A mysterious thing crashes on Mystery Mountain (yes, Mystery Mountain. Let's subtract 1 point for this, shall we?). Nuclear Physicist Steve March detects it and goes to investigate, but only after he finishes having a B.B.Q (Let's add 1 point for this nice little touch). In a mysterious cave on Mystery Mountain, he discovers Gor, who is an evil mysterious floating brain (and subtract 800 points for this). Gor (his favourite colour is blue, and thinks Steve’s fiancé is “exciting�) takes over Steve and makes him act even hammier than before in his quest to conquer the world. Chucking the ol’ spanner into the works is floaty brain type thingy number two, Vol, who is a brain fighting for the powers of good -not evil, peace –not war, full strength beer –not the lite rubbish. Vol takes over - get this - Steve’s dog George (add 6,000 points for that), so he can battle Gor and bring him back to justice on Arous.

Bizarre. Just frigging bizarre. I’m not really sure what possessed the scriptwriters (I assume there was a scriptwriter, rather than, say, a drunk monkey with a typewriter) to come up with this weirdo plot. The large floaty brains, I can understand, in a “let’s create a large menacing floating body part alien� kind of way. The possession of people for evil purposes, I can understand. The possession of a dog, I’m not too sure about. The fact that the brain has a hard on for Steve’s fiancé, I have to think about that one a little more. Oh, and you can only kill them by hitting them in a part of the brain called the “Fissure of Rolando�. I love that one, and apparently it’s a real part of a brain. Clearly, this film was made to play at the drive-ins back in 1958 as the last film of a quadruple-header all night Halloween session.

Don’t go expecting a Vertigo quality image with this film, because you’ll be mighty disappointed if you do. The fullframe black and white picture has obviously been taken from a print which was in very average condition, with lots of scratches, hairs, reel change markings etc etc. The conversion hasn’t been completely trouble-free, with the compression not always being too kind to the picture and a few small quick glitches occuring. I’m not going to complain too much though, because no-one in their right mind would expect a proper restoration job to be done on a film like this. Frankly, I’m surprised that they went to the trouble of sticking this on dvd at all, although I have to say that I’m happy they did.

The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0, but the use of two channels is pretty much superfluous. There’s nothing here that the centre channel alone couldn’t have done as good a job of. It’s an ordinary sounding mono affair, with lots of sibilance to the dialogue and a tinny sound to many of the effects and score. Still, it’s clear enough to understand comfortably without being too fatiguing.

The only extra features on the dvd are one trailer for the film, and eight and a half minutes other trailers for other old sci-fi films, some of which are also in the Retro Sci -Fi DVD Collection. These are shown on a drive-in themed screen to keep it all in the mood. Although this seems like a good idea, and they should get points for trying something different, I personally would have liked to see them individually accessible and played fullscreen. Still, they are what they are, and that’ll have to do. Life shall go on.

I think the best approach here -considering the overall quality of the transfer and the story- is to lower expectations a little. Play the dvd with the audio running through the television speakers only, perhaps late at night with the lights out, and maybe sitting an extra foot further from the television than usual. This way I guess you can be reasonably satisfied with this effort.