BRAIN OF BLOOD (1972)
Article 2706 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-30-2008
Posting Date: 1-9-2009
Directed by Al Adamson
Featuring Grant Williams, Kent Taylor, John Bloom
Country: USA

The benevolent ruler of Kalid is dying of cancer, but his associates have a plan to keep him alive by sending him to the U.S. and having a doctor transplant his brain into the skull of a younger man. However, the doctor has motives of his own…

I’ll give Al Adamson one thing; it’s nice that he gave Angelo Rossitto a fairly sizable role in this one in place of the usual cameos you’d get of him. Still, much as I hate to say it, Angelo really wasn’t that great of an actor; he’s better than Tor Johnson, but a long ways from Michael Dunn. Still, Al Adamson’s usual acting troupe isn’t really much better, so he’s not in bad company here. The presence of Rossitto does make me realize that Adamson was tapping into some of the appeal of the old Lugosi Monogram movies, and this movie reminds me of some of them, especially THE CORPSE VANISHES. It starts out looking better than the usual Adamson movie, but the movie gets sillier and sillier as it goes on, and the pace becomes deadly in the second half of the movie; it makes DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN look sprightly by comparison. And speaking of that movie, this is the only other screen appearance of Zandor Vorkov, who plays a character named Mohammed. John Bloom gets to play a dimwitted giant once more, Reginal Carrol gets to show off cleavage, Vicki Volante gets terrorized… you know the routine. Still, I’d rather watch an Adamson movie than a Larry Buchanan movie.