Evil Brain from Outer Space - 1964

This Sci Fi Invasion entry serves as the last bit (I think, I hope) of the Japanese serial Super Giant, which Invaders from Space is also a part.  In retrospect, I think that Invaders from Space could have been better if it had been the beginning of the film series, or if I had seen the film series that took place before it.

Evil Brain serves as the end of the series, and in that respect I found it much more enjoyable than Invaders from Space.  Could just be that I was excited that this was the second to last film I have to watch in the set, but for whatever reason, I was damn happy just to be there, watching it, in all it's shoddy glory.

Not to say this movie is good.  It most certainly isn't good.  First of all, this is a 78 minute film which was edited out of almost 3 hours worth of TV shows.  No one would ever state that this movie was "linear" or "made sense" without taking many things into account.  But it seems like, since this movie is mostly dull filler, a lot of that almost 3 hours must've been even worse filler, cause this movie still does make sense, in a way.  It certainly was easier for me to follow in comparison to Invaders from Space, and I was actually understanding what was happening in the end part.

I'm sure the original Japanese version didn't have the narration, and I'm also sure they changed the literal things that the people were saying to that this movie made sense.  I'm just, sure of it at this point.  With all that editing going on, nothing would make sense otherwise.

In Evil Brain from Outer Space, we begin with a brain in a suitcase being lost by the man carrying it.  That brain was Balazar, who had been assassinated.  Once the brain gets loose, aliens start to be a problem for Starman, the tights-clad superhero with the stuffed crotch area (actually, it really was stuffed!).  But it seems most of the first part of this movie actually follows a little boy who's name I forget.

The kid goes to see a doctor who is actually an alien, and it's the slow figuring this out segment which I liked.  There's all these secret doors and hidden switches in the garden outside, which I thought was really neat.  It made me wonder, back in the 60's especially, how they might have gotten something real like that to work.  I'm sure in the film, it was stage hands, wiring, off camera effects.  But I just wonder how you'd really get a huge door to swing open, or a entire platform to lower, just by flipping a little switch or something.  I want a house with a hidden passageway or something!

Anyways, the end of the film is also pretty cool.  I'd be hard pressed to tell ya what happened, I saw this movie like 3 days ago, but I know I liked it, and it made sense.  And I was glad that I'd seen an actual part of the series that was important, instead of random middle parts, which is why I didn't like Invaders from Space, or any of those fucking Rocky movies (or similar).

One thing which I was just doing was going through the actors in this series, the minor guys that didn't have character names or parts that I remembered.  Just to see what else they were in, if they were real actors, if I've seen them in anything else.  It's kinda fun.  Some random actors have been in other films I've seen, a guy was in Jigoku, someone was in a film with Sonny Chiba, etc.

So this one gets a unrepentant 3.5 stars, and I have only ONE film left to go!