Weirdhouse Cinema: The Brainiac

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1962 Mexican monster movie “The Brainiac,” directed by Chano Urueta and starring Abel Salazar as the evil Baron Vitelius d'Estera.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty two
Mexican horror film The Brainiac, starring Abel Salazar Rosa, Maria
Gallardo or Guyardo, and Rubin Rojo. And this is one
that I saw many, many years ago. I think I
watched this with a friend in high school. I remembered

(00:36):
very little about it except the exquisitely bizarre design of
the monster, and this was such a treat upon revisit.
It is so absurd, but it also just takes your
soul on a ride, and in counterintuitive ways, is more
thought provoking than some viewers may think.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, I had seen it previously, I think in a
rift tracks form so on. I was not expecting expecting
to have my thoughts provoked much at all, and yet
that they were provoked, So I will agree with you
on that. You know, I haven't referenced Michael Weldon's Psychotronic
Encyclopedia film recently, so I made sure to bust it

(01:14):
out to look up his entry for the Brainiac and
sure enough he also praised the creature design as well
as quote surprisingly surreal elements in the picture, and then
also adds if you can't find it on television, rent
the video cassette, which which which makes sense considering that
this is a film that was widely seen on cable

(01:37):
television at least back in the day, and probably pre
cable television as well, so it had it has had
a long long history of popping up unexpected on television
sets and then as a rental across various formats.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I think before there was as much of a market
as there is today for weird, low budget horror film,
this was one of the few. This was one of
the ones that was on people's radar, along with maybe
ed Wood and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there are various references to it.
For example, some of you may be familiar with it
because Frank Zappa references it in a song from nineteen
seventy five called Debra Cadabra. This is the one where
he says, make Negro brainiact fingers but with more hair,
and he also there's also a line in that says

(02:29):
from the puffed and flabulent Mexican rubber goods mask, which
I believe must also be referencing the monster in this picture.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Now, if you at home are wondering what are Brainiact fingers,
how are they different from regular fingers, you gotta stay
tuned you'll find out.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Essentially, what we have here is a resurrected warlock revenge picture,
a subgenre that I honestly love. We've covered various examples
of this on the show before, but there are some
neat sci fi type. There's a there's some creative use
of dissolve effects, and again a monster that is deliciously
creative in conception and an execution is you know, at

(03:10):
times comical, as low budget monsters often are, but also
at times pretty terrifying and always absolutely weird.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And this is also an example of inquisition'sploitation. Is the
reshorter version of that word.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
No no, I think I think that's it in quisploitation, maybe,
but I don't. I don't feel like that conveys the
full meeting.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Now, as far as resurrected warlock revenge films go, how
does Brainiac square with your other favorites of the genre.
I assume you the main one I would think you're
referring to there is Horror Rises from the tomb Am.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
I wrong, That's That's one of my favorites. So though,
there was also Piranha Mandir uh Parana Mandir the the
the Bollywood horror film from the Ramsey Brothers, a very
similar plotline, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some other ones,
probably some major examples outside of the Weird House episode list.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Now, there's a question that has really been interesting me
since I rewatched Brainiac here, and that is how sympathetic
is the baron we were talking? We just recently last
week did an episode on Todd Browning's Dracula in which
we discussed changes to the character of Dracula as he

(04:22):
has been The story has been retold and reimagined through
different adaptations and films over the years, and one of
the big changes is that in the novel there's really
nothing sympathetic about Dracula. You're not gonna like Dracula in
the novel. He's just nasty, horrible, demonic. And then in
these later versions you get a more tragic Dracula, Dracula

(04:44):
who there are some good things about him, or maybe
at least he's got a sad backstory and so you
sympathize with him, even if it drives him to dark places.
In this movie, I feel like the backstory really rides
the knife's edge on whether we should consider the Barren
character originally sympathetic or not. There are some things said

(05:06):
about him that are both quite evil and quite good,
and you don't know which ones to believe because we
never see the truth of the matter, so we only
see him in revenge mode, and we don't know if
he's like truly a wronged man who was just suffering
at the unjust hands of the Inquisition and then came

(05:27):
back for revenge, or was he always a nasty warlock?

Speaker 1 (05:30):
True? True to what extent are these charges by the
Inquisition valid at all? Again? Are they all just trumped
up charges against a man who did some good in
the world, And there's some strong questions regarding whether he
was a man to begin with. Perhaps we have indeed
an alien visitor here who does some good in the

(05:52):
world and is punished for it, or it just doesn't
know how humans work and does a mix of both,
not really understanding how one act falls on the side
of evil. In one act that it falls on the
side of good.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Okay, so I was gonna say, elevator pitch. This is
not really an elevator pitch, but it might be a
good tagline for like a repackaging of the film, and
that is the Spanish Inquisition could not have expected this.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh that's pretty good, pretty good. The only thing that
came to my mind was Dracula. But make it weirder,
not that it has much to do with Dracula other
than the evil the baron. The Baron of Terror in
this picture is dracula esque in some regards. You know,
he's a suave dude who does weird eye hypnosis stuff,
and you know, enjoys the ladies, enjoys not their blood

(06:41):
but their brains. Loves them for their minds, but not
in the good way.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
I think there are some fairly strong similarities.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, yeah, but not in terms of like plot or
anything outside of that.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I think one of the big differences is that clearly
Crosses would not work on the Baron of Terror. Here.
The brainiac would laugh at your at your crucifix.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
That's right, all right, Let's hear just a little bit
of the trailer audio.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
The RADIANC, I.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
Shall return to your world within three hundred years. When
that comment completes its cycle, it is once again in
these latitudes. Three hundred years later, the Count returns to Earth.
In The Brainier, see horrible and insane killings. As the

(07:36):
Count turns into a monster and seeks his revenge, see
that Count feast from human brains. Don't miss the most
horror film film of.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
The scripture, The Radiac, The RADIANC, The RADIANC, The Rainier,
B B B.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
All right, now, if you want to watch The Brainiac
as well, certainly you can follow follow Michael Weldon's advice
and watch it on TV or look for the video
cassette upgrading that for today. There's a really nice looking
blu ray from Indicator. But again, the film has a
long history of playing on cable on television. It's been
available on DVD for quite a while. The Riff Tracks

(08:33):
guys covered it at one point. I didn't give myself
enough time to get my hands on a physical copy,
so I streamed it on Prime. But even though it
was good quality, I could only pull up the non
Rift Tracks version at first, and I had to go
on the app on my phone to find the unriffed version,
added it to my list, and then was able to
pull it up in the big screen. I will also

(08:53):
point out that the version I watched is is the
English dub like the old Kay Gordon Murray English dub.
But there's one scene that's completely in Spanish with no subtitles.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yep. Yeah, if we watched the same version, I had
the exact same search problems as you like. Search often
wouldn't bring it up. I had to get it like
in my library on one device before I could actually
view it on another one. So yeah, same issue. And also, yes,
the scene in Spanish in the middle of the movie,
it's the scene where the characters are like reading newspaper

(09:28):
articles about the brain murders.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah. Luckily the context is pretty much implied. You don't
need to speak Spanish or have a translation to know
basically what's going on here.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
So maybe they were just trying to cut costs on
the dub, you know, the scenes that are just a
recap of what you've already seen anyway.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, and or if you see enough of movies like this,
you essentially know what's going on. All right. Let's get
into the people behind this film. The director is Chano Iwerta,
who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen seventy nine. Mexican

(10:07):
film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor active behind the camera
from nineteen twenty eight through nineteen seventy four. So while
certainly active during the golden age of Mexican cinema, which
is roughly thirty six through fifty six, his career expands
beyond it in both temporal directions. Among his most well
regarded films or nineteen fifties Legotta di Sangria, fifty two's

(10:32):
Labestia Magnifica, and fifty seven's El Raton. His genre films
include nineteen fifty four As the Witch, nineteen sixties The
Witch's Mirror, sixty three is the Living Head, That's a
Living Severed Head film, and several Blue Demon Luca movies,
beginning with nineteen sixty five's Blue Demon and also including
Blue Demon Versus The Satanic Power from sixty six that

(10:55):
one co starred El Santo, and then there are two
sixty eight films, Blue Demon Versus The Diabolical Women and
Blue Demon Versus The Infernal Brains.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
I think I've gone looking for a couple of these
in the past.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
He also acted again, especially later in life. His credits
on this front include two Sam Peckinpah films, The Wild
Bunch from sixty nine and Bring Me the Head of
Alfredo Garcia from seventy four. All Right, in terms of
the script and the story, here we have Fredrico Kiel,
who lived nineteen seventeen through nineteen eighty five. Adaptation story

(11:32):
credit here Mexican writer who also directed in the early sixties,
kicking things off with the first Neutron movie in nineteen
sixty that we referenced this in one of our recent
episodes because this starred Wolf Ruvinsky's and co starred Claudio Brook. No.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, Wolf Rovinski's was one of the bad guys, one
of the Martians in Santo Versus the Martian Invasion.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, a luchador turned actor, but not a mass lucidor
too handsome for.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
That, so he played kind of like Kirk Douglas.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah. So there's another Neutron film in sixty three, and
career also wrote and directed several Santo and Blue Demon films,
as well as some Nostra Damis films and vampire films.
He's also acted and is in fact one of the
detectives in this film. He was also a cartoonist. Oh,
which of the detectives is he? Is he the comic

(12:25):
relief one or the serious one? I am not sure.
I've will had a note getting it. When we get
into the cast here, I found some contradictions on the
cast lists between two of the major movie databases, specifically
concerning the actresses. I think I got it straightened out,
but it also led to me not going as in

(12:46):
depth on the supporting cast here.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
The other adaptation story credit goes to Aldolfo Lopez Portillo
dates unknown, credited on several films from the sixty seventies
and eighties, mostly westerns, but also including sixties. There's The
Living Head. And then, according to IMDb, Antonio Arelana nineteen
twenty three through twenty eighteen, uncredited writer on this one.

(13:10):
Mexican writer, actor and occasional director. He wrote on several
Santo films, including sixty two Santo Versus The Vampire Women.
I also have to single out a title from nineteen
ninety one called El Ninja Mexicano, and that has Germain,
Roeblis and Roberto Canito. One name that's going to come
up in a minute, and another name we've referenced in

(13:32):
multiple episodes on Mexican films. Okay, all right, but the
star of this picture the Baron of Terror himself, and
I guess the brainiac playing Baron Vastilius Destera and also
the producer of the picture. We have Abel Salazar, who
lived nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety five. He also directed
fourteen pictures. He played vampire hunter doctor Enriquez in fifty

(13:57):
seven's The Vampire and also in fifty eight's The Vampire's Coffin.
He also acts in two well regarded old school Mexican
horror films, fifty nine's Black Pit of Doctor m and
sixty three's Curse of the Crying Woman. He's also in
The Living Head and nineteen fifty nine's The Man and
the Monster. He produced several of those as well.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
The Living Head keeps coming up. Maybe this is a
sign that we need to go to that.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Next Yeah, yeah, the posters look cool.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
I've also seen a lot of references to the Curse
of the Crying Woman. Is the Urona movie? Yeah, I
actually I just looked it up. The Malediction de la Youurona.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yes, this is not a film I've seen, but I'm
familiar with it just by reputation. It shows up in
a lot of lists of films that I've considered checking out.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
So this guy really kept reminding me of somebody. He's
great in the film. He's got a lot of scenes
where he actually just doesn't say anything, like other characters
are talking at him and he is sitting there silently,
either staring at them menacingly or just king and laughing
and you know, scoffing at whatever they're throwing in his face.

(15:05):
And so he does a lot of that. But also
he's got some some some swagger when he talks. But
the face he makes, especially when he kind of looks
skeptical with one raised eyebrow, he was really really reminding
me of Garrett Graham as Beef in The Phantom of
the Paradise. Do you see the comparison.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, I can see some Garrett Graham there. I
also kept thinking of the actor, contemporary actor Patrick Fischler,
who's in like Mulholland Drive and a ton of other things.
I can see that too, but with more swaggering charisma.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, but also disdain, just judgment, looking at people who
he who are who are lesser than him.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, all right, so we'll talk more about this performance.
On the good guy side of things. We have again
Rubin Rojo playing a role. Again. This is a this
is there's a revenge element to this, but it's a
revenge across time, which we sometimes see with undead Warlock pictures.

(16:10):
So in the past he plays Ronaldo Miranda and in
the present he plays Marcos Miranda or any other way around.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Okay, Marcos is the one in the seventeenth century, the
modern one. They say Rinaldo online. I don't remember if
they ever say that in the movie. In the movie
they call him Ronnie.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Okay, dub at least that's the thing about the dove
they do. They do streamline some things.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, in the dub he's Ronnie and Victoria Contreras is Vicky.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Okay. Well. Rojo lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety
three Mexican actor, perhaps best known for his award winning
supporting role in nineteen forty eight Soldad. He also played
Matthew in the nineteen sixty one American Bible epic King
of Kings, which I think mostly it had a large
American cast, but also made use of multiple Mexican actors

(16:59):
as well. Rip Torn plays Judas in That By the Way.
Rojo's other credits include fifty six is Alexander the Great,
sixty three Santo in the Wax Museum, seventy nine's The
Whip Versus Satan, and nineteen sixty nine's Romero starring Roald Julia.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I feel like we haven't seen the last of him.
No offense to to Ruben, but he's not really the
highlight of this film. He is there to just be
the good guy. He doesn't have a whole lot to
do often.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, and the kind of ghosts for most of the
rest of the cast. Really, I mean everyone is this
kind of fulfilling a basic role and you know, doing
a good job within those roles. But yeah, this is
about our villain and our monster.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
It's Brainiac's world. We're just in it, that's right.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Okay. We have Vicky as you referenced earlier, or Victoria
Contrena's contreras. This is our leading lady. This is one
of the situations where I found some confusing casting information
between the databases, but I believe I have it correct here.
Played by Rosa Marie Gallardo. Her other films include sixty

(18:09):
one's Mark of the dead Man, sixty five's Creature of
the Walking Dead, sixty fives she Wolves of the Ring.
That's a luchadora movie. In nineteen seventies.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Ruby Okay, so she is usually going to be in
the same scenes as Ruben Rojo. Again, they're mostly they're
the good characters, but they're mostly just reactive. They're like
young people who are studying astronomy and they're just sucked
into the world of the Baron of Terror, and they
kind of hang around in that world until finally he
tries to suck their brains out, and fortunately they're saved

(18:40):
at the last minute.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
That's right now. One of the victims is noteworthy, at
least one of the victims credited just as bar Girl.
She is the you'll know when we come to this scene.
She is a lady hanging out at the bar that
the baron ends up killing and brain gobbling. Played by
Erodny Welter. She lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety eight.

(19:05):
Mexican actress with a ton of Golden age credits. She
was in the Lewis Bunnell film The Criminal Life of
Archibaldo de la Cruz from fifty five, but she pops
up in various horror films. She's in the Lucidora film
The Panther Women from sixty seven. Her other credits include
El Gampiro sixty one's The Devil's Hand and The Vampire's Coffin.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
She has a good scene in fact, one of the
ones I was just talking about in a minute ago,
where people talk at the baron and he doesn't say
anything back to them. She's drunk at a bar and
is I guess, falling in love with him while he
just stands there staring at some place like behind her head,
over her shoulder, and then suddenly he brainiacts out, and
we'll describe what happens.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Later, but yeah, she gets a great scream in, that's
for sure.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, there's a brainiac process. He goes into processing mode.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
All right. The lead detective, the Commandant, is played by
David Silva, who lived nineteen seventeen through nineteen seventy six.
Pretty standard performance here, but he was an opera singer
and actor with some great connections, connections to some shining
gems of Mexican weird cinema. He pops up in The
Batwoman from sixty eight, which we previously referenced.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Really fun flick starring one of the Martians from zetto
in Yes, the Martian Invasion. Yeah, yeah, it's little Lichadora
film with fish people in it. But Silva also appears
in both Alejandro Jodowski's Al Topo from seventy and Holy
Mountain from seventy three. I don't recall him in that,
but that would make sense. He feels like he's from

(20:36):
a different world than most of the cast. This is
the serious one, right, not the comic relief cop. The
comic relief cop is Benny.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, this is the serious one. I'm pretty sure. He's
also in a pair of weird films from Juan Lopez Montezuma,
The Mention of Madness from seventy one and Alokarda from
seventy seven. They are both those both star Claudio Brook.
I have not seen Alacarta yet. It's supposed to be
pretty terrific. I've seen The Mansion of Madness and it

(21:08):
is super weird as well. I would say almost Holy
mountain Es, well, not Holy mountain esk its. Holy Mountain
is kind of on its own level, but let's say
it has a lot of surreal elements. It is a
film in which the inmates run an asylum, and the
leader of the of the asylum folk is played by
Claudio Brook in a very spirited performance.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
That's a recipe for fun.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, all right, now, just a few other characters. There's
another double role here, someone who is an inquisitor in
the past and is a victim in the present. This
is the one that gets to make some really crazy eyes.
Played by Germain Roeblis Live nineteen twenty nine through twenty fifteen,
Mexican actor in horror movie legend in his own right,

(21:53):
the Vampiro movies that I mentioned, well, he plays Count
Caro di luvade Le Lavoud in those. He plays Nostradamus
in the Nostradamus films, which I don't know much about,
but it looks like they center around an evil Nostradamus,
and he's in the Living Head as well. Also pops
up in the Jess Franco film from seventy one, She

(22:13):
Killed in Ecstasy.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
This is the guy who plays in his modern of course,
he's one of the inquisitors, as you said, but in
his modern form he is the professor. He's a professor
of history, and he gets to invite the baron over
to his house to meet his beautiful daughter and then
talk about the history of the Inquisition. What do you know,
it's just his area of specialty.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's not going to go well. And one, I'll say
a couple of others here. This film was not directed
by Renee Cardona, but just because he didn't direct it
doesn't mean he can't show up anyway. He also plays
one of the inquisitors, slashed like doomed aristocrats that is
ultimately killed by the baron.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
He's like the head inquisitor. And then in the modern
day he's the guy who's an industrialist coming up with
new metal alloys.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yes, let me show you my alloys in the basement.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, you want to see my alloys?

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Bro. And then there's there's one more one of the
let's say. Senora Mensis is played by Ophilia Gomin. She
lived nineteen twenty one through two thousand and five, Spanish
actress whose other films include sixty two Is the Exterminating
Angel and The Man in the Monster. Now. I mentioned

(23:29):
Kay Gordon Murray earlier, who lived nineteen twenty two through
nineteen seventy nine, producer and distributor of the English dub
of this film. Murray is a familiar name here because
he was responsible for the US theatrical distribution of several
different Mexican films back in the day, including fifty nine
Santa Claus and sixty three's Doctor of Doom. I think

(23:50):
that's maybe his voice is the inquisitor during the opening sequence.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh interesting, I was gonna say, it's very similar. The
so we get some narra in the prologue of the film,
and I'll talk about this in a bit, but it
felt familiar. It felt like the narrator from Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yes, yes, like it would be. The voice should be saying, Lupita,
do not sentence the baron to death.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
And then finally, the composer on this picture is Gustavo
Caesar Carrion, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety six.
Mexican film composer who worked on a number of horror films,
including several of the titles we already mentioned, The Witch
Is Mirror, El Vampiro, Curse of the Crying Woman, and more. Now,
this guy recently came up on my radar because I

(24:37):
was reading a twenty twenty four interview with jess Oborn
of Electric Wizard in Psychedelic Baby magazine, and they're asking
him a lot of questions about, you know, old horror
movies as these as they tend to and he said, quote,
I'm really into the music from Mexican horror films. It
has a strange mix of sinister orchestral music with primitive

(24:58):
electronic noise like Gustava Caesar, carry on. It's really cool stuff.
And I have to say I think that largely pans
out at least early on in the film. The music
is certainly very sinister and orchestral, very dramatic. But then
when the sci fi elements start bleeding into the picture,
we do get some electronic elements, like a little dash

(25:19):
of space music here and there.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, And I can see how that's also a change
from the kind of core of that band's musical musical
movie kind of crossover space, which I would say is
something like The Witchfinder General.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Having said, I am curious to check out
some of his scores for these other films of note,
like Curse of the Crying Woman. I wonder if if
those have any of these electronic elements, or if this
is just a case where's he's scoring this film and
it's like, oh, a comet shows up astronomy factors into
the picture, so we need to add some sci fi noises.

(25:55):
I wonder if those are present in these other pictures
or not. So I would say, for myn a more
memorable score than a lot of the Mexican genre films
from this period have been in that we viewed for
Weird House Cinema. Well, they're not counting Santa Claus. Santa
Claus has very memorable music, but in a different way.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know, a really great ending of this film would
have been if instead of death for the baron, he
just became Santa Claus. Did you see that transition? It
would make sense Santa Brainiac. Yeah, I think it would work.
Someone should do it. He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been
bad or good. I mean Brainiac would know.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, you need to leave a bowl of brains out
for him in a little spin.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
All right, you ready to talk about the plot.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
So the credits play over some very nice Goyademonia illustrations.
We've got some kind of winged imp with a lion
head sprouting out of his crotch, who appears to be
swooping around in the air or terrorizing the peasantry. There's
also imagery of the tortures of the damned. We get
penitents writhing in agony and these naked wretches fusing into trees.

(27:14):
So I think there's a bit of Dante stuff going
on here. Also, there's a really good one under at
one point in the credits of two Witches. So of
these witches cruising on a broom, two on one broom,
and then an owl in the background looking at them
like you're overloading that broom, and then the title, of
course appears. It's not Brainiac in the original. The original

(27:37):
title is El Baron del Terror, The Baron of Terror.
But plenty of sick six sketches with the credits, also
witches with melting mask faces, a lady with breasts on
her back, more gargoyles, feathers and talons in places they
shouldn't be, and predator head groins. Now, when we come

(27:58):
to the action, we're told it is the year sixteen
sixty one in a bleeding type face. I like the
what do you call it, the kind of glowing white,
bleeding type script that appears in this because it's also
kind of italic. So it's like swooping away from the camera. Yes,
And we're in a hall under great stone arches and

(28:18):
a hanging crucifix, and there's a chair in the middle
of the room in which sits a man in shackles
and leg irons, the kind of the ball and chain
that drags behind you. This we will learn is Baron
Vitellius Desterra. He is surrounded by frightening figures covered crowned
ankle and black cloaks and hoods with their faces hidden

(28:40):
behind masks. So these are the Inquisitors. And then begins
this monologue from a booming, reverberating voice, which again reminds
me of the narrator in Santa Claus. It's like, you
take that, but you replace the Christmas chair with pontifical menace.
And the voice says lou Pita, No, says we the

(29:01):
grand Inquisitors, protector of the faith against heretic sins of
apostasy in the city of Mexico, and all the states
and dominions in the Province of New Spain and its
vice royalties in governing bodies through royal audiences in all
the cities and states, do proclaim that the other inquisitors
and I have attended this hearing in the secret Chamber

(29:23):
of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition in Mexico to
do justice in the trial that has been initiated against
the aforementioned Baron Vitellius of Astera of unknown origin, who
has repeatedly refused to state same, aware of the edicts
and merits of this trial and the evidence and suspicion
resulting thereof. And my lord, this is like a real legal,

(29:48):
legal kind of contract language reading of the fine print quality,
isn't it.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, It's like c Span for the Inquisition.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Here, and it will go on and on. There is
a Macaw absurdity to the sheer volume of text we
get in these verdicts and proclamations. In the opening scene here,
there are even moments where it feels like the voiceover
artist is like reading fast to try to get through
it all. And originally I was torn on whether to

(30:17):
like actually read everything from the scene, because I did
transcribe it or just summarize. I think I'm just going
to summarize, starting at one point because it's too much
to read. But by the way, I do just want
to say before I go on, I love the posture
of the inquisitors because it's almost a superhero pose. You
get multiple of them standing there in the black cloaks
with like their you know, facing forward, feet at shoulder width,

(30:40):
and then the arms folded. What do you call that?
You know, they're on their hips, the hands on the hips.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yes, yes, very judgmental.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
So this part I will read. The prosecutor comes in
and he reads from a scroll and it says the
following report on the sentence and the trial by torment,
that this Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition instituted against said
Baron Vitelius for heresy and the instigation of heresy for
practicing dogmatism. And I was like, huh, and that what

(31:10):
they're doing. But like, even with that line for practicing dogmatism,
even the voice actor sounds a little confused, like he
just stops for a second as if to check and
make sure that's really what the script said.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, does that mean magnetism with dogs?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah? No, no, so there's kind of a pause. He's like,
for practicing dogmatism, and then he goes on for having
used witchcraft, superstitions and conjurations for depraved and dishonest ends,
for having employed the art of necromancy, invoking the dead
and trying to foretell the future through the use of corpses,

(31:48):
which I think that's the same thing as necromancy. And
then there's a long pause and he says for having
seduced married women and maidens. And here we cut to
Vitellius and he gives a big old smile. Well, yeah,
So to summarize what follows, Vitelius gets sentenced to torture
and told that if he should be maimed or have

(32:09):
blood drawn or die during the torture, that's going to
be divine proof of his guilt. Then they read he
doesn't say this. They read out that they previously sentenced
him to torture, and he told them that he welcomed
as much torture as they were, you know, as much
as they could give him. He was like, bring it on.

(32:29):
And then they describe all the tortures they did on him.
It sounds like they did some form of strepato as
well as stretching on the rack quote, and with his
arms and legs almost torn from his body, he continued
to make jest of our holy authority, which doesn't make
you sound cool when you say that. It makes the

(32:49):
inquisitors sound like the loser. But they decide he needs
more punishment, has not had enough yet. But before they
get to that punishment, there is a twist because, as
the person presiding over this trial says, and now, as
if our justice had not been sufficiently ridiculed, a witness

(33:10):
has come before this tribunal to defend the accused. This
is the epitome of all brazen defiance. Lord inquisitors, now
tell me, are we going to stand for it? But
then they just bring the witness in anyway, and it's
Ruben Rojo, who's going to play another character later on,
but he comes in as the character Marcos Miranda. He's

(33:33):
a guy dressed in a black doublet and a puffy
caller who is here to vouch for Baron Vitellius's character.
Now here's where things I think get kind of interesting,
because up until this point I hadn't really thought about
whether the Inquisition's accusations were supposed to be true or not.
But this guy comes in and says, no, no, no,

(33:54):
the baron is a good guy. He says that, he
says that the baron has helped the downtrodden people in
this new land of Mexico, and that he has dedicated
himself to the promotion of the fine arts and sciences.
And I was just thinking, oh, yeah, I'm sure these
hooded inquisitors are greatly put at ease by that love
it when you help the downtrodden and promote the arts

(34:15):
and sciences. That's what they're into.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
And to be clear, like, there's no reason this guy
would We're given no reason to believe he would be
lying here, Like he seems like a you know, a
complete babyface. He's like, yeah, he's I knew him back
in Europe, and he's yeah, he's he's a good guy.
He seems like he's, uh, he's really tried to help people.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah. But then so immediately from the end of the testimony,
without a moment's pause, the head inquisitor says, Marcos Miranda,
the force that you have tried to perpetrate has earned
you the punishment of two hundred lashes. What Yeah, which
she'll be applied immediately in the torture chamber.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Wow. Yeah. And so then he's just taken off to
be whipped, and the trial two hundred lashes.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think, I think that is a death sentence. And
before he's led away, Miranda and Vitellius make brief eye contact,
but they never talk to each other, so we don't
know anything about their relationship. So the inquisitors very briefly
compare notes and then render a guilty verdict. But didn't
they already I thought that was part of the proclamation.
It was already like he's guilty. But they do it again,

(35:22):
and they sentence him quote to be dressed in the
clothing of shame, bearing symbols of fire. He will undergo
personal debasement before the people, All his lands and his
possessions will be confiscated, and finally he will be burned
to death in an open field. So, okay, things are
not looking good for the baron. But then ooh, there's

(35:43):
an interesting twist. Vittelius, who has not really said anything yet,
hits them with some sublime truculence. He says, if my
body is to be burned, it will be without chains. Yeah,
and then he uses sorcery to make the chas on
his legs disappear and reappear around the legs of his captors.

(36:05):
So he like stands up to walk out of the room,
and the captors awkwardly hobble after him, dragging the iron balls.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
It's pretty cool. I mean, we're overthinking it. We might
wonder why he hasn't used these powers to escape already,
but yeah, you know he's using it to dramatic effect
here at any rate.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, yeah, it does kind of suggest that if he
were so inclined, he would be able to magically escape
his punishment altogether, but he chooses not to. It's implying
that the baron is willingly facing this unjust sentence. He's
willingly going out to be burned at the stake. And

(36:41):
when I realized that, I started noticing a number of
parallels here. This might sound crazy, but are the filmmakers
trying to tap into some kind of parallel between Baron
Vitelius and Jesus at his trial before Pilot. We can
think about all this, okay, think about the similar these
in the stories he helps the downtrodden, he is accused

(37:04):
of sorcery and immorality by the religious leaders of his time.
He faces an unfair trial, faces torture, and then cruel execution,
during which he is dressed in garments of mockery. So
I think a crown of thorns versus the clothing of
shame that they just talked about. And then to get
to what we know is coming in the movie, these

(37:25):
characters will die and then later rise again to render judgment.
So it's kind of a shocking number of similarities here.
But then I don't know exactly how it would connect
the passion of Christ to the fact that this guy
has tube fingers and eats people's brains.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, that may be separate from this, but yeah, I
think these are strong points. I mean, this wouldn't be
the only example we can look to where a Spanish
filmmaker has incorporated some elements of Catholicism, be they thematic
or visual, into some sort of a horror picture.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
So at this point in the story, what are you thinking, Rob,
Are you thinking that the baron is actually he's what
his friend said here, that he's actually somebody who is
a nice guy who's trying to help the downtrodden and
is mostly just doing things to help people and is
being unjustly accused by the Inquisition or is he actually

(38:24):
a wicked warlock and sorcerer who is manipulating people and
so forth. I mean, the strange parallels to Jesus would
imply that the filmmakers had the former in mind, but
that also doesn't really square very well with the rest
of what happens in the movie.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, they don't give us anything to build upon this
idea that he may have any decency to him, you know,
which is kind of a missed opportunity. Or I don't know,
maybe they weren't permitted to go there, But that would
have been rather interesting if we hit later on, when
we see his return in the nineteen sixties, if we
see him at least in small all moments reaching out

(39:01):
to the poor and helping the downtroten instead of just
just making social calls and getting seeking revenge and eating brains.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah. Anyway, the staging of the execution is pretty cool.
So it's an indoor for outdoor shot sets with creepy
crooked trees, this big crowd of onlookers in the night.
They're all huddled together behind hooded inquisitors carrying luminous torches,
each one putting off this huge tower of flame, and
they have Vitelius dressed up in mockery as some kind

(39:34):
of anti pope in a pointed hat.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yeah. Yeah, all the all the hallmarks of of a
classic cinematic witch burning here, you know, vengeful Christianity in
its most base and dark form, the withered trees kind of,
you know, matching up with this idea that here is
just a fruitless, decadent, degregated faith before us.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
There are bunch of movies I can think of from
the sixties and seventies that have this as their prologue,
like somebody gets executed by the Inquisition and it looks
soften like this. I'm thinking of Mario Bava's Black Sunday. Yeah, yeah,
and of course horror rises from the two. Well it's
time to burn in then, that's right. Well, so he's

(40:19):
at the stake and Vitellius makes eye contact with Marcos
Miranda in the crowd. I guess Miranda already got the
two hundred lashes and now he's just out there watching.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
I guess he has to watch.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Yeah, And we hear chatter from some people in the crowd,
so like, there's one guy who's standing there with some
ladies next to him, and he says to one of
the ladies that fiend will pay dearly for all his
sins now for what he did to you. But the
lady doesn't say anything, so I don't know what she
thinks about it. We also see a couple of older
ladies apparently filled with glee. They're just excited to see

(40:53):
this witch burning, and they're gossiping about how quote the
Viceroy's baby is in tears because they're burning her boy friend.
But then the other one says, be quiet or they'll
burn you too, so climb it of fear, I guess.
But then they go on to burn the baron and
we get some great dramatic music here. It's it feels
very similar to Night on Bald Mountain, like with the fluttering,

(41:18):
bat wing kind of violins, and Vitelius is a pretty
darn calm while getting burned at the stake. For the
first half of the cook he mostly keeps a straight
face but occasionally looks amused. Then suddenly on the score
there is a familiar musico dramatic cliche that I'm not

(41:39):
sure I've ever given much thought to before I would
call it something like the sound of magic. You probably
recognize what I'm talking about, rob It's often done on
the harp with a kind of rolling glissando up and
down the scale on the harp that lets you know
that we're often that we're entering a dream world, or
that a magical train information is taking place here. It

(42:02):
doesn't sound like a harp. I think it's some kind
of mallet instrument, like a marimba. It's kind of a
soft mallet sound. But now I'm curious, people listening with
musical knowledge, is there a name for this convention like
the dreamy rolling glissando that lets us know that something
magical is taking place?

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, magical or surreal, dream like and so forth. Yeah,
it's certainly a common musical cue anyway.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
What it corresponds to here is that the baron suddenly
looks up in the night sky and happens to see
a comet from our point of view, a very blurry comet.
This is not the best special effects in this part,
because it looks more like a dead bug on a
car windshield that got smeared by the wiper blades. Yeah,
we've seen some better space effects in movies from this period.

(42:54):
But Marcus Miranda, the Baron's character witness, sees the comet too.
Does this mean something like? What's his role here? And
again doesn't seem at all in pain or bothered by
the two hundred lashes? And so they both see the
comet and there's kind of an exchange like what does
it mean? Something's happening? And then comes the I Curse

(43:15):
You sequence, in which the Baron changes his He shifts
his attention from the comet to one by one, each
of the four primary inquisitors, So, looking between them, he
uses his powers of sorcery to see through their masks
and to learn their true identities. And then he promises
that he will return in three hundred years, riding upon

(43:38):
the comet above to punish their descendants. And the enemies
are in order. Baltasar of Menaces, who is wearing a
hilarious puffy barrister wig. I think this is Renee Cardona.
There's Alvaro Contreras who looks like a cool dude. Actually
he looks like he could. He kind of has a
biker look, okay. Sebastian of Pinoa, who's kind of weasily

(44:03):
looking guy with a goatee and another big white wig.
This guy gives a nasty little smile. This is the
guy who's a descendant will be the professor. And then
Helendo of Vivar who no wig, no smile, don't don't
remember a lot about this guy. And you know, the
Baron promises. He says, I shall exponge your foul lineage
from this earth. So here we get. Suddenly some years

(44:26):
flash up on the screen and so it says sixteen
sixty one, that's where we are. Then it says seventeen
sixty one, and I was like, oh, is it going
to show us this same place at each of those years,
Like we'll see it across the different centuries time machine style.
But no, for some reason, it just counts each century
on the screen with the number and doesn't change anything.

(44:48):
It shows us seventeen sixty one, eighteen sixty one, nineteen
sixty one aka modern day. That's right. So we arrive
in modern Mexico nineteen sixty one at a hip Nike
club with couples out dancing to soft jazz music. And
here we're going to meet our main characters in the
modern day. Who wouldn't you know, it are both descendants
of characters from the violent prologue. We get Victoria Contreras Vicky,

(45:14):
who is descended from one of the inquisitors, and Ronnie Miranda,
descended from the baron's friend or character witness, who we
never really learned anything about, so as we will find
out the two. These two are both young astronomers, but
they're also an item. So they're dancing to the music
in a close embrace, and they're so entranced by each

(45:35):
other's company that they almost forget they have a date
at the observatory, so they notice the time, and then
they kind of rush out of the place. They explain
to some friends that they've got to go leave the
club to meet their mentor, Professor Milan, who is helping
them search for what Ronnie calls a real star tonight
because the weather is very clear, So they go to

(45:56):
the observatory, where the professor begins quizzing them on comets
with the patronizing tone. I'm gonna say, on one hand,
I appreciate the presence of the astronomy and the observatory
plot line in the movie because I like the themes
of sort of crossing the streams of fantasy and science
fiction in horror that it brings in, So I like

(46:19):
what it does for the atmosphere of the film. On
the other hand, I have to say that the observatory
scenes are by far the most boring thing in the movie.
Every time we go back to Professor Milan, I am
not excited. Usually he's going to spend most of the
movie just opening letters from people who do not confirm
that they saw the same comment as him, and just

(46:39):
acting forlorn about that.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
It kind of comes back to something we said in
a recent episode of Weird House Cinema, a film like this,
you need various middle aged experts that you go to
to get just additional tidbits on what you may or
may not be facing in your monster.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah. So this setting and the character they kind of
indirectly infuse the plot with some nice scientific energy, but
at the same time that it doesn't make for great
moments on screen generally, Like when the two younger characters
first arrived there with Professor Malan, he just starts quizzing
them about comments. He's like, how many miles you know?

(47:17):
How many miles close does the Halle? Does Halle's comment
come to the earth? And you know, the guy says,
and he's like, oh, good job, you know, you know,
your comment trivia. But also he's treating them like kids,
but they're adults and they're also supposed to be astronomers themselves.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Yeah. Yeah, he's talking to them like their high school
students or something.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Anyway, Professor's on the hunt tonight. He's got a big
stack of decaying cottices on his desk that he shows them.
He explains he's been looking through them, and they all
tell of a comet that appeared three hundred years ago
in sixteen sixty one, and based on Professor Milan's calculations,
the comet should appear again tonight at two thirty six

(48:06):
am local time, which means right now. So they go
to look through the telescope. It seems not correctly aligned.
The first thing they see is the Andromeda galaxy, and
then eventually they're looking around and finally Victoria locates the
comet while the other two are complaining about not being
able to find it. We get some dramatic horn stings

(48:27):
in the soundtrack and the comet. First it looks like
a comet, then it suddenly turns into a firework. It's
shooting sparks everywhere, and it crashes down in a field nearby.
And so we see a local man driving a car.
He comes to a stop to watch an astonishment as
the as the comet comes down, and the way it
falls is pretty funny. It's a big paper mache boulder

(48:51):
with jagged edges, and it just falls straight down and
hits the ground like a sack of flower. But then
something you might not expect happens. Slowly, the comet itself dematerializes,
leaving in its place a being a beast of unspeakable horror. Uh,

(49:11):
this is the part where we're going to have to
describe what the titular brainiac looks like. So rob, let
me know if I leave out any important details, but
I'm going to try to I'm gonna try to run down.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
A list, all right, Here we go.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
So the brainiac is bipedal size of a tall man
with a loose fitting rubber mask of a goblinoid character.
And I have to emphasize loose fitting on the mask.
This is not a this is not a tightly organized
monster makeup face. Like the mask is dangling and jiggling

(49:44):
off of the head.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
But also pulsating which I really like. Yes, and I
would say in addition to goblin esque, it also has
certain satanic elements to it. Like it feels, you know,
kind of like a you know, a classic illustration of
a death.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a goblin baphomet so like
long pointy ears drooping at the tips, a long, sharp
beak like nose, shaggy black hair and beard, and it's
kind of patchy, doesn't look healthy, but it is. Also
there's a lot of it, a lot of hair, deep hollow,

(50:20):
empty eyes that are just sagging, like it's not tight
around the eyes of the actor underneath. Instead you just
see that there are spaces behind the eye holes. And
then at the mouth there are two narrow fangs like
those of a venomous snake, protruding from the upper jaw.
The mouth is often hanging open, and then out of

(50:42):
the mouth extends a foot long, floppy, forked rubber tongue,
again like that of a snake, except usually not flicking
in and out of the mouth to taste the air
like a snake's tongue. It's just hanging there, just jiggling
when the guy moves.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, ye, there are elements of this creature that also
remind me a bit of crampus, you know, yes, yeah,
for sure, the lolling tongue, though in this case again
it is forked and that'll be key.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
So then we got to go down to the hands.
Each hand is a sort of flesh clamp with exactly
two fingers per hand that can close together in a
pincer motion. These fingers are, as we see, not solid
but hollow. They are some kind of flaccid tube fingers,

(51:31):
so think soft, squishy tube claws.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Yeah, and they are. They're the most bizarre detail of
this creature design. And they're completely mysterious because we have
no idea what if anything they're doing, Like does he
breathe through those holes the ends of the fingers, are
they indeed finger I mean, he does use them to
grasp and to grab, but are those indeed apertures for

(51:57):
you know, anything he doesn't see. He doesn't feed with them.
Maybe they're for drinking water. Maybe he hears through them.
I don't know. But he also has ears on his head.
So many questions all unanswered.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Do liquids come in or go out through the tips
of those fingers?

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah? Or what goes in? And now I don't know
it's but it's you know, it's bizarre and strange, and
I love it. It's because again, it's just a monster
design that is really going for it. They just really
set out to create something here that is unlike anything
we've seen before. And I don't know that we've seen

(52:33):
much like this since it's as bizarre as anything that
has been in a monster movie in the subsequent decades
for sure.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
So when the Brainy act first appears, he's wearing the
Barren's clothes from sixteen sixty one, but they're very tattered,
so I guess it's been a rough ride on the comet,
assuming that's where he was. I'll have questions about that.
But he quickly fixes his clothing situation via the terminator method.
He steals clothes from a chronolocal.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, he kind of like teleports the clothes off of
the guy onto himself, but not the underwear because Brainiac
goes commando.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
That's exactly right. So the Beast advances on the man
who pulled over to see the comet crash down. He
then begins to hypnotize him, and we will see that
the Brainiac has some of the same powers as Dracula,
including a hypnotizing glare, which interestingly is signaled on screen
with the same effect we highlighted in Todd Browning's Dracula

(53:34):
last week, where the face is mostly kept in shadow,
but a focused beam of light falls over the eyes
that lets you know that the hypnotizing is going on.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah, I'd say it's not quite as like it's perfectly
executed in Dracula. Here it feels less perfected, but it's
still it's still great.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
But there's also a difference because in Dracula it's a
static light. This effect is like just a that goes
over Dracula's own face when he's working his evil magic.
In Brainiac, the light flashes on and off, so it's
a pulsing light. But also we see the focused light
effect on both the monster and sometimes on his victim. Also,

(54:19):
you alluded to this earlier rob In time with the
flashing hypnotic light, there is another pulsing effect, which is
a rhythmic inflation and deflation of the monster's rubber mask.
So the same way that a sleeping person's chest may
rise and fall as they breathe, the Brainiac's face slightly

(54:39):
balloons and then collapses on a pulse.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Yeah, pretty ambitious for the time. I mean, this kind
of thing would become more of a hallmark later on.
You and I both recently rewatched Joe Dante's The Howling,
which makes great use of this kind of like pulsating
you know, bladders inside of you monster mask. You know,
this is a lot cruder, but it is kind of
a sign of things to come.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Mm hmm. One last thing we should know. Brainiac does
make noises. They are essentially the growls of a lion
or a big cat.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, they're very effective, though I thought they were quite creepy.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
So, in an attack pattern that we will see repeated
many times, the brainiac approaches his terrified victim, who is
somewhat hypnotized or frozen in place, grabs him about the
neck and shoulders with his tube fingers, and then goes
around behind the victim and then pokes him in the
back of the head with his floppy forked reptile tongue.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
And then, as we'll find out, this is how he
sucks out the brains of his victims, which course, yeah,
which is fabulous. Again, they really went for it, they
went They took sort of the basic vampire myth, and
they're like, they said, well, what can we do to
make this stranger? What can we do to make this
more grotesque? And yeah they pulled it off. Now, one

(55:55):
of the big questions that I end up asking myself
throughout the rest the picture, is this what we see
here the brainiac? Is this the Baron's true form, his
true alien form? Or is this something? Or is this
his transformed body from having been taken up to the
comet and been in space aboard a commet for decades

(56:19):
and then return to Earth.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
This is such a good question. I had the exact
same thoughts. I actually made a list of questions here
or ideas. So my question was what is the brainiac
or the baron? What is his nature? And what is
the source of his power? So to review what we
know before execution in sixteen sixty one, the Baron had

(56:43):
at least some powers of sorcery. Some of these powers
we see directly, such as the power to dematerialize and
materialize objects like the chains on his legs, remember that,
and then also the power to see behind masks. He
is alleged to have other powers by the inquisitors. We
never see whether that's true or not, but powers like

(57:05):
necromancy and using some kind of seductive entransment, though that
could be a parallel of the hypnotism we see later.
Then he gets burned at the stake with a comet
flying overhead. Then when the comet returns, it lands on
Earth and transforms into him or releases him. Now he
has something we've never seen before, a secondary brain goblin form,

(57:29):
and can transform back and forth between the humanoid barren
form and the brainiac form at will. Now he can
also turn invisible, He can hypnotize people, and he can
do the tongue thing and suck out people's brains. So
the question is, did something about him change on the
comet journey or was he always the brainiac? Did he

(57:52):
physically ride the comet all that time? In which case,
did he encounter something in space or did the return
of the comet simply resurrect him here? Is it like
he's been here the comet coming back brought him back.
So and also I guess secondary from all this is
his power based on fantasy or science fiction.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Yeah, and we have no idea. These questions are never answered,
but I think that's part of the appeal of the film.
I think is is just such a bizarre character, such
a bizarre monster, and we're just left to wonder at
how it all pieces together. And maybe that's quite accidental.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
I don't know, you know, I'm timpto to say that
he was merely a master of some minor tricks and
you know, master of the arts and sciences back in
the seventeenth century. Then he somehow got himself aboard a
comet rode it around space a long time and encountered
strange alien beings who gave him these additional powers. He

(58:51):
brought them back, Maybe he fused with them and brought
all that back to Earth with him.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
I like that, that is. I lean towards that explanation.
But we also have the whole thing about him being
of unknown origin.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
That's true, yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
And that could just mean that he was a foreigner,
but he could also mean he could be from space.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
There's one part later where he claims that he never
had any ancestors, and I didn't know if that's just
a weird translation of a line or if he means
that literally.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah, that he's not of this.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Earth anyway, So brainiac. In this scene he steals the
guy's clothes via like clothes teleportation, victims clothes under his body,
and also of course transforms himself out of brainiac mode,
so he's no longer a giant Harry Reptilian brain goblin.
Now he has the suave face of the original Baron Vitilius.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, he's good to go. Now he has the tools,
he has a mission. He's in the wilderness, but you
know he can remedy that pretty quickly. I think.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Also right here, Victoria and Ronnie arrive on the scene
because they're looking for where the comet landed, and they
run into Baron Vitellius, and they just stand there saying nothing,
looking at each other for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Yes, but then we get we get some excellent dialogue here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Yeah. The Baron is like, allow me to explain myself.
I always just walks at this hour of the night.
And then Ronnie explains that he and Vicky are astronomers
and they're hunting a meteor, and I think Vicky is like, oh,
don't bore him. There's no way he'll understand what you
mean talking about a meteor. But then Baron Vitellius is like, no, no,

(01:00:29):
I too have great interest in astronomy, so I know
what meteors are.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Yeah, he's like, astronomy is actually my weakness, which is
is At first I had to at for a second.
I'm like, wait, does that mean it's like garlic? And
I'm like no, No, that just means he's like, that's
how into astronomy he is. Yeah, that's his weakness. So
that's something to keep in mind for, you know, any
job interviews folks have coming up. If you get to
asked that question, well, what's your biggest short following or

(01:00:54):
your weakness or whatever, you can say astronomy. I'm just
too into the stars.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
I'm a brainiac.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
At first they exchange information one they give each other
their cards. But the baron goes out after this to
prowl the city. He's on a brain hunt. So he
goes to a restaurant which appears to still be open
at three am or whenever. This is the bar crowd
is winding down. This place does look very cool. There's
a backsplash behind the bar that's like this big, round,

(01:01:25):
kind of translucent window with these weird symbols on it
and an upside down brandy bottle. It's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah, absolutely, like what we see of presumably Mexico city
nightlife is very very swap and charming here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
So in this place, there is a single woman drinking
by herself at the bar. All the other patrons have left,
and there are a manager and a bartender closing up
for the night, like drying glasses and counting money, and
the baron walks into the place. He approaches the woman
for some reason, he turns invisible as he's walking up,
and then he appears again, like becomes solid again when

(01:02:01):
he reaches his destination, which is standing right next to her.
I wasn't sure what the point of this was, but
I think it's just to show off another one of
the baron's powers he can turn invisible.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And of course to highlight again that the effects guys
can do dissolve shots.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yea, they use this.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
All the time, whether it's stripping the clothes from a
victim in a field or just making him go invisible
for no real reason. We also saw it earlier when
he was seeing the faces of the hooded judges.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So the woman talks to the bartender into
giving this new guy a drink even though they're trying
to close, and he didn't ask for one. In fact,
not only did he not ask for a drink. The
baron says nothing in the scene. He doesn't talk, but
the lady at the bar starts talking to him and
then seemingly forms a very intimate connection without him saying

(01:02:50):
anything back. He just stares and drinks kangnac out of
this very cute tiny glass, and she's like, you don't
say anything, You're just looking at me, and then she says,
I don't want you to stop looking at me, and
he's obviously not looking at her. He's like staring over
her shoulder at the wall, and then she goes in
for a kiss dramatic music sting. He doesn't react at all.

(01:03:14):
Finally she gets mad and tries to walk away, so
it's brainiact time, nothing else to do. The light flashes
on the baron's eyes and he transforms. The woman at
the bar screams in terror and he grabs her and
he does the tongue to the back of the head
thing and then drops her body to the floor with
a thud.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
So more brains for the brainiact.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Right, And then we got straight to the morgue, so
we're seeing bodies on slabs, and here we meet several
more recurring characters. There's the Morgue attendant, who I think
shows up a couple of times. Surprisingly handsome and cool
looking fellow with horn rimmed glasses, a thin mustache, and
very neatly parted hair.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
Yeah. I don't know why this guy is in our star,
because he has all the hallmarks of one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Yeah. And then the two cops we mentioned, the inspector detective,
the gruff, stoic bald man. He's very strongly built, with
a fedora low over his eyes. He's serious. And then
there is Benny, his partner or subordinate, who's the goofy
comic relief cop. And the first action we get of
this guy is him offering impossible theories to explain the crimes,

(01:04:22):
and then when his partner's like, no, that doesn't make
any sense, he desires to quit the investigation. But while
they're looking at the bodies here, the morgatendant tells them
that he's never seen murders like this in all of
his career. He says, quote, the skulls of these two
victims show two perforations. Possibly the murderer used an electric drill.

(01:04:42):
I say this because the person who did it was
quite skilled. Just look at these two orifices, and they
look he really there is a tone of admiration here,
like he's appreciating the work. And then he tells them
the most amazing thing has happened to both of these
bodies of brains were sucked out through the two holes.

(01:05:04):
And the doctor tells them that this means the person
who did it must be an expert in anatomy. And
I'm thinking, yeah, because how else would they know that
the brains are inside the skull?

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I mean, it is interesting to think there are other
ways to get to the brain, but the brainiac chooses
to just make his own holes, not to use any
of the various other holes that are there, and in
a roundabout way, do lead to the brain. The police
with a little help, with a.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Little Yeah, well, one of the police inspector responds to
this by saying, I wish they'd find some way to
control the subjects of man's studies. A maniac with a
lot of knowledge is a threat.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Yeah, clearly that's the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective, Like the most important part
of law and order is preventing maniacs from doing research.
We also learned from the two cops that last night
there was a major bank robbery, and I think we
can assume it was the Bear and acquiring funds for
his mission of revenge.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Yeah, I kind of feel cheated. We didn't get to
see that sequence though.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Yeah. It's kind of like in the face behind the mask, right,
we never actually see the heist.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Yeah, I want to see the heist, don't skip the heist.
But they're like, they know what a heist is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Okay. So from here, the rest of the movie I
think can be split up into like two or three
main plots. You're going to have the baron locating and
then getting revenge on the descendants of all of his enemies,
generally by sucking their brains out, sometimes by other means.
Then you're going to have the police investigators trying to
solve the case. And then you also have Ronnie and

(01:06:36):
Vicki being brought into the Baron's high society social circle
and then being in danger. Of course, because Vicky is
a descendant of one of the judges.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Two of these plots are more interesting than the other.
I would have to say that the police investigation, aside
from one kind of hammy bit of comedic relief. I
don't know. I always felt a little slow for me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
Yeah, I agree. The police scenes are usually over pretty quick.
At least they're sprightly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
There is a scene where Baron Vitellius visits the local
historical site of the inquisition executions. He goes to the
place I guess where he was burned, and then he
also goes to the city archives and learns the names
of the judges in his trial. But I was like,
what is the point of the scene. I thought he
already knew them. He said these names three hundred years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Now he was three hundred years ago. Maybe he for kayle, Yeah,
you know. I mean i'd seen this movie before and
it was less than three hundred years ago, and I
forgot everybody's name, but they weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
It wasn't your inquisition trial.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
True.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
After this, he goes out on the street and then
he meets a sex worker on the sidewalk, lights a
cigarette for her. They make out a little bit, but
then he turns into brainiac and eats her brains.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
I feel like he's missing out on so many moments
for like authentic connection with people. Yeah, and or to
help the downtrodden, you know, Yeah, these would have been
good seeds for that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
He goes brainiac mode too early, Like if he got
to know people, maybe he wouldn't want to suck their
brains out. He could then again, maybe this is his
way of getting to know people, if we go with
the alien theory. Actually, this raises a question. When Brainiac
eats people's brains, does he gain their knowledge?

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Hmmm, maybe maybe he does? Or yeah, I don't know.
Maybe I would like to think that maybe it's just sustenance.
Though there's so much I feel like like a Gimmel
del Toro or someone like that could could really have
come in and done like a really thoughtful, heartfelt remake
of Brainiac and explored some of these questions.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Hmm, yeah, like the Chronos take on Brainiac.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Anyway, After this, there's a scene with the two cops
having lunch in a cafe while they talk about the case.
There's one I took a screenshot here of one of
the cops says, as usual, Benny, his brains have been
sucked out, and then Benny Wheelern has ordered calf brains
to eat at the cafe. That's just on the menu here,
but then when the waitress brings his plate, it seems

(01:09:08):
he has lost his appetite. Yuck, yuck.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
They don't play this scene up as much as I
feel like other movies would have, but I still appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
The inspector also concludes, based on the fact that the
brains have been sucked out that quote, the killer must
be a schizophrenic.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
Okay to doing throwing anything at the wall here to
see what sticks.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
I guess, okay, and then oh. We also get the
first of these mini scenes, the recurring subplot where Professor
Miland can't get any other observatory in the world to
confirm his his sighting of the comet. So he's like
opening letters from Moscow, from Paris, from everywhere, and they're
all saying Nope, didn't see a comet. But anyway. In

(01:09:53):
this first scene, while the three astronomer characters are opening
all the letters from around the world, they also get
an invitation to attend a fancy party at the home
of Baron Vitellius. So let's go to the party. It
is a fancy black tie affair with champagne and caviar.
The butler keeps announcing the arrival of new guests, including

(01:10:14):
all of the descendants of the inquisitors who condemned the baron. Yep,
so one is a young lady about to get married,
one is an older dude who's a professor of history,
one is an industrial magnate. And then of course our
heroes arrive. I got to laugh here at first at
the picture of our astronomers arriving, because first of all,

(01:10:35):
Vicky's outfit it looks like she works at the toy
factory at the North Pole. And then she also has
two dates. She has both of the astronomer guys, one
on each.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Arm, representing the sciences.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Yeah. Also, at some point during this fancy party, the
baron has to sneak away to the coat closet basically
to an adjoining room room to eat brains out of
a big golden chalice. The spoon. He's just got a
it's like locked inside a chest. He just has a
big old grail of brains.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
I love this, but it also just raises more questions.
Whose brains are these? When has he been harvesting or
did he harvest these? Like he did he maybe buy
these off the black market or you know, got them
from a morgue or something. We don't know, but he
has a sizeable little cauldron, little bowl of brains here.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
And they're basically intact, which would not be the case
if you sucked out the brains through those tiny holes
in the back of the head.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Yeah, and he's constantly going in for little nibbles and bites.
It's like, you know, it's like it's like I do
when I'm working here at the house. You know, I'm
just constantly snacking on snacknecks or something, and he's the
same with his brains.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
So there's a scene at the end of the party
where everybody tells the baron what a wonderful time they've had,
and they all make plans to see him again. It's like, oh, Baron,
once't you please be at our wedding And he's like, oh, yes,
I will be there. So I think we can run
kind of quickly through the various revenge scenarios. The first
one is maybe my favorite one. The Professor of History Depentoha.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
This one's really good. This one's legitimately creepy.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
Yeah, because the guy just happens to be a scholar
of the Inquisition, and also, wouldn't you know it his
beautiful daughter Maria, also a brilliant historian of the Inquisition.
So like, they bring the baron to their house and
they're like, look at these papers we have about the
trial of the whoa baron Vitilius. He had the same
name as you. That's that's pretty weird, isn't it. Yeah,

(01:12:32):
there's one line where the professor says religion was not
extremely enlightened at that time. Baron.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Yeah. Baron's like, yeah, I know, quite.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Aware anyway, So they're like, hey, you know he had
the same name as you. This guy must have been
one of your ancestors. And then, in a kind of
shocking twist, the baron just straight up announces himself. He's
like he said, this is the scene where he says,
I never had any ancestors. I am the Baron Itilius Destera,

(01:13:01):
and you are the descendants of one of the inquisitorial judges,
and now I will destroy you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
And this is a great revenge sequence. Again legitimately creepy
because he hypnotizes petrifies the father, and then I mean
he hypnotizes them both. But he's just frozen there, wide eyed.
This is your Maine roadless that referenced earlier, but he's
just frozen in place, petrified with these wide eyes as
he watches the baron feast on the brain of his daughter.

Speaker 4 (01:13:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Well, first he kisses the daughter and she's like, oh,
I'm in love with the baron now makes a face
indicating that I guess she's probably hypnotized. And then he
turns into the brainiac and then sucks her brains out,
and the guy and the professor is just standing there
with like his eyes are like they're like a mile tall.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Yeah. So this this scene hits pretty hard, like even today,
so I feel this must have terrified folks back in
the sixties.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
And then Brainiac burns down the house.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
That's right, Yeah, he the trashes the office. Let's you know,
we don't see a lot of like really overt rage
from him over all of this, but here we do.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Later, the cops are on the scene and the inspector says,
the line is quote these people were burned. Only that
doesn't fool me. It's clear that the madmen extracted their
brains as well.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Also at this scene, this is where we get some
more comic relief with Benny. He he's like yelling at
the people who are doing the forensics, and he's like,
I've got to examine these bodies to find out who
drilled those holes in their skulls. It was probably some
maniac who thought he was cracking a safe.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Maybe that joke lands a little better in the original Spanish,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Maybe The next murder is that of the industrialist Manaises,
the one descended from Baltazar Demoneses. So they're in his
lab with he and with him and his wife, and
they're talking about collaborating on a new alloy. And then
the BRAINI act does a similar thing here. He's like, hypnotize,

(01:15:06):
kiss the lady, turn into beast mode, eat the wife's brain,
except in this case, instead of eating Maneesa's his brain,
he hypnotizes him to jump into his own industrial furnace
ugh ooh yeah. And then skipping more lightly along toward
the end, we get a third revenge scene, which occurs
after the wedding of the targeted individual. It's a young

(01:15:28):
lady getting married. It's going to be eating some brains
as well. But this is all building up to the
final confrontation, because we know in the back of our
minds all the time that one of the descendants today
is Victoria Contreras, and so he's going to be coming
for Vicky soon. So in the final showdown, the baron
invites Vicky and Ronnie to his house. And now how

(01:15:51):
does he get them separated? Like he sends Ronnie to
the other room to look for something or.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
Oh, he says, I would like to give Vicky some
jewel and it should just be her that comes with
me into my study where I keep all the jewelry.
It would be wrong for you to try to influence
her on which piece of jewelry she chooses. Yeah, and
you know, Ronnie's like, well it makes sense to me.
Carry on, then that's normal. Yeah. So of course he

(01:16:17):
gets there into the into his study or his office there,
and I don't even remember if there were any jewels,
because he almost immediately launches into villain dialogue and an
attempt to seduce, slash, hypnotize, slash ultimately eat her brains,
we assume.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
But she is saved, so this turns into a scuffle.
Of course, Ronnie hears her screams and comes running. But then,
in a really surprisingly brutal twist on the side of
the good guys. The cops show up. Our inspectors, both
Benny and the more serious cop arrive on the scene,

(01:16:55):
both wearing backpack flame throwers.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Yeah, like full blown space movie flamethrowers on their back
and yeah they and then just light him up. And
I mean, I was about to say, unfortunately, sadly, from
some perspectives, the baron dies a second death by fire.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
I couldn't believe it when I saw the flamethrowers. They're
running in like it's like Drake and Vasquez, like.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Rock wearing a huge honking flamethrower apparatus.

Speaker 4 (01:17:28):
Is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yeah, there's no setup for there's no like, there's no like,
you know, there's no bit where they're like, you know,
we just got those new flame throwers in over the precinct.
I don't know why we did all that training on them,
and we're probably never going to use them. There's nothing
like that's just suddenly they're here, a turbo team with
flamethrowers ready to go.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
And the baron is not part of the turbo team.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
No, he's not. He gets toasted, burned to a crisp
and brainiac form. Then we get a like a dissolve
effect into do we go right to skeleton or you
go to I like, charred humanoid form?

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
First, I think it's charred skeleton with like no feet, right, no.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Feed or hands. That really threw me, and it made
me think about the brainiac fingers all over again. I
was like, were those maybe those are just he had
no hands in their tubes? Yeah, like there were no
bones in there. And then again a million questions about
exactly how all of this works.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
So question, did we miss something? I wanted to compare
notes with you? Was there something I missed in the
movie that explains more about what the brainiac is and
where he comes from? Did that scene just go buy me?

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
I don't think so. Now I am to understand there's
a director's cut of this, but I also have not
read anything to imply that it really answers any of
the questions we actually have. I think it was maybe
just some more character stuff, But I could be wrong,
But it's my understanding that none of these outstanding questions

(01:18:58):
about the nature of the beast are really answered.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
Listeners, If there are answers to our questions about the brainiac,
things we don't know, but you do right in let
us know. Contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Tell us what are we missing about The Brainiac?

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Yeah? I also wish I'd been able to see it
in the original span, in the original Spanish with subtitles.
Not that something like that couldn't be lost in the
subtitles as well, but you know there's always the possibility.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Oh you know, sometimes I like the original language, but
a movie like this, I love a dub. Dub really
works well for Brainiac.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Yeah, you know, you are right, And also the dub
is a part of this film's history. This is the
way so many English speaking moviegoers actually saw the picture
over the years on television late at night, trying, you know,
themselves flabbergasted by this strange monster that shows up and
starts sucking brains out of people's necks with a fork tongue.

(01:20:06):
As is sometimes the case, after we watch a film
discuss it on Weird House, we have even more thoughts
about the film and maybe we dig into some additional resources.
That was the case here with The Brainiac.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Okay, what's the subject.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Well, first of all, there's the matter of the inquisition. Now,
some of you might be wondering, well, okay, the inquisition
that was obviously active in Europe and certainly in Spain.
We're talking about Mexico here, we're talking about New Spain. Yes,
the Tribunal of the Holy Office, the Inquisition in New
Spain was established in fifteen seventy one and wasn't entirely

(01:20:42):
disbanded till eighteen twenty. So the basic time frame we
see in the early part of the picture here is reasonable.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Yeah, and now this doesn't answer the questions that we
have about whether, within the narrative logic of the film,
the baron is actually supposed to be guilty of the
crime he's accused of. But on the question of real history,
I did want to quickly note that the people who
were in reality persecuted by the Mexican Inquisition the Inquisition

(01:21:11):
in New Spain were generally not accused, not certainly not
guilty of, and generally not even accused of the kind
of unspeakable occult crimes we see in inquisitionsploitation movies, you know,
demonic lechery and violence, you used warlock powers to do
murder and that kind of thing. Instead, it's a much

(01:21:32):
sadder and more tragic thing that these were just generally
religiously non conforming people, primarily people who were accused of
secretly adhering to a religion other than Catholicism, such as
pre Hispanic Aztec religion or Judaism. A big target of
the Mexican Inquisition were people who were called conversos, Jewish

(01:21:54):
people who had been first forcibly converted to Catholicism, but
then subsequently were suspected of continuing to practice Judaism in private.
So for an example of the latter, you can look
up the story of a guy I was just reading about,
a guy named Luis Carva Hall, the younger, notable for

(01:22:14):
keeping memoirs of his experiences which were just recently recovered
I believe in twenty sixteen. He was a member of
a prominent family in New Spain, the Carva Hall family,
which were governors of part of the colony at one point,
and he in fifteen ninety six was tortured and executed
at the age of thirty for keeping the Jewish faith

(01:22:35):
in secret, along with many members of his family. But
you can also look up the story of Carlos Omotokschin,
a man who was burned at the stake by the
Inquisition in fifteen thirty nine for practicing the traditional Aztec religion.
So they're basically religiously non conforming people of various sorts
and just general heresy. What the inquisitors decided was heresy

(01:22:59):
not having the right religious beliefs and practices.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
Now for a little additional context about the use of
history in this picture and this picture's place in the
history of Mexican cinema, I turned to Doyle Green's Exploitation Cinema,
A Critical History of Mexican Vampire, Wrestler, ape Man and
similar Films nineteen fifty seven through nineteen seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
That's an enticing title to me, But I was trying
to think, have we watched a movie that covers all
three of those? I think Doctor of Doom might that
would definitely include Wrestler and ape Man, maybe also Mexican
Vampire sort of Yeah, I don't know, brain ish.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
That we need to be on the lookout. We need
to be on the lookout for that special picture, the
Goldilocks picture. Anyway, I was reading through this book, and
Green has a couple of books dealing with weird Mexican cinema,
and so I've added them both to my card. I'm
gonna have to pick them up to really dive in
in greater depth. But his general thesis here is that
while many may be quick to dismiss Mexican genre films

(01:24:04):
of this era as mirror cheap entertainment and as responses
to American and British cinema trends, there's a lot more
going on here. So again, the golden age of Mexican
cinema blossoms during the end of the Second World War
and into the post war era, followed roughly by the
period of cinema explored in his book, and during this time,
he argues, Mexico is wrestling with its identity, seeking to

(01:24:27):
forge a modern future free from the shackles of its past,
many of which are tied to European colonialism. As such,
the threats in these movies are often creatures of the past,
interwoven with historic horrors, be they vengeful inquisition, burned warlocks,
as tech mummies, or something else. And on the flip side,

(01:24:48):
we see the emergence of a new sort of hero
in icon El Santo, as well as his Luchador and
Lucidora kin like blue demon mil Mascaris, Glory of Venus
the Batwoman neutron and maybe, if we're being generous cops
with flamethrowers and also astronomers.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
But let's be real, brainiac is not about the good
guys right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
Now. Specifically, on the topic of the Brainiac, Green has
this to say. He writes, quote, the past is a
period of unchanging violence rooted in irrational superstition, reflected in
both Baron Vitilius's use of black magic and the oppressive
religious dogma of the Inquisition in New Spain. Again, the

(01:25:34):
Baron's resurrection does not simply represent the dangerous return of
superstition and irrationality, but carries with it the reminders of
an unfortunate chapter of Mexican history, the Inquisition and Spanish colonialism,
and their dangerous legacy for the present. And of course
this makes the use of Goya's art prints from Los
Copricos the Whims series. I think it's like a whole

(01:25:58):
bunch of different illustrations which I think has come up
on the show before that harshly satirized religion, superstition, and
a seeming decline of rationality in Gloya's modern world.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
I do think it's interesting what Green points out in
this passage. You read about the vision sort of the
worldview of Brainiac being one of a kind of total
rejection of the past, that in the prologue there are
no good guys. Really, assuming that we take the side
that the Baron was not actually like the nice of
Jesus figure who was just railroaded, that if it is

(01:26:35):
more what it looks like, where the Baron is a
bad evil warlock and the inquisitors are also bad. It's
just a place of oppressive superstition and dogma beating you
down from both sides. And really the only hope is
a kind of modern future. And so it is a
very modernist kind of worldview that comes through in the
film that does actually seem to have positive views about

(01:26:59):
like about science and humanism and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
Yeah. Yeah, And we have to remember that the barons
the mission of vengeance here is against the descendants of
the people who wronged him, you know, so, like everything
he does in the present is completely vested in the
past and its horrors.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
I guess one question that raises is how are we
supposed to feel about those descendants. We like Victoria Contreras,
we like Vicky, but the other targets of his vengeance plot.
What kind of feelings are we supposed to have about them?
I feel like the movie doesn't really nudge us very
far one way or the other. They're presented kind of neutrally.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Yeah. Yeah, in retrospect, it would have been perhaps more
interesting if we'd explored ideas in either direction. You know,
like maybe some of them are horrible and entitled and
are like you know they and you know, we see
like the accumulation of vast wealth over generations, while you know,
others are our heroes and so forth. And in many ways,

(01:27:59):
that would also fit the pattern we've seen a lot
of revenge films. Right, start with vengeance against those who
seem most deserving of it. Then you work up to
the ones that seem least deserving of it, and that's
where our revenger meets their downfall. Yeah, not to take
away from the Brainiac. Still still a marvelous picture.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
Okay, that's all I've got on Brainiac.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
All right, Well, it's a fun one. Like I say,
one of the one of the most unique monsters in
all of horror cinema. I think it's quite a quite
an accomplishment there, because you know, there there have been
so many strange monsters over the years. Obviously, there's also
a lot of sameness, and while the Brainiac creature certainly
riffs on various existing monster tropes, it really goes off

(01:28:45):
in its own ludicrousal direction and it is to be
celebrated for that. All Right, we're gonna goe and close
this episode out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there, Yes, share your thoughts on the Brainiac and
also just you know, Mexicans honor a cinema in general.
We've been on something of a kick with these recently,

(01:29:06):
so there are any favorites you have that you'd like
us to consider for the future, just write in and
recommend those titles. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short episodes on Wednesdays
and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
You can go to letterbox dot com if you want

(01:29:27):
to follow us there that our username is weird House
and we have a list of all the movies we've
watched thus far, and sometimes a peek ahead at what
comes up next.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
For more podcasts, it's from my heart Radio. Visit the
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