- Directed by: Eugene Lourie
- Written by: Thelma Schnee, Willis Goldbeck
- Stars: John Baragrey, Mala Powers, Otto Kruger
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 10 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTY2ArgHcg4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was short and moved well through the story. It’s decently made all around, a fine example of 1950s technology gone amok, mad science, and a creature threatening the city – perhaps the whole world. It’s a fun watch.
Spoilery Synopsis
Two men watch a film about industrial machinery and equipment. The film talks about Dr. Spensser’s amazing innovations. The heat sensor was Jerry’s idea, and it’s the key to the whole thing. Jerry is set to win the International Peace Prize for his work. Jerry Spensser is some kind of supergenius who’s saving the world with food technology. He hopes that war might become obsolete. They all go to Stockholm to get the prize.
On the family’s return, everyone talks about Jerry’s brilliance. His father, William, is a brain surgeon, and his brother, Henry, is an electronic and mechanical genius as well. The plane lands, and the whole family is there to greet Jerry. Billy’s toy plane blows into the street, and when Jerry turns after it, he’s run over by a truck. Jerry is killed on the spot.
The ambulance takes the body to William’s lab instead of the morgue. William operates immediately, but Dr. John says Jerry was dead already, so why the operation? He comes out later and says he did all he could.
There’s a funeral, and William storms out in the middle of it. He swears that Jerry’s brain was exceptional, a rare genius, but John talks about God’s greater purpose; this enrages the old man. They talk about brains; John believes that without a body, any brain, even a genius, would become monstrous.
Henry, Jerry’s brother, likes Jerry’s widow and son. He and Anne talk about how weird William has been since the funeral. William calls Henry downstairs, as he’s got something to show him. It’s Jeremy’s brain in a jar! He’s got an electroencephalograph, and it shows that the brain is alive and sleeping. He asks it a question, and the brain wakes up and responds on an electronic typewriter.
Yes, it’s Jeremy’s brain. William wants Henry to build a body for Jerry using his knowledge of automation. Very quickly, he assembles a huge robot body for the brain. They throw the switch, and Jeremy wakes up. When he sees himself in the mirror, he screams and passes out.
Upstairs, Anne hears the scream and rushes in to see what’s up. Henry says the scream was William, who lost his temper over a failed experiment.
Henry and William debate whether Jerry can ever be happy in that body, away from his wife and son. Henry thinks Jeremy will live in perpetual torment. William thinks he’ll be fine.
The first thing Jeremy asks is for them to destroy him. He is convinced to stay alive and keep working on the condition that no one else is ever allowed to see him.
Jeremy has a vision about a ship, The Viking, which crashes into another ship. His head starts sparking and shorting out, so William shuts him down for a rest. A bit later, they watch a news report about the ship crash, which actually happened. Somehow, Jerry now has ESP.
Henry starts to pick on the machine man, who points out how strong he is. It’s the first anniversary of Jeremy’s death, and he’s gotten very snarky and sarcastic. Jeremy now has hypnotic eyes, and he uses them on William as he leaves the lab to visit his own grave.
At the cemetery, Jeremy watches as Anne and Billy visit his grave. He ends up talking to his son, who doesn’t recognize him. Billy thinks the big robot is a giant. William had told Jeremy that his family was dead.
Later, Jeremy spies on Anne and Henry, who asks her to fly away to Hawaii with him. Anne faints when she sees Jeremy, and Jeremy scoops her up after Henry runs away.
In the morning after she wakes up in her bed, Anne tells John what she saw, but he doesn’t really believe her. Henry makes a run for it, but calls William for money; Jeremy knows exactly where Henry is thanks to his ESP abilities. He has William tell Henry where to be at a set time to receive his money.
Henry parks near the East River to wait for a messenger with his money. Jeremy, who is waterproof, walks under the water and comes up behind Henry to kill him with a death ray from his eyes that we haven’t seen before.
Jeremy no longer wants to keep the poor and weak alive; he wants to kill the people he sees as “inferior.” Feeding the masses isn’t the solution, getting rid of the masses is. When the police come to tell the family about Henry, Anne knows it was the same monster she saw.
Jeremy meets Billy again at the cemetery. He gives the boy a toy airplane like the one he died trying to retrieve. Billy later tells mom that the mysterious giant wants him to call him “Daddy.” Meanwhile, Jeremy hypnotizes William to go to the United Nations tomorrow night and to take Billy and Anne.
At the appointed time, Jeremy breaks into the United Nations and starts shooting people with his eyes. Jeremy tells Billy that he can’t control himself, and he shows Billy how to throw his permanent “off” switch. William tells John that he was right, a brain without a real body is just a monster.
Jeremy lays on the floor and dies.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s short and moves very quickly, without any filler. The creepy piano soundtrack really adds to the mood. The creature is both impressive and a little ridiculous, but it works well for this story. Most of Jeremy’s madness seems to come from sensory deprivation, a thing that was only beginning to be studied at this point in time.
Kevin’s Commentary
I was expecting this to be campier than it was. It’s actually pretty grim and serious. I appreciated that it was short and gets right to things, moving briskly to the end. It’s actually pretty tame, but there is a substantial body count of sanitary bloodless deaths. The peak of 1950s technology was cool, pushed into science fiction, doing things they still can’t do today. This was my first time seeing it, and I had a good time.