In the wonderful and fact-filled book that comes with Indicator’s Mexico Macabre box set, Jose Luis Ortega Torres says about The Brainiac:
…it is with this grotesque monster that Mexican cinema finds it greatest, one-hundred percent native horror icon, without any recognizable antecedent in any foreign myth or folklore. He is not a vampire or a lycanthrope. Not a witch, mummy, ghost, or alien, much less an infected or resurrected zombie. He is, plain and simple, Baron Vitellius d’Estera.
I’m all for originality and actually think this fact adds significance to the film. However, I’m going to take the high road and let Torres describe this monster, lest I become unkind with my thoughts about the way it looks:
…swollen and semi-closed eyes, pointed ears, sparse, long and straight hair, hands with small tentacles ending in suction cubs instead of fingers, fangs, and a snake-like tongue that is used to suck the brains of its victims.
That sounds cool, all right... in the imagination. The execution is another story. The one catty thing I’ll say is that if you think the big as a battleship bird in The Giant Claw is silly, wait until you get a load of the Baron. I accept the former without blinking an eye, but it’s hard for me to watch the latter, especially compared to the craft of other Mexican films I’ve seen.
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That’s not to say Chano Urueta is a bad director; he made other, significantly better, films and is praised left and right by Torres. If you can somehow disregard the costume and makeup here, The Brainiac probably has some effectively creepy moments. And, to a certain extent, I did enjoy it.
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The movie starts strong with a little revisionist history about witch hunting in “the new Spain” of 1661 Mexico. Baron Vitellius d’esters (Abel Salazar) makes faces at the judge as he’s convicted of a number of crimes that can best be summarized by calling them, “sorcery.” He magically makes the chains around his feet transfer to two guards while walking casually toward the first part of his sentence for his insolence: 200 lashes.
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Later, fire surrounds him at the stake, but he does not burn. He looks up and sees a comet in the sky. He then states the name of each person who convicted him and promises to come back in 300 years when the comet returns to take revenge on their descendants.
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In 1961, a young couple assists Prof. Saturnino Millan (Luis Aragon) at the observatory. You won’t believe the coincidence: the girl, Victoria (Ofelia Guilmain) is one of the descendants! Not only that, but the Baron is smitten, leaving him to cry out at the end of the movie, “Why did it have to be her?!?” He says, “I want to love her, but my hate is stronger.”
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By this time, he’s disposed of the others by making eyes at them with a light that shines on his face rather than emitting from it. When they’re stunned, he then transforms from his human form to his Brainiac form and waddles over to them sticking out his long tongue which lands somewhere on their body, not necessarily the necks, which the medical examiner claims after the fact have “been perforated like a drill.”
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One of the men who meets a grisly fate is Sebastian de Pantoja. It’s not F. Murray Abraham who plays him; it’s our old friend, German Robles, from El Vampiro. He participates in a fancy dinner at the Baron’s house with the other descendants.
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While not a vampire, the Baron makes a funny nod to Bela Lugosi when he says, “I have a condition that prevents me from drinking liquor.” It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like, “I never drink… vine,” but I think it demonstrates some love of the genre by the filmmakers.
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As I write this, I recall the meteor that lands outside the city with a strange light emanating from it. A passerby investigates as it evaporates and leaves the humanoid monster. Its face pulsates as it kills the passerby and then takes his clothes so he can masquerade as a human. That’s a fun scene. The Brainiac is fun... strange, but fun.
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