Creature with the Atom Brain
The movie opens at night with a lone figure of a man walking towards the camera along a tree-lined pathway. We hear a heartbeat and crickets, then title and credits roll. A car is seen driving down an empty highway at night. The car stops near a lamp post and the driver exits the vehicle. A long surgical scar is visible on his forehead. He walks towards a stone clad building that is being secured for the night. Inside the casino, a cashier hands his boss a case with $20,000. Jim Hennessey (uncredited) puts the cash into the wall safe. In a lab, the man approaching the casino is being monitored. We will learn later the man with the scar is Willard Pearce (an uncredited Karl 'Killer' Davis) and he has been dead for nearly a month. Pearce breaks a window and enters the office. He tells Hennessey, "I told you I'd come back." Hennessey pulls a gun and pumps three bullets into the intruder with no effect. The intruder picks Hennessey up and we see, in shadow, his back is broken. Pearce pockets the cash from the safe and walks away. Two casino employees enter the office and fire at the intruder. At the lab, a man, Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) directs the intruder to return home. Dr. Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gay) takes the microphone and directs Pearce into the car. Steigg assures his colleague that the creature will return home. Steigg and Buchanan discuss their business and research agreement. They don radiation suits and crawl through a tunnel into the main lab. Two additional men with surgical scars on their heads sit hooked up to IV lines.At the casino, the police arrive in force to investigate the burglary and murder. Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning) and Capt. Dave Harris (S. John Launer) talk to District Attorney MacGraw (Tristram Coffin) about the case. Chet notices that the fingerprints the killer left on the windowsill are luminous, and Dave notices the footprints and blood have the same curious property. Chet starts his examination of the evidence. He concludes that the blood is radioactive.Dave drives over to the Walker residence. He is greeted at the door by Chet's wife, Joyce (Angela Stevens). The Walker daughter, Penny (Linda Bennett) comes from the kitchen to greet her "Uncle Dave". Joyce goes upstairs to wake her husband and announce Dave's arrival. Over the breakfast table Dave reveals there was a match on the fingerprints. What is more unusual is they match a dead man's prints. Dave gets a call at Chet's home. The two men depart to listen to a wax cylinder recording made during the casino heist.At his home, District Attorney MacGraw is confronted by a creature, Vernon Dunn (an uncredited Michael Ross) in his garage. The assailant pulls the steering wheel off his car then kills him. Chet and Dave review the recording. As they are ready to leave they are informed that MacGraw was found dead. They go to the scene of the crime. The coroner explains the cause of death, but is at a loss to explain how a human grip could cause such injuries. Chet retrieves a Geiger counter from the trunk of his car and examines MacGraw's car. Chet tells Dave, "Call the inspector and tell him I want to talk to him as soon as possible. And ask him to have the Mayor and the commanding General of this military area. We're going to need all the cooperation we can get on this one."A television broadcast is witnessed by Steigg and Buchanan. From information presented on television they conclude Chet Walker knows too much about their scheme and must be eliminated. Chet and Dave arrive at the office of Chief of Police Camden (Charles Evans). They are introduced to Mayor Bremer (Pierre Watkin) and General Saunders (an uncredited Lane Chandler). Chet briefs the assembled. He uses the Faraday experiment using electricity on a frog's leg as a way to explain how dead tissue can be animated using radioactivity. Chet asks the general to help track down the source of radioactivity.After a visit to the local military base, Chet returns home. Joyce is shocked to read the headlines in the local newspaper, "Do Dead Men Walk City Streets?" Chet assures Joyce that there is a pattern to the deaths and their daughter is in no danger playing outside. Dave stops at the Walker residence. He tells Chet there is a connection between Hennessey and MacGraw -- they secured the conviction of Buchanan some ten years earlier. Hennessey turned on his boss to become the top mobster and Buchanan vowed revenge.At police headquarters Dave had three men brought in for their own protection. Lester Banning (an uncredited Don C. Harvey) was the assistant D.A. on the Buchanan case. He is a lawyer now is private practice. Jason Franchot (an uncredited Edward Coch) was Buchanan's accountant. The last of the three is Tom Dunn (an uncredited Paul Hoffman) whom Dave describes as Buchanan's gunsel. Of course, Dunn strongly objects to the term, so Dave rephrases as, "paid killer, like it better?" The three men refuse to be locked up for their own protection, but reluctantly agree to a protective detail. A short time later a creature dressed as a policeman comes to relieve the officer protecting Franchot. He kills Franchot, then the officer he relieved.The military starts their vehicle and aircraft search of the city for the source of the radioactivity. Dr. Steigg stops at a drug store in town then orders a glass of beer at a nearby bar. He is startled by a search vehicle outside the bar. He hastily pays for his drink and departs leaving a $10 bill. The bartender (an uncredited Eddie Foster) tries to give him change but Steigg is gone. A sergeant carrying a Geiger counter enters the bar and gets his strongest reading on the glass of beer. The bartender explains that the drink belongs to a man who ran out. He reluctantly offers up the ten dollar bill and is told that the currency is very radioactive.Chet stops by the office of Kenneth C. Norton, M.D. (an uncredited Nelson Leigh) at City Hospital. Norton briefs Chet on Steigg's biography and work. Norton shows Chet a film on brain implant research. Buchanan chastises Steigg for leaving the lab and possibly compromising their location, but Steigg explains he needed pain medication for his hand. Buchanan directs one of the creatures (an uncredited Dick Crockett) to contact Chief Camden and tell him to stop all search activities or else. The authorities refuse and a wave of destruction is launched.Franchot has been turned into a creature. He is masquerading as a military officer dispatched to kill Chet, but he kills Dave and returns him to the laboratory for surgery. Dave, now dead and surgically altered, pays a visit to the Walker residence. Chet already left for the office, but Dave sits with Penny in the living room. Dave leaves after Joyce tells him what Chet told her about the two men still under protective custody. Dave arrives at the county jail and is told by a policeman (an uncredited Tyler McVey) that Chet was trying to locate him. Dave kills Banning and Dunn while claiming to be Buchanan, then drives away with Chet in the front seat of the car. He is directed to crash the car, but Chet jumps out before the car overturns. Dave's body is brought to the hospital to be examined by Dr. Norton. Dave escapes the hospital, steals a police car, and drives back to the lab and his radioactive source of power. Chet follows in a helicopter.Steigg panics at the police and military presence so Buchanan dispatches him with a wrench. He directs his army of zombies to confront the authorities out on the lawn. Dave steps out of the stolen police car and tries to enter the lab through a window for the radium source. Chet enters first and confronts Buchanan. A fight ensues and Dave enters the lab and kills Buchanan. Chet destroys the lab which deactivates the creatures.We close at a birthday celebration for Penny. Penny blows out the candles on her cake and the camera zooms in on a newspaper headline, "Creatures with Atom Brains Detroyed."
revenge