Touches You

Really Surprised!

I'll tell you why so serious

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A delightfully schlocky premise is given straight faced treatment here, as a Nazi scientist named Norberg (a slumming Dana Andrews) goes about the business of keeping various Nazi characters on ice and experimenting on them so that they can, one day, be resurrected successfully. A problem arises when his visiting niece Jean (the gorgeous Anna Palk) becomes VERY concerned about the sudden disappearance of her friend / traveling companion Elsa (Kathleen Breck).While somewhat disappointing - this doesn't play out the way that some people might want it to - it's an okay forerunner to the "Nazi zombie" genre that eventually flourished. There might be too much talk and too little action for some audience members, but everything is played with admirable sincerity, and the movie isn't completely lacking in memorable imagery. Writer / producer / director Herbert J. Leder ("Pretty Boy Floyd", "It!") gives us a pitiable decapitated head on a table, and the sight of severed arms attached to a wall. Filmed in Britain, this is limited in its color palette, and in fact was apparently originally shown in theatres in black & white. It features a wonderful schlock movie score composed by Don Banks.The cast is fun to watch, especially Andrews, as he makes an attempt at a German accent. Palk is an appealing leading lady, but Philip Gilbert is rather bland as the nice guy American scientist who becomes party to the machinations of our bad guys. Karel Stepanek and Basil Henson are entertainingly malevolent as Nazi goons. Alan Tilvern delivers a standout performance as Norbergs' crazed assistant. A young Edward Fox pops in and out of the story as one of the unfrozen dead. Breck is ultimately quite the sight, and she does earn ones' sympathies.An amusing, diverting bit of rubbish that may be worth a look for schlock enthusiasts looking for golden oldies of decades past.Seven out of 10.

Extremely creepy movie about a mad scientist trying to revive dead Nazis and start World War III. Dana Andrews plays the nutball scientist with an appropriately Nazi-like accent and demeanor. Unfortunately, as he revives these corpses, they go mad, so he locks them away in his castle dungeon. The scenes with these twitching, drooling stiffs are right out of an old-time circus sideshow. Meanwhile, the scientist still has several corpsesicles to play with (shown standing stiff as boards in a freezer, like so many fast-food hamburgers). But he also realizes he needs a fresh, live brain to work on. Just about then, his niece and her friend come to visit, and the scientist's equally nutty assistant takes it upon himself to strangle the niece's friend and offer up her head to his master. Pretty soon, they have a living head in a box, sort of like Senor Wences. The head's skull is cut away and the brain exposed, all the better to tinker with it, and the gal -- who in earlier scenes was a hot little number -- now looks like my deceased mother-in-law. Oh, did I mention the scientist keeps a bunch of severed arms dangling from a wall that he likes to play with? This is truly one sick film, surprising for a British kiddie flick of the time, and for a child of the time, it had to be the stuff of nightmares. Adults will get a hearty laugh out of the campy shenanigans, I suspect. Everything comes to a very bad end. The movie pulls no punches and is as sadistic as a Saturday afternoon matinée flick could possibly have been. Today, it's a hoot, of course. For those too young to remember Andrews, in his prime he was an A-list movie star.

Okay, okay,...I'll admit it,...this is probably the ONLY neo-Nazi transplant movie ever, so I guess that makes it the best--by default! Some might think that THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN might be a better example of the genre, but THE FROZEN DEAD looks like Shakespeare compared to that horrible film. Okay, I'll also admit that the movie still stinks. It's true that the production values and writing are terrible, but at least the movie has Dana Andrews and he does a decent job. It's sad that at this point in his career he was beginning to take ANYTHING that was offered to him. Later he admitted to being an alcoholic and this would explain why he chose to be in this turkey. So who would like this film? Well, lovers of campy schlocky horror films will get a few laughs. However, lovers of Mr. Andrews might recoil in horror to see this handsome leading man resort to acting in THIS! So, beware and try it if you dare. And, on the positive side, Mr. Andrews got sober and talked about this--and was an inspiration to many and went on to better things.

Another reviewer mentioned torture and pity as key elements to this movie, and I would like to support this idea. There is a grim, sleazy venear to this movie that is not easily forgotten. I too (like another reviewer) saw this when I was kid, and the feeling of depression and dread followed me for days. It was one of the few movies that when it was repeated on the Saturday afternoon program Theater X, I declined to watch it; not that it was a bad movie, but because of the feelings of fear and pity it generated in me (not valuable emotions for one so young).Unlike other "keep-the-head-alive-in-a-box" movies, this one effectively makes you empathize with the victim forced to submit to Nazi torture. You cannot distance yourself and enjoy slummy "fun" like you can with The Brain That Couldn't Die, which had the head scheming from the outset for revenge; it takes a while for this victim to come to terms with her power and state in life (?). The almost subliminal, eerie, atonal score that accompanies the various "unveiling" sequences puts nerves on edge as well. This is a truly unsettling movie.The final words of the various "heads" in both movies are telling as well: Brain... has the disembodied exclaiming, "I told you to let me die!", followed by a vengeful cackle, while the Frozen... victime rasps in barely intelligible tones, "Bury me."Disturbing.