Shocktober Silver Screams Day 2: The Brain From Planet Arous

I went with a decidedly more comic book art approach for Day Two's material, since 1957's The Brain From Planet Arous is kind of the penultimate schlock fest that people either knowingly or unwittingly spoof and reference when they're poking fun and cracking wise about "bad" movies from the 1950s. 

The film is a thick slab of atomic age cheese, but a helluva fun watch. John Agar, prince of the B's, plays a nuclear scientist who becomes possessed by a cosmic brain from the planet Arous. Gor, the brain in question, has a taste for world domination, and, after being introduced to Earth women vis a vis Agar's fiancee Sally (Joyce Meadows), becomes a big ol' floating mass of prurient interests. Of course another, kindlier brain is trying to stop Gor; his name is Vol, and he hides himself in Agar's fiancee's dog.

A lobby card featuring John Agar with his "possessed" foil-lined contacts,
the very same used by Gary Lockwood on the Star Trek episode "Where No
Man Has Gone Before."

The film was directed by Nathan H. Juran, a Jewish Romanian filmmaker whose family emigrated to the USA and settled in Minneapolis, where Juran studied architecture. He did eventually set up his own architecture office in Massachusetts, but the Great Depression forced him to try his hand at freelance illustration due to the construction freeze. He found work as an art director in Los Angeles and was nominated for Academy Awards for his work on John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1942) and the 1946 film The Razor's Edge. He did win the award for How Green Was My Valley, but eventually moved out of the art department and into the director's chair for some Audie Murphy westerns and, eventually, landing a deal at Universal, directed some of the classics of 1950s b-cinema; most notably The Deadly Mantis, Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and 20 Million Miles To Earth (both with Ray Harryhausen!). 

Apparently Juran wasn't too thrilled with his horny world-enslaving brain picture, because he changed his name in the credits to Nathan Hertz. The film received more jeers than cheers, but found a new life in the fallout as a cult classic. You can see a neat press package from Howco International films at the great Zombo's Closet website.