There are bad movies. There are laughably bad movies. And then there’s The Fiend with the Electronic Brain, which feels like someone put a diamond‑heist caper, a mad scientist B‑picture, a lounge act promo reel, and a war trauma exploitation drama in a blender, pressed “purée,” and served it to John Carradine in exchange for rent money. The result is a cinematic Frankenstein where half the organs are missing and the ones that remain are stapled in upside down.
A Brainstorm in the Worst Way
This movie didn’t even start life as The Fiend with the Electronic Brain. No, that would have required intent. It started as Psycho A‑Go‑Go (1965), a straight‑up crime flick about stolen diamonds stuffed in a child’s doll. The kind of story you’d expect to see on an episode of Dragnet, only with more saxophone and fewer morals. But director Al Adamson wasn’t satisfied, because who is, really, with a movie no one wants to watch? So he dusted it off in 1969, shoved John Carradine into a lab coat, and shot some bargain‑basement footage about brain experiments to pretend it was a science fiction horror picture.
Voilà—new title, The Fiend with the Electronic Brain. You see, if your movie isn’t working, just drop an “electronic brain” into it. Instant sci‑fi, like adding Tang to water.
Carradine: Mad Scientist for Hire
Carradine is here in full paycheck‑collection mode, the cinematic equivalent of a bluesman playing kazoo on the corner for spare change. He plays Dr. Vanard, a mad scientist who tries to fix Joe Corey’s war wounds with electricity. Instead of healing him, the procedure turns Joe into a rampaging maniac, which is exactly what the script needed, because otherwise you’re just watching a confused Vietnam vet wander into a jewel robbery subplot leftover from the earlier cut.
Carradine spends most of his screen time glaring at his laboratory equipment, which looks like it was salvaged from a Radio Shack dumpster. His death—strapped into his own gizmos and fried like overdone bacon—is one of the movie’s highlights, if only because it means the poor man got to go home.
Joe Corey: Psycho by Committee
Roy Morton plays Joe Corey, the fiend in question, though “fiend” is putting it generously. He’s really just a guy stomping around with the posture of a middle‑school bully who just discovered bourbon. Sometimes he’s a wounded Vietnam vet. Sometimes he’s a jewel thief. Sometimes he’s an unstoppable rage monster. None of it matches, because the movie is basically duct‑taping scenes from one film to another and pretending it makes sense.
One minute he’s strangling a cocktail waitress in a motel room like he’s auditioning for a snuff reel, the next he’s chasing a mother and daughter into the forest because of a diamond‑stuffed doll. This isn’t plot. This is a bad fever dream you wake up from sweating in a Greyhound station.
The Editing Room Massacre
It’s hard to describe just how schizophrenic the editing is without sounding like you’ve suffered blunt head trauma. The movie lurches from heist scenes to lounge singer interludes to Carradine zapping brains with no sense of time, space, or sanity. Characters appear and vanish. Motivation is scribbled in crayon. It’s less a film and more a ransom note composed out of different genres.
Adamson apparently realized even this wasn’t working, so in 1971 he slathered on more new footage with Kent Taylor, Tommy Kirk, and Regina Carrol and repackaged it again as Blood of Ghastly Horror. Which is kind of like trying to resell spoiled milk by adding food coloring and calling it “new flavor.”
The Thrill of Pure Incompetence
Let’s be clear: this movie is bad. But not in the gleeful, Plan 9 from Outer Space way where the incompetence becomes charming. No, this is bad in the way that feels like someone is prying your eyelids open at 3 AM and forcing you to watch community theater dress rehearsals spliced together with rejected Twilight Zone footage.
The nightclub scenes—originally shot to promote actress Tacey Robbins’ singing career—are endurance tests, like being trapped in an airport lounge where the band refuses to stop. The heist material is about as tense as an expired coupon. And the “sci‑fi” segments with Carradine feel like they were filmed in someone’s laundry room between loads of whites.
A Climax Off a Cliff
The grand finale has Joe Corey shot by police and falling off a cliff, which is exactly how you’ll feel after watching the film: like you’ve been shoved into the abyss for the crime of sticking around too long. There’s no catharsis, no payoff, just the relief that it’s finally over.
Why It Exists
So why bother with this patchwork monstrosity? Because in the 1960s, drive‑in theaters needed cheap product to fill screens, and Al Adamson was a master at delivering reheated slop under a new label. The Fiend with the Electronic Brainis less a movie than a business model: shoot some filler, slap on a lurid title, and let the late‑night crowd supply the popcorn and ridicule.
And ridicule is what it deserves. If you thought Manos: The Hands of Fate was the cinematic bottom, Adamson was already digging a few feet deeper with his bare hands, looking for oil.
Final Diagnosis: The Real Electronic Brain Was Ours
Watching this film is like getting your own brain experimented on. You sit there, staring at the screen, feeling the synapses misfire, wondering if sanity is overrated. Carradine deserved better. Hell, the audience deserved better. Instead, we got a stitched‑together corpse of a film wandering around in search of coherence.
If you’ve ever wanted to know what happens when a diamond heist movie, a lounge act, and a sci‑fi mad scientist reel all crash into each other headfirst, here’s your answer: nothing good.
Rating: One melted circuit out of ten. The fiend with the electronic brain isn’t on screen—it’s in the editing booth, cackling as it erases every trace of reason.
