The Madmen of Mandoras (1963)

Movie Info

I had a horrible dream I was stuck in an awful movie…oh, God!!! It’s real!!!

Phil Day (Walter Stocker) and his wife Kathy (Audrey Caire) find themselves suck into a world of intrigue and scientific horror when Kathy’s father Professor John Coleman (John Holland) is kidnapped for his experimental work with nerve gas.  The couple travels to the South American country of Mandoras where a secret experiment is taking place.  The Third Reich might have fallen in 1945, but Hitler’s followers still believe in their vision of the world…and Hitler might rise again!

Directed by David Bradley, The Madmen of Mandoras is a science-fiction adventure film.  The movie was originally released in 1963 but was retooled in 1968 as the made-for-TV movie They Saved Hitler’s Brain.  It was universally panned and considered one of the worst films ever made.

Let’s thwart some Nazis!!!

The Madmen of Mandoras came in a multi-movie pack where I let it linger for years.  Finally watching it, the movie is cheesy and bad as promised, but it is also a quick and funny bizarre film.

The movie’s plot is all over the place and never really lands on a tone.  The film has the characters falling into one trap after another as they bumble their way from America to Mandoras in a rescue attempt with no plans.  You have the couple, the scientist, and the odd addition of Kathy’s promiscuous “likes to party” sister Suzanne who actually causes most of the problems.  This all wraps up with one of the most ridiculous endings that is completely laughable rather than dramatic.

The cast is very bland.  The main leads of Walter Stocker and Audrey Caire are a rather typical sci-fi “couple” along with the scientist lead played by John Holland.  I do like the kooky and completely out of place Dani Lynn as Suzanne and special credit has to go to the worst back-seat driver Hitler as played by Bill Freed.

I’m a Hitler in a bottle, baby…rub me the right way!

The film largely is shot on sets and minimal sets at that.  The show’s final sequence takes place at the famed Bronson Caves in Los Angeles which have served in hundreds of movies and shows.  The last sequence also features the silent Hitler in a tube which just involves Hitler’s head staring around…and a melting sequence that goes on forever (and shows what the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark would have looked like on the cheap).

The Madmen of Mandoras is a bad, bad film, but it is entertaining in the badness.  It does reach so-bad-it-is-good status, but like a lot of those movies, you have to wade through some extremely weak stuff to reach the laughable parts.  Whether you watch this or They Saved Hitler’s Brain, you are going to see a film that will be memorable…just not in the way they intended.