This movie is probably the only place where John Agar's natural talent for cackling like a demented chicken and mugging the camera with a goofy, forced-looking grin is actually appropriate for the role. Otherwise, the film has little to recommend it. The thin, conventional plot is stretched way beyond its limits. Scenes end up being repeated in slightly altered form simply to pad the film out to the requisite hour and ten minutes. The only talented actor in the film, Robert Fuller, plays a character that gets killed five minutes into the film, which coincides with the disappearance of anything mysterious, tense, or mildly interesting from the movie. The female lead, Joyce Meadows, plays her role in a depressing monotone, and always seems like she's just about to throw up. The rest of the cast is even flatter and more non-descript than that. The special effects are crude (toy airplanes on visible strings, the brain obviously nothing but a painted balloon) and descend into the ludicrous at the end, when they are most needed. And, once again, for the umpteenth time in a 50's horror film, the monster is radioactive for no reason whatsoever. If there is an archetype for a lousy 50's horror film, "Brain from Planet Arous" is it.
Review of The Brain from Planet Arous
