Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
mark.waltz
I'd have to do research to figure out which version I saw, based upon what I've read, but frankly, I don't want to waste any more on this film (if you can call it that) than I have to. It is a hodge podge of multiple plots, none really developed, part 60's crime drama, part psychedelic anti-establishment protest, and most interestingly (not by much) mad doctor horror film with poor John Carradine sinking very low in his extremely long career and somehow being the only classy element of what has to be one of the most pointless movies ever made. When the individual stories do meet up, the bad acting, horrible writing and truly wretched production values have already ruined half of this lengthy flick. How this was made, let alone distributed, is a puzzle to me, being not only everything I describe it above to be, but ghastly dull. The soundtrack is noisy, so if you make it through, it won't lull you to sleep, but chances are, you'll give up after the appearance of Carradine's overly tanned daughter who delivers an embarrassingly lifeless performance.
JoeKarlosi
Don't ask me how I did it, but even though this is technically a botched and splicey patchwork of a movie, I had a good time with it. It's poorly made to be sure, but somehow it's also mesmerizing in its ineptness at the same time. It helps going in to know the history...It was directed by drive-in movie maestro Al Adamson (of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" fame), who originally planned a straight jewelry heist picture in 1964 until meeting up with producer/mentor Sam Sherman who persuaded him to gradually add new scenes and ideas specifically for the horror/sci-fi television market in the early '70s. It was finally sold to TV with the lucrative title of MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, but Sherman thought it could be milked further, so the movie was also played at theaters where it became known as BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR.Ultimately emerging as connected pieces of different half-baked incarnations (one of these was even called PSYCHO A-GO-GO before the music was eliminated), the movie begins with a zombified maniac running around town strangling people. Through flashbacks within other flashbacks we're treated to a background story of how a Vietnam vet named Joe Corey was wounded and then "helped" by a wacky scientist named Dr. Vanard (the always welcome John Carradine) who planted some sort of mechanism inside Corey's head and unintentionally turned him into a murderer with a taste for jewel robbing (which is how the old 1964 heist footage managed to get utilized). But this man-made killer's got an angry dad who's also a scientist and is even nuttier than Dr. Vanard. He's out to even the score for what was done to his victimized son, and that includes making a mummified and whimpering she-monster out of Vanard's sexy daughter (Regina Carrol, director Adamson's wife).This isn't a film for most audiences, but anyone who revels in idiotic or badly made exploitation films of the '60s and '70s would want to get a load of this concoction. You've got to hand it to Sam Sherman and Al Adamson, in any case... they knew how to have fun and freak out audiences. The current DVD available by Troma is badly framed, however... this cuts out some widescreen and results in an unfortunate pan/scan affair. But it's unlikely at the time of this writing that there's any better source material. * out of ****
rossaw
Like horror has blood. A tossed salad of scenes whose relationship makes only a klutzy kind of sense. Combine this with the worst directing, photography, sound effects, and music imaginable and you have some idea what you're in for. Night scenes too dark to see the characters. A woman screams but no sound comes out -- they forgot to add it. A zombie wraps his arm around someone and they scream and fall dead to the ground. A man being shot grabs his chest before the gun goes off. Or how about the score -- a psychotic killer is chasing a woman and her child with intent to kill, accompanied by swinging jazz. This chase scene incidentally is most of the movie, or seems like it, killer running, woman and child running, killer, woman, on and on ... Zombies and mad scientist plot elements are stuck onto it with spit and string. To say this is a cheesy horror film is to be generous. Someone said it had never been used on MST3K -- that's probably because they'd be putting more work into ridiculing it than the filmmakers did in making it.
- Chumpy
Only because this movie hasn't graced MST3K, has it not received attention as the worst of all time. I saw this film over 20 years ago and still remember it as the worst ever - without having seen it since. And yes, I have seen "Plan 9" and "Robot Monster" and a number of the films shown on MST3K, like "Manos, The Hands of Fate" and "The Puma Man."This film, which I saw as "The Man With The Synthetic Brain," is truly terrible. A crime film which becomes a mad scientist film, which becomes a chase film, and ends up as a zombie movie!I saw this on TV, and when coming back from commercial breaks, I frequently thought that I was watching a different film entirely. Both in plot and cinematography, it's like a film pieced together from ill-fitting parts of other films. A Frankenstein of films - at least in the method by which it seems to have been made.The dialogue is horrible and most of it unnecessary. A typical line: "I flew in.....on a plane!" That would be opposed to flying cross country by flapping his arms. I'm glad they explained that one, I'd have been lost otherwise.The best part (or worst)? The ending with a Witch Doctor / Scientist shown wearing a Witch Doctor mask and a lab coat. Why a lab coat? Why not?! The lab coat would protect his delicate mix of monkey brains, goat lips, fish heads and guano from suit lint. The suit lint would ruin everything!Only see this film if you love bad films. Anyone looking for even a below average B-quality movie would be very disappointed by "Blood of Ghastly Horror."SCGp.s. Who gave this movie a "10?" Were they confused by one of the 300 titles used to repackage this bomb? Then again I note that there were two "10" votes and two writing credits on the film. I sense a conspiracy. Someone get Mulder and Scully on this.
