIA, I guess) put on a case regarding the geneticist killed but they accidentally stumble onto members of their agency's nefarious scheme to help the Reich gain access to Coleman so he will give them the gas to let loose on the US in a goal to conquer the world. After they are dispatched in relatively short order, the meat and potatoes of the plot is focused on: how Stocker and Caire assist Moricano's finest in a plan to stop the Underground Nazis in the town from releasing the gas. This does sound like an entertaining vehicle, and if you take into account the whole "Hitler Head in a Jar" development, it should seem like a can't-miss tale of espionage and intrigue, told in a fun B-movie way. But, this turns out to be a talky, unexciting affair with a plot that is just a mess that fails to deliver anything in the way of real thrills. I would love to know some talented filmmakers were involved in remaking this, because there is a wacky, nutty film I imagine that could be gleaned from the bits and parts of this boring exercise in futility.

Carlos Rivas is Camino Padua, the son of Maricona's El Presidente (Pedro Regas), who wants to help stop Hitler and his Nazi followers (who look like a bunch of American midwesterners from around the block). Nestor Paiva is Police Chief Alaniz, who may or may not be aligned with the German scoundrels. Dani Lynn is Caire's spirited, excitable sister, Suzanne, who has a weird kiss with Stocker at a club table. A Texan salesman even gets involved, his son part of the Nazi group out to control the world! I could go on and on, but it is tiresome considering the waste of time this movie was overall.

The original 74-minute movie, released in 1963, was titled THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS. For its 1968 TV release, it featured 25 minutes of new footage and had the punchier title, THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. Not only does the new footage contain rotten actors, the clothing and hairstyles they wear did not exist yet in 1963. And yet, the cars were all year-appropriate. Go figure.

Our hero, Phil Day, is a U.S. intelligence agent. He—and for some reason, his wife—are dispatched to the Caribbean island of Mandoras, where the abducted Professor Coleman is being held. Coleman has developed the antidote to G-Gas, a tiny dab of which is enough to kill an elephant. Numerous canisters are in the hands of a small (and highly incompetent) group of neo-Nazis who have kept Hitler's severed head alive in a fancy pickle jar of some sort. On the wall behind him is a mural-sized faux swastika. I say "faux" because it faces backwards.

Anyway, the Nazis plan to unleash the G-Gas on an unsuspecting world, killing off the lion's share of the human race so that Hitler can return to power. They abducted Coleman to keep him from producing his antidote. With the lobbing of a few grenades, Agent Day foils their plan, in the process melting Hitler's head in a fire.

Item: How will abducting Professor Coleman halt the production of his antidote? Presumably, he wrote the formula down and passed a copy on to someone (like the government).

Item: In the new footage, the wall of a government office shows a picture of Eisenhower. I'm pretty sure Kennedy was president in 1963.

Item: On Mandoras, the Days encounter numerous stereotypes of Latin Americans: the "El Presidente" dictator of the island; the fat, sweaty police chief who's not what he seems; his lazy second-in- command; the cafe with both a Mariachi band and a Flamenco dancer…. You get the idea.

Item: One of the neo-Nazi higher-ups tells Agent Day, "The giant bombs of your armies will be dust in front of us!" This is one of the movie's better lines.

Item: Hitler's dialogue consists entirely of "Mach schnell, mach schnell!" And his minions speak German that sounds less authentic than HOGAN'S HEROES.

Item: Seeing Hitler's severed head in the back seat of a car makes watching this thing nearly worthwhile.

How has MST3K not roasted this cloaca of a film?