The Brain Eaters (1958)
Directed by Bruno VeSota

Film Review

Afflicted with a severe case of B-movie amateurishness, The Brain Eaters never lives up to the promise of its brilliant premise and looks like what it is, a vanity project by someone desperate to direct a movie, oblivious to his lack of talent in that direction.  The individual in question was Bruno VeSota, a character actor known for his appearances in sci-fi films such as Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) and The Wasp Woman (1959).  VeSota persuaded independent film producer Roger Corman, the undisputed king of the low budget genre movie, to help him raise enough money to make the film, which was shot on a shoestring budget of 30 thousand dollars in just six days.  The sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein was unimpressed by the film - he insisted that it was a rip-off of his novel The Puppet Masters and sued its producers for plagiarism.  Despite his insistence that he had not read Heinlein's novel, Corman agreed to an out-of-court settlement of five thousand dollars.  The fact that Heinlein recognised his own work in the film makes it worthier of interest than it might have been.

Technically, The Brain Eaters will have a hard job impressing anyone, even Ed Wood.  It is poorly shot and badly edited, with too many scenes with stiff actors standing about in weird poses trying to look convincing whilst delivering the most unsayable dialogue.  The production standards are low, the script is laughably awful (especially the portentous voiceover narration), the direction is all over the place, and yet, for all these obvious failings, it has its own peculiar genius.  An unmistakable aura of spine-tingling eeriness pervades ever second of the film and some scenes are indescribably creepy, all the more so for the lack of artistic polish.  One inspired touch is a point-of-view sequence which follows one of the parasitic aliens (blobs of yuckiness, only fleetingly glimpsed) as it scuttles across a bedroom and homes in on one of its victims.  It's funny and scary at the same time, and doubtless inspired many other directors to use the same gimmick in their films.

The idea of parasitic alien beings taking over the world is hardly a novel one, but The Brain Eaters gives this well-worn concept a few original and frightening twists.  Creatures that come not from outer space but from the centre of our own world, intent not on destroying man but on saving him from himself by neutralising his capacity for autonomous action - there's a subtle and ingenious allegory here that suggests the film is a lot cleverer than you might first think.  Look closely and you'll see Leonard Nimoy in an early film role, some years before he boarded the USS Enterprise; the rest of the cast deserve to have their brains well and truly eaten.

Film Synopsis

In the small Illinois town of Riverdale, a mysterious cone-like structure suddenly appears from nowhere.  It is made of some kind of metal that appears to be uncuttable and the interior is empty, just a spiralling maze of narrow conduits that go on forever.  No one knows whether the object is of Earth origin or something that has fallen from the stars.  Nearby are the lifeless remains of various animals.  As Senator Walter Powers begins his investigation it transpires that strange parasites have taken over key members of the community by attaching themselves to their brains, in an attempt to gain control of the area.  What are these strange beings, and what purpose do they have for mankind?