Blood of Ghastly Horror |
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 • USA • 1967 • 85m •   • Directed by: Al Adamson. • Starring: John Carradine, Kent Taylor, Tommy Kirk, Regina Carrol, Roy Morton, Tacey Robbins, Arne Warde, Richard Smedley, Kirk Duncan, Tanya Maree, Barney Gelfan, John Armond, Lyle Felice. • Music by: Don McGinnis, Jimmie Roosa.     After a soldier in Vietnam has his brain replaced by a crazed medic, he is turned into a mindless automaton, and used to help thieves steal a fortune in jewels. Fortunately however, the zombie manages to overcome the mind control, and takes action against the Doctor and the thieves.
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Review:
It was directed by drive-in movie maestro Al Adamson (of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" fame), who originally planned a straight jewelry heist picture in 1964 until meeting up with producermentor Sam Sherman who persuaded him to gradually add new scenes and ideas specifically for the horrorsci-fi television market in the early '70s. It was finally sold to TV with the lucrative title of MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, but Sherman thought it could be milked further, so the movie was also played at theaters where it became known as BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR.
Ultimately emerging as connected pieces of different half-baked incarnations (one of these was even called PSYCHO A-GO-GO before the music was eliminated), the movie begins with a zombified maniac running around town strangling people. Through flashbacks within other flashbacks we're treated to a background story of how a Vietnam vet named Joe Corey was wounded and then "helped" by a wacky scientist named Dr. Vanard (the always welcome John Carradine) who planted some sort of mechanism inside Corey's head and unintentionally turned him into a murderer with a taste for jewel robbing (which is how the old 1964 heist footage managed to get utilized). But this man-made killer's got an angry dad who's also a scientist and is even nuttier than Dr. Vanard. He's out to even the score for what was done to his victimized son, and that includes making a mummified and whimpering she-monster out of Vanard's sexy daughter (Regina Carrol, director Adamson's wife).
This isn't a film for most audiences, but anyone who revels in idiotic or badly made exploitation films of the '60s and '70s would want to get a load of this concoction. You've got to hand it to Sam Sherman and Al Adamson, in any case... they knew how to have fun and freak out audiences. The current DVD available by Troma is badly framed, however... this cuts out some widescreen and results in an unfortunate panscan affair. But it's unlikely at the time of this writing that there's any better source material.
Review by JoeKarlosi from the Internet Movie Database.
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