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Our
grainy film begins with a sweaty Professor
Bernard nervously taking a phone call
while stuffing documents into his
briefcase. Assuring the party on the other
end that he has it, whatever it is then
leaves the office with him. Outside,
waiting and watching, are two gentlemen
who resemble the Blues Brothers (so
we’ll be referring to them as Jake and
Elwood.) Jake answers a payphone
and assures a Mr. Van Pelt (Linus
and Lucy’s dad?) that
everything’s been taken care of. Then,
when Bernard gets into his car and cranks
the ignition, his car explodes.
Jake smiles as he views the carnage, and
then Elwood drives them away in their
black Blues-mobile.
At
CID headquarters, Van Pelt (The
Bad Guy?) meets with special agent
Vic Gilbert. It seems the late Professor
Bernard had found the antidote to the
deadly Nerve Gas-G, but all his knowledge
and notes went up with him in the
explosion. However, Vic offers that
another scientist,
a Professor Coleman (John Holland),
was really responsible for finding the
antidote. This news concerns the
treacherous Van Pelt, who tells Vic that
he'll talk to Coleman and then sends Vic
on a wild goose-chase to find out more
info on the late Bernard.
Vic
is assigned a new partner, Toni Gordon,
who meets him at his swanky apartment
where they argue about male chauvinism
until they finally settle down to business:
Seems Bernard spent some time on the
Caribbean island of Mandoras -- where it
is rumored that relocated Nazis are
plotting the rise of the Fourth Reich.
Thinking their current assignment is a
waste of time, Toni thinks they really
should concentrate on Coleman. But Vick
says they need to stick with the plan, and
that Van Pelt is taking care of Coleman.
(Uh-oh.)
Meanwhile,
Coleman is showing a film of G-Gas killing
an elephant to a bunch of Pentagon brass,
including his son-in-law, Phil Day (Walter
Stocker). Coleman explains that the
gas is basically DDT for humans, and that
every nation has it -- but only we have
the cure: Formula-D. (U.S.A! U.S.A!
U.S.A!) There is much techno-babble
as he explains the chemical components of
the antidote that "has almost
positive results." (Almost
positive results? Well, that’s
reassuring.) And while he babbles,
outside in the hall, Camino Padua (Carlos
Rivas) tries to get past the guard.
He desperately wants to talk to Coleman,
but is frightened off by Frank Dvorak (Marshall
Reed), Coleman’s assistant -- who
just oozes that bad guy vibe.
After
the demonstration, Coleman receives a
threatening phone call informing him that
his daughter, Suzanne (Dani Lynn),
has been kidnapped. He is ordered to come
to her apartment, alone, where he finds
Suzie’s boyfriend, David (Scott
Peters), roughed up. They leave to
find a working phone but are hijacked by
Jake and Elwood. (Sort
of. I’ll explain later.) But Toni
-- who decided to interview Coleman anyway
-- witnesses
the abduction. Camino sees it, too. (Sort
of.) Toni tails the Blues-mobile to
an old house and sneaks in for a closer
look. She must have flunked stealth and subterfuge
at the academy, because they hear her. The
agent flees, makes it to a phone booth,
and calls Vic, managing to tell him where
Coleman is stashed before Jake guns her
down.
Vic
arrives on scene too late because Coleman
is already gone. Van Pelt arrives shortly
after him, reveals his treachery, and
shoots Vic. But as Vic reacts to a phantom
bullet, it's Van Pelt who falls -- shot by
Toni (who
wasn’t quite dead I guess.) Toni
tells Vic to run away and dies for good
this time. He
hears Jake and Elwood coming and tries to
escapes out the back. Elwood shoots him in
the shoulder, but he manages to get into
his car and speeds away. But the wound is
too grave, and Vic passes out, wrecks his
car, and dies in the resulting explosion, (A
very familiar crash and explosion if
you've seen Thunder
Road.)
Meanwhile,
Phil returns home to his wife, Kathy (Audrey
Caire), who is
Coleman's other daughter (and who
bears a more than striking resemblance
with Donna Reed.) As they leave for
a night on the town, Camino hi-jacks them
at gunpoint. Hustling them into his car,
he makes Phil drive. The kidnapper then
reveals that he is from Mandoras, and that
Kathy’s father and sister have been
taken there against their will. Before he
can get into the details, they come to
stoplight and the Blues-mobile
pulls up beside them. Then, when Jake
shoots Camino, the lack of a silencer
leads to this funny exchange of dialogue
from the unobservant Phil and Kathy:
Kathy:
"Oh, Phil, something's happened
pull over."
Phil:
"What happened?"
Kathy:
"I don’t know?"
Phil
stops the car, examines Camino and
proclaims: "He’s been
shot."
Hot-shot
CID agent my ass! Before Camino dies,
however, he shows them a matchbook signal
for friend in Mandoras.
Acting
as nonchalantly as you can with a dead
body, they prop Camino up in a phone
booth. Phil calls Coleman’s office where
Frank ominously ignores the call. (Camino’s
body is discovered later in another
unintentionally funny scene.)
With
no other leads on the missing persons,
it’s off to the tropical paradise of
Mandoras; the land of surf, sun and Red Herrings.
Escorted to their hotel by the chief of
police (Nestor
Paiva -- yet
another fan favorite here at old 3B),
after checking in, they are visited
by a man who bumped into them at the
airport. The stranger (Carlos Rivas
again) tells Phil to check his
pocket where he finds a friendly matchbook
that he slipped to him at the airport.
Introducing himself as Teo, Camino's
younger brother, he informs them that
Suzie is OK and on the loose in the city,
but the nazis are holding Coleman captive.
Teo then leads us into a bizarre flashback
sequence chock full of stock war footage:
Seems
Camino was a scientist working in
Germany during WWII. Along with other
scientists, he was forced by Hitler to
find a way to make him immortal. But the
best they could come up with was to lop
his head off, put in a jar, and hook it
up to a machine, keeping the dictator
alive indefinitely. To keep it a secret,
the SS kill all the scientists who
performed the surgery, but Camino,
somehow, managed to survive to tell the
tale.
Teo
must leave, but warns them to be careful
-- and watch out for Vasquez, the
assassin. Eyes wide open, the couple head
for the Las Dos Palabras Bar-N-Gill; home
of the Mandoran resistance. Inside, they
find Suzanne wailing away with the local
mariachis. Reunited with her sister, she
tells them in jive what happened,
punctuating every sentence with the word
"craziest." Then
the spotlight falls on a cut-rate Carmen
Miranda clone, and as she begins to dance,
much to the gawking Phil’s delight, she
jiggles and wiggles and warbles as all the
red herrings gather in the bar -- Nestor,
Teo and Vasquez. Suddenly, the lights go
off, a shot rings out, and when the lights
come back on, Vasquez is dead, Kathy and
Suzie are gone, and Phil is arrested.
Phil
really isn’t under arrest; it was just a
ruse by Nestor to get him out of town and
to the Presidential Palace. Inside they
find the girls in the company of El
Presidente Padua (Pedro
Regas -- and
yes, he’s Camino and Teo’s dad.) Padua
wants the Nazis out of Mandoras, but is
powerless to stop them and must do there
bidding. So the
prisoners are taken downstairs and
reunited with Coleman. We also find out
that Frank is, indeed, a Nazi -- and so is
Suzie’s boyfriend, David. Herding them
into the main hall, the captives are shown
that the Fuhrer’s head is alive and well
and twitching. (Notice
that the swastika is backwards.)
When
they are returned to their cell, Frank
reveals that since Coleman has given them
Antidote-D, they intend to use the G-Gas
to take over the world. And it begins
tonight when the Nazis meet a plane
carrying the deadly toxin. Mustering up
their assault force (there
appears to be about six of them),
they put the
Führer
in his traveling case and head for the
landing strip. And
since these idiots have revealed their
master plan, it’s time for Teo and
Nestor to spring their trap and free our
heroes. Then rounding up a few more rebels,
they head for the rendezvous point.
The
plane lands and out pops Jake and Elwood,
then a fight breaks out between the two
factions. The Mandorans quickly take the
upper hand destroying the plane with
grenades. (Although
the shoddy editing makes it look like
they’re throwing the pins instead of the
grenades and are blowing themselves up.) Soon
enough, the Nazis are routed and
Hitler’s evil noggin goes up in flames
after his car is bombed.
With
the Nazi threat neutralized, our American
friends can return home; but they can’t
find Teo or Suzie -- until she calls in
and informs them that they ran off and got
married.
The
End
If
you weren’t able to keep up with all
that there is an easy explanation as to
why. Well, it’s not exactly easy. Okay,
it’s really confusing, but here goes:
First,
I'll remind everyone that this based on
some fact but mostly conjecture. There
was a film called Madmen
of Mandoras
made and released in 1963 by Crown
International. But it wasn’t that great
and was shelved after a mediocre release.
In 1968, Paragon obtained the
rights to the film but it wasn’t long
enough to be sold to TV, so some
additional footage was shot to pad out the
film.
So
basically, we’ve got two films clumsily
spliced together. To keep your scorecards
straight, Phil, Coleman, Kathy, Suzie, the
Mandorans, and all the Nazis are part of
the original film. Van Pelt, Vick, Toni,
and Jake and Elwood were part of the new
stuff shot in 1968. (Rumored
to have been shot in the Philippines.)
I’d love to tell you who played those
riveting roles, but they appear to be lost
in some cinematic oblivion.
Then,
some poor editor was given the arduous
task of splicing all the new stuff into
the old film, trying to preserve some form
of continuity. Well, he tried real hard,
but the only thing they managed to get
right were the cars.
The
film stock, soundtrack, clothes and
hairstyles are way, way off and it shows,
badly. It also explains why three main
characters are killed off about a third of
the way in. The most hilarious thing about
the new footage was that it looked and
sounded just like a porno movie. Swear to
god, I half expected Vick and Toni to
start stripping and head to the bedroom
when they first met with that skanky
soundtrack tripping away. (I
also kept my eye out for any free roaming
boom mikes.)
As
for the original film, I can see where
they were trying to combine a little
Hitchcock suspense, (ala
The
Man Who Knew Too Much)
with an Orson Wells noir potboiler (ala
Touch
of Evil)
with a free floating Hitler head mixed in.
Of course the results were disastrous.
I’m reminded of the time I accidentally
made some macaroni and cheese with sour
milk. Sure, it looked good but it tasted
like crap.
Actor
Bill Freed turns in a marvelous
performance as Hitler’s head -- I guess They
Saved Hitler’s Brain
sounded better then They Saved
Hitler’s Head. I don’t think any
other actor can move his eyes, sneer or
twitch his nose like that guy.
Still,
despite it’s patchwork origins, They
Saved Hitler’s Brain
isn’t as dull as some would have you
believe, and I’d recommend it any day
over The
Boys from Brazil.
Good luck tracking a copy down and enjoy.
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