Hair of the Dogmatizer: THE BRAINIAC (1962)

(1962) Dir. Chano Ureta 

*/****

Actor Abel Salazar produced a web of 'great' weird and wondrous early-60s horror (and other) films in Mexico, but THE BRAINIAC (1962) is the only one that can be rightly placed next to the works of Bunuel and Jodorowsky in the zebra and xylophone-stuffed canals of Mexican cinematic surreality. Salazar himself--a kind of Mexican version of Sheldon Leonard--takes the title role and makes all the pretty girls kiss him (like Eric Schaffer or Paul Naschy after him) as the irresistible Baron Vitelius d'Estera. Tried by a hooded tribunal for "dogmatizing" and seduction, he has nothing but a baleful stare and a lone friend's plea (rewarded with 50 lashes) for rebuttal. Tied to a big X, made pants-less in a pope hat, he glares as the inquisitors read their verdicts (and the ladies roll their eyes). After cursing his condemners out by name (seeing right through their black hoods), our saucy Baron hitches a ride on a passing comet. Three hundred years later, the comet returns and the baron drops out of the sky with a thud, right near an observatory where the chief astronomer exclaims "comets can't just disappear!" 

The plot itself is sparse and expects us to fill in a lot of blanks from other late-50s sci-fi films it presumes we've seen. There is no need to explain why the baron has returned a suction cup clawed, long-tongued, patchy-haired pointy nosed, brain-sucking alien shapeshifter, because similar things happened to the viajeros in a bunch of late-50s sci-fi hits probably seen by writers Frederico Curiel and Adolfo López Portill: First Man into Space (1959), Night of the Blood Beast (1958), and The Creeping Unknown (1955) all feature similar situations. By 1961, merging with a vampiric space 'other' was as familiar as the "bends" or oxygen narcosis. On the Gothic horror side, Brainiac's plot leans on Bava's Black Sunday (for its witch burning prologue and descendant cursing) and of course, for a fusion of the two, there is Edgar Ulmer's Man from Planet X (for the weird noir-ish observatory / fog machine-and-rear projection soundstage noir isolation and omnipresent darkness. Lastly, for the 'back from the great beyond to wreak vengeance on those who sentenced me to death, one-by-one' plots we have everything from that spate of late-30s/early-40s Karloff vehicles, like The Man They Could Not Hang, Before I Hang, Black Friday, and The Walking Dead and even Son of Frankenstein. Somewhere or other they learn the baron can jump to a different body if not destroyed by fire, so when they finally close in, both detectives have comically large flame-throwers. 

In one thing though, The Brainiac is utterly unique, and that's where it counts: with his weird two fingered suction cup claw hands, his long forked tongue; his scattered tufts of hair, the weird hatchet-like planes of his face, the crudeness of his sculpted features, giant plastered-on fangs and pointy nose and ears, the baron is one charming monster, clearly just a big latex (?) mask replete with closed mouth and bulging eyes (I'm guessing the actor looks through the nostrils), he's totally disarming in his ridiculous cheap cuddliness. Somewhere between the Fly, the  Devil Bat, and an anteater. He keeps his uneaten brains in a jar inside a locked desk, and takes periodic hits from it as needed. If he's in his Salazar form he uses a long spoon. If not, his long, phallic tongue. Best of all, part of his vengeance package seems to always involve the baron hypnotizing the man and forcing him to watch as he makes out with his wife or daughter. And then, after a few seconds, becoming the monster and sucking the brains of them both, then burning the place down.

In its narrative economy too, comes a blissful expunging of all the more tiresome plot points and establishing shots of lesser films. Like the best of the early-60s/late-50s Mexican horror films from Salazar's team, there are no exterior shots, no daytime stock footage 'next morning' inserts to dull the eerie dislocated nocturnal vibe; no plucky girl reporters or comical bumpkins (the latter one of Mexican horror cinema's least crossover-able elements); no children, no animals in cages, and no tired priests. Very few cast members at all - just a pair of detectives, the coroner, the baron, his butler, his victims, and the hero couple (the hero Ronny being a descendent of the baron's one friend who stood up for him). 

It's the little details too that once considered logically make the whole thing patently ridiculous, as if a narrative told and conceived by a breathless child trying to describe a comic book. Cause and effect barely know each other in this alternated world of stressed-out astronomers (he acts like the comet has his car keys) calves brain-eating, flame thrower-waving homicide detectives ("keep the parts separate," one advises tells the team cleaning up a double homicide, "otherwise I might get mixed up!"), a coroner ("Just look at these two orifices!") and a weird direct lineage family tree situation; every one of his would-be executioners has exactly one descendent who looks just like them (except for one girl, leading to a one of the many wow but sublimely deadpan moments). All the members of his tribunal are even conveniently buried together in one old mausoleum, so the cop can save time reading their names. They don't seem to have much of an existence outside of this one moment, nor does Mexico itself. The old records of his trial which he's somehow memorized and which are just lying around like an old phone book. The baron knows the charges by heart: accused of "dogmatizing, using conjuring for evil ends that all men are attracted to, and seducing young maidens that couldn't... couldn't resist!" 

Lastly, cementing its classic status is a kind of strange lonesome interiority that in its sparsely attended notcural scenes evokes a kind of Edward Hopper noir fatality both chilling and comforting. The baron kills so many people that when he tells the inquisitive cops to send his sympathy to their loved ones, the detective says, "it's impossible, there's no one left to feel sorry for now." The sets seem to breathe in deeply in relief or fear, as the backgrounds of scenes empty from the one or two extras that were loitering in the corners just scenes before. When the baron first meets Ronny and his fiancee outside the observatory he instantly bonds with them over astronomy. Later when the pair come to visit (it turns out his fiancee is his last intended victim), they remember their meeting, and the baron says "we became friend then, did we not?" One longs for and recalls those easy days when friends were made that fast, over that little. There's the baron's first night in town, drifting into a closing, empty bar, with one guy sweeping up, another counting the till, the lonely girl at the bar drinking her isolation away who welcomes him without question. 

This Mexico, all wrapped up in its emptied interior loneliness and modern, flat (rear projection backdrops being still photographs) is just waiting for something like the baron's grand Gothic reception hall, clearly left over from some bigger budgeted-production-- landing like some chimera from Universal's classic horror past, manifesting in the midst of modern day poverty row police procedural nightscape of sullen autopsy rooms, cafes with the morning newspapers filling us in on the previous night's victims of our brain-draining arsonist. They all immediately accept random invitations to the baron's mansion, as if just waiting for the cool new kid to kickstart their social lives. Yet they have no clear idea what to do there: all are introduced by the butler, grab a drink and mill around, then turn around and say good-night minutes later. Now the baron has earned the right to come visit all the other couples, where he can kill at his leisure. Indeed, there are no family ties of any kind attached to any one, only sexy wives, daughters and bug-eyed men soon to be de-brained. At the wedding of one of the couples the baron is the only one in attendance (he shows up late, is why, and meets them at the church foyer). In sum, this is a very strange reality: there are only ever the characters we see. Nothing exists beyond the camera's proscenium arch, giving it all a beguiling interiority and feverish dream logic. Somewhere in there, the baron even falls in love with Ronny's fiancee, though there's no indication or connection until the climax. He must kill her though, since she's a descendant: "My hate is much stronger than my love, like a master no one can control!" He goes on and on: "Why did destiny elect you! ? Why? I want to know!" She faces away from him as he says all these things; like she doesn't want her husband to know about how much reciprocal desire feels, like it's all just the usual Besos y Lagrimas-style suds.  And as soon as the baron is vaporized, the film ends - without even a shot of the reunited lovers heading off into the sunrise. For what these characters don't seem to know is, without the baron's presence, none of them are destined to survive 'the End.' 

And just like that, it's over. We kind of have to wake up. The rest of Station 11 and all those terrifying vertigo end of the world global warming too fast Covid leaky ceiling work woes and age and death horrors still waiting to pounce and send you hyperventilating to the bathroom to splash cold water on the back of your neck and remember you mantras. But don't worry. There are miracles of our modern age. We may all be isolated in our cribs, the world coming us to digitized without even the warmth of a funeral pyre as comfort, but movies like The Brainiac aren't going anywhere. In fact, we can take them with us on our phones, like some kind of weird twilight rosary, or a passing comet, ready to whisk us out of the pyre.