It’s not the most coherent film ever made, but what else do you expect from a story about post-war Nazis who hide out in South America and plan world domination under orders from Adolph Hitler’s still-alive severed head? A dashing American scientist works to thwart their plot, of course. The big mystery: How did celebrated cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night of the Hunter) end up shooting this?
There’s another, longer cut of this film called They Saved Hitler’s Brain, re-edited in the early 1970s for television. The original 1963 version directed by David Bradley is only seventy-four minutes long, which is too short to fill up a two-hour TV time slot, even with commercials. So, Crown Pictures hired Donald Hulette (who mainly cut trailers for Paragon Films) to shoot almost twenty minutes of extra footage for the film ten years after the original production. What Hulette did was shoehorn in a talky subplot about a bickering male and female government agent team who work on the case. What Hulette DIDN’T DO was make much of an effort to match the look of 1963. Hulette’s actors all look like shaggy hippies who might have once swayed to Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock. They stand out like syphilis sores next to the Kennedy-era crew cuts from the original film.
If you want to see this movie and you have access to both versions, watch the original Madmen of Mandoras first. It’s more fast-paced. Then, if you want a few laughs, check out They Saved Hitler’s Brain. The added footage comes in right at the start and dominates much of the first half.