The Curious Dr. Hummp

1969 raunchy sci-fi horror B-movie

Rating: 7/20

Plot: A crazy scientist, under the direction of something that sort of resembles a brain that is kept in a glass jar, sends ghoulish thugs out to kidnap people having sex. Then, using some rock-solid science, he's able to use their orgasms to prolong his life or something. Reporter George and stripper Rachel, with the help of a scorned nurse, try to escape before they have to have sex in the presence of a zombie guy with a ukulele.

At one point, Dr. Hummp, a guy with a superfluous M in his name, says that he wants to create "veritable screwing machines." Sure, Dr. Hummp is using others to benefit himself and make the brain-in-a-jar happy. He's selfish and, with that whole using zombies to kidnap people thing, probably evil. Say what you want about evil and selfish scientists, but would being kidnapped and forced to have sex all the time be all that bad? I'm not sure these people have much to complain about. Honestly, I wouldn't mind being a veritable screwing machine myself. This is no-budget, poorly written and even more poorly dubbed, and exploitative. You can almost imagine the producers watching an early cut and having this conversation:

"Oh, man. Our movie sucks and is way too short."

"Yeah, I thought the monster guys would look more menacing. They just kind of stand around or approach their victims very slowly."

"I'm not really sure this plot makes any sense, fellas."

"Well, it's back to the drawing board. We can't release a forty-two minute movie. Especially one that nobody would want to watch five minutes of."

"I've got a way we can fix both problems--the short time and the suckiness."

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

"Let's add forty-five minutes of nudity!"

"That's a brilliant idea!"

The naked starts early and never really goes away. You get a lengthy depravity montage featuring strippers, lesbians, heterosexual couples, a woman pleasuring herself, and a guy in a striped shirt who was probably supposed to be a homosexual, all who unfortunately are about to be pervknapped by a slow-footed goon with a chloroform-drenched napkin. Then, you get a little plot. It's not enough to distract from all the naked people, of course, but it's enough so that the back of the dvd box can say something other than "There's a mad scientist doing some stuff and a lot of naked people!" Don't let the image of the top goon holding a ukulele below fool you into thinking this is one of those B-movies that's actually good. Yeah, that's a pretty awesome shot, and there's another scene where the goon plays his instrument, but this is not a movie that is worth seeking out.

And I'm adding "veritable screwing machine" to my resume.

The Man with the Screaming Brain

2005 B-movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A rich guy shows up in Bulgaria for reasons I don't care to remember and, through a series of seemingly random events, is murdered by a cute gypsy woman. His cab driver is killed by the same woman. A crazy scientist procures both corpses and fuses their brains together. The rich guy and the cab driver might not agree on a lot of things, but they both wouldn't mind getting their revenge on the woman who killed them.

Bruce Campbell--nearly the modern Hollywood tall tale character that Chuck Norris has become--wrote, directed, and starred in this, a labor of love that apparently took him 19 years to go from his screaming brain to my television set. Bruce Campbell is not a very good writer. He's not a talented director. And despite what I said about his Ash in Evil Dead II being one of the greatest performances of all time, he's not a traditionally good actor at all. I'll give him credit though. The guy knows his audience and what they want. This comically pays homage to both cheapo sci-fi movies from fifty years ago and to the rest of Campbell's oeuvre, and I can imagine a lot of Evil Dead II fanboys giggling with glee while watching Bruce's titular man doing and saying just the kinds of things that Bruce Campbell's characters usually do and say. The most entertaining scene takes place in a restaurant as Bruce is adjusting to life with the cab driver's brain being fused to his own. His left hand (controlled by the right half of his brain which belonged to the cabbie) is piling salad on a plate while Bruce screams, "Gross! Gross!" and tries to fight it. A following scene involves Bruce putting his scarred head into a filthy toilet because his cranium is burning. Unfortunately, that's sort of how I felt while watching this movie. Most of the humor seems written by a man with no brain, and the story, though lifted almost directly from a variety of B-movie sources, lacks the cheap charm and unintentional comedy of the classically bad. This isn't as much of a waste of time as My Name Is Bruce but anybody in the mood for this sort of thing, unless they're a Bruce Campbell obsessive, should look elsewhere.

The Manster

1959 science fiction horror film

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A crazed Japanese scientist is experimenting with human evolution in his secret laboratory conveniently located next to a burbling volcano. At the beginning of the movie, he has to kill off one of his mistakes, a killer ape man who was formerly the scientist's brother. Screaming in a cage, is a disfigured woman who was once the scientist's wife. As the scientist wonders who will be the next subject for his experiments, an American journalist wanders in to conduct an interview. The scientist asks him a few inappropriate questions, drugs and injects him, and sends him on his way. Instantly, the journalist's personality changes. He starts cheating on his wife and refuses to return home. Eventually, he starts noticing some physical changes as well, specifically the appearance of an eyeball on his right shoulder. It's not good.

The movie's also probably not good, but I enjoyed this little sucker. The intro is striking--bathing women, the appearance of a hideous ape man, a splash of blood, and the scientist's mutated wife (like a character from Freaks) screaming and shaking the bars of her cage. It all looks cheap but effectively creepy. It almost makes the next forty minutes or so a complete let-down as the filmmakers made the unwise decision to have some sort of plot and fail to maintain that level of creepiness, but it all picks up again when the guy unveils his shoulder eye, an area which eventually sprouts a head. It's one of those movie images that somebody watching this movie isn't likely to forget. I also really liked the build-up to that scene where theremin (or was that a saw?) music would play whenever the guy looked at or touched his shoulder. To be fair, the story in that intervening forty minutes is fairly interesting. I liked watching the journalist change psychologically before the physical transformations happened, possibly a metaphor for the "monsters" that men can become when they give in to temptation, drinking too much or cheating on their wives. This was a very B, Japanese/American co-production, and although the cheapness almost bleeds from the screen and the acting (especially Tetsu Nakamura, undoubtedly "acting" in a language he's not entirely comfortable with) is no good at all, they do quite a bit with very, very little. The Manster, also known as The Split and Doctor Satan and (most boringly) The Two-Headed Monster, is worth checking out.

"Oh, Snap! I'm not supposed to have an eyeball there!" (Note: Not an actual line from the movie.)

The Man with Two Brains

1983 comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Neurosurgeon Dr. Hfuhruhurr, still mourning the loss of his wife, falls in love with a woman he runs over while giving an egotistical interview. He saves her life thanks to his screw-top technique and marries her. Unfortunately, Dolores Benedict is incapable of love and is more than likely planning on murdering Hfuhruhurr for his money. Now I'm not sayin' she's a gold digger, but she ain't messin' with any broke neurosurgeons. And she won't consummate the marriage, leaving Hfuhruhurr frustrated and unable to focus on his work. They honeymoon in Europe where the doctor falls in love with a brain in a glass jar that he can communicate with telepathically. If only there was a body in which he could put this beloved brain! Oh, snap!

Moderately funny movie with jokes ranging from nearly clever to far too obvious. At times, it seems like a middle schooler wrote this which is only good for the gratuitous nudity or partial nudity, mostly involving the sultry Kathleen Turner or, more accurately, Kathleen Turner's body double. This wears out its welcome kind of quickly and turns into nothing more than an excuse for Steve Martin to wave his arms around in an exaggerated way like he does in every movie or television show he's in. Don't get me wrong. Steve Martin waving his arms around in an exaggerated way is hilarious! This is dumb comedy, patched together and flailing and predictable, and although there's definitely a place for dumb comedy, this is nowhere near a classic of the genre. Paul Benedict plays a butler.