Monstrosity or The Atomic Brain as it is also called, is a 1963 film that is widely panned but holds a certain charm and is really not the worst thing that you will ever see. That does not automatically mean that it is a good film, because it is not, but it is tolerable. While it is a bit of a curio, it is not a movie that you should seek out anytime soon, but it is bad enough and enthralling enough that it is currently undergoing a 4k restoration. Overkill? Maybe, but even bad films can be loved by some.

The plot is fairly simple as it deals with an old lady who is looking to be young again. As far as surgeries go, science only takes you so far and so she hires a sort of mad-doctor type and funds his experiments so that when he is successful, he can transplant her brain into the body of a much younger and attractive woman. Though he has some luck, he really does not want to put the old lady’s brain anywhere and things tend to go bad for everyone involved by the end of the film.

Directed by Joseph V. Mascelli and starring B movie actors Marjorie Eaton and Frank Gerstle, all you can really say is that yes – they appeared in the movie and Mascelli did indeed direct it. Nobody was especially terrible, but then nobody was especially good either. Everything was simply middle of the road where it came to the acting and as far as direction – someone had to film the movie. The script was terrible and the story could have used a lot of work, thus making everything else quite poor, but the film did at least make sense as far as it went and you have to give the actors credit for at least trying to make it work. It may have been an impossible task and yes, they failed at it, but they did seem to try.

The great thing about this picture is that it has everything you could possibly want in a science-fiction or horror film including zombies, a mad scientist, a crazy old lady whose brain gets transplanted into a cat and more. The writers of this thing may not have known exactly what to do, but they threw everything they could at it to see what stuck and the result, as messy and as terrible as it is, turned out to be quite entertaining.

2 out of 5