Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 10, 2021

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as a part of Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman.

Sam Katzman's name may frankly not be held in the same general esteem as some other famous Golden Era producers like David O. Selznick or Adolph Zukor, but for sheer number of films produced and perhaps especially in cost to profit ratio, Katzman might eclipse more ostensible luminaries than you might expect. While Zukor, as the head of Paramount Pictures, got literally hundreds of "presents" credits, his actual producing credits (according to the IMDb) number fewer than a hundred, and Selznick logs in with even fewer than that. Of course both Selznick and Zukor tended to enjoy much more fulsome budgets and more glittering marquee stars than Katzman, a hardscrabble guy who started working in the film industry when he was barely a teenager, and who then climbed the ranks to work at a number of studios, including "poverty row" centers like Monogram, but also 20th Century Fox, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and Columbia, ending up with (again according to the IMDb) 239 credits as producer. The four Katzman produced efforts Arrow Video has aggregated in this appealing collection may arguably not be from Hollywood's "real" Golden Era, with, as the title of the collection may hint at, these films all emanating a mid- fifties ambience that sought to attract younger viewers in particular away from the hypnotizing influence of that confounded television invention, often courtesy of plots that included science fiction and/or horror.

There is a potentially life threatening drinking game to be played while watching The Creature with the Atom Brain, at least for anyone concerned about potential alcohol poisoning. A character in this film who really should have known better, Medical Examiner Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning), is almost comically attached to either a cigarette or pipe throughout this film, and scene after scene includes "business" involving lighting the various cancer delivery devices. But of course this was the fifties, and the smoking angle is just one of several ways this film is squarely of its era, which actually may be part of its rather peculiar charm.

By the time Walker gets involved in what amounts to a murder spree, it's already been revealed that a hulking brute with a Frankenstein-esque scar across his forehead (see screenshot 1) is evidently being "remote controlled" by some villains, one of whom kind of goofily turns out to be a Nazi with still active plans for world domination. There's an unabashedly goofy quality to many of the proceedings, but there are some interesting stylistic touches as well, as commentator Russell Dyball mentions, including things like a moment early in the film where the first murder, which is accomplished by the remote controlled zombie hulk basically folding his victim in half, is shown via shadows on the wall.

Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Creature with the Atom Brain is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow actually provides two insert booklets with this release, but there's very little information granted about the transfer, other than that "restored masters were produced by Sony Pictures". Of course Sony has long been one of the more reliable curators of even its less well known catalog, and The Creature with the Atom Brain is granted a perhaps surprisingly strong presentation, albeit with a couple of brief downturns in quality. The bulk of the transfer offers generous blacks and well modulated gray scale, and fine detail on items like costume fabrics is consistently well rendered. Some of the transfers in this set share one kind of curious anomaly, where for no really discernable reason, sudden and pretty noticeable degradation of the image can happen for brief moments. In this film, it's in some of the scenes with Richard Denning in interior locations (see screenshot 8, and then contrast that with screenshot 6). In these slightly more "dupey" looking moments, clarity can suffer a bit and grain look somewhat rougher, but on the whole this is a really appealing looking presentation.

Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Creature with the Atom Brain features an LPCM Mono track that has no real issues and is perfectly serviceable, but which frankly doesn't have much "wow" factor courtesy of the film's low budget. It looks like a lot of the underscore is stock cues by a variety of great composers, and there are some slight variances in fidelity and reverb in some of those, but otherwise the track in terms of dialogue and effects is consistent sounding and offers nothing major in the way of age related wear and tear. Optional English subtitles are included.

Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Kim Newman (HD; 8:33) can be accessed under the Play Menu. The disc is authored to move on automatically to the feature after the introduction (there's an option to simply play the feature without the introduction as well).


• Commentary by Russell Dyball


• Sam Katzman: Before & Beyond the Cold War Creatures (HD; 1:13:57) is a really interesting long form piece hosted by Stephen R. Bissette via a Zoom like interface that arguably might suffer from what I assume was a Covid imposed production strategy which kind of makes this play like an extended PowerPoint presentation.


• Super 8 Version (HD; 19;27)


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:11)


• Image Gallery (HD)

Creature with the Atom Brain Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Creature with the Atom Brain is good, silly fun a lot of the time, and if it's the very definition of a genre B-movie in some ways, it's also surprisingly stylish at times. Video has a few moments of inconsistency, but audio is fine, and as usual with Arrow releases, the supplementary package is outstanding, for those who are considering making a purchase.