Fistula said about halfway through this movie, “I don’t envy you the task of reviewing this”. He has a point. This movie… it sucks. I mean, it sucks hard. The back of the case promises, “It’s a hoot…”. I wasn’t aware that a hoot referred to being smacked in the face by a sack of wet poop.
For the longest time I didn’t think this movie was real. I’d heard it mentioned on, of all places, “Step By Step”. Yes, the show with Patrick Duffy. It was the only thing on after I got home from school because I didn’t have cable or satellite and you kids with your MTV and your “Real World” and your “Adventures of Pete and Pete” and your “Amos & Andy” and baaaaaaaarrrrrrraaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhh.
Anyway, I thought it was one of those movies with a crazy title the writers dreamed up to have a character talk about, like Revenge of the Mutant Splat Gore Monster or Die Screaming With Sharp Things In Your Head. Then, a couple of months ago, Deep Discount DVD had a sale, and having no money but still wanting to get something for dirt cheap, I wound up with this and Cannibal Apocalypse (a much better movie).
And so I saved it for this occasion. And after all the buildup, and the awesome title… ugh. Apparently the movie was never finished during principal filming in the ‘50’s, and a decade later some UCLA film students got hold of the extant footage, and finished the movie themselves. When that situation is explained, you would think the result would be a wacky parody along the lines of Kung Pow, but they seem to have played it straight. I sincerely hope these film students flunked and were banned from touching film equipment, because every one of them makes Ed Wood at his most incompetent look like a genius.
In a rather unsurprising move considering the title of the movie, the Nazis managed to save Hitler’s head after he died in WWII, and have kept it alive on a small island called Mandoras. Fast-forward to the 60’s, and a scientist named Dr. Bernard (incidentally the only character in the movie besides Hitler whose name I managed to catch) has created the world’s most lethal nerve toxin.
Several intelligence agencies catch wind of the nerve toxin, which is stolen by Nazis, and send agents to Mandoras to bust the Nazi scheme wide open. Really, that’s about as far as I understand what happened. It’s one of those movies where the background static and the soundtrack are blaringly loud, and completely wash out the understated dialogue. All this leaves us with is the action. Except there isn’t any action until the last two minutes, so we’re pretty much fucked, aren’t we?
There’s a great deal less ranting Hitler head in a jar than one would hope. What little there is presents the promise of a movie that could be as crazy and entertaining as this one thinks it is, but it’s all a cocktease. In fact, the only time we ever see him rant is in a pre-jar flashback, where he’s screaming a bunch of nonsense syllables which the actor apparently though sounded like German and resulted in hundreds of years of culture and history rolling in its grave. The Hitler we see in the jar appears to have been kept alive through a rigorous cannabis diet, as he barely manages to twitch a facial muscle the whole time and just stares off into space while the other Nazis go about their Nazi business. They’re probably all working on fixing the giant swastika they painted backwards on the wall. It goes the other way, you look like a turkey!
Even the climactic car chase, grenade battle, and the fiery melting of Hitler’s stoned-ass head are not nearly as cool as you’d think they would be. Unless of course the idea of a few seconds of watching a Hitler-shaped wax head melting really gets you off (and if it does, I know a good piscine therapist I can recommend you to).
I’ll keep it on my DVD shelf, because even though the movie itself is a massive let-down, I’m still proud to have a DVD case with the words They Saved Hitler’s Brain displayed in my home for company to look at and shake their heads in dismay at the job my parents did raising me that I’d be proud to display something like that for them to look at.
The Moral of the Story: If you’re going to save the living head of your dictator in a jar, you should probably mount said jar on a huge battle droid, or at the very least a bear. Y’know, just something to make sure Pasty McAngloamerican50’shero can’t just come along and blow him up with one girlishly-thrown grenade. And just because he wants another hash brownie doesn’t mean he should have one.
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