This title was featured in a tribute to
Albert Victor Adamson

BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR (1971, 85 minutes): OK, pay attention. This one's tricky. In 1964, Adamson made a jewelry heist picture called Echo of Terror that was soon recut into Psycho a Go-Go (1965) as a star vehicle for aspiring singer Tracey Robbins. Years later, as part of a television deal, Adamson shot additional footage and The Man with the Synthetic Brain was excreted. Having gone to all that trouble, the flick was also released in theaters as -- drumroll, please -- Blood of Ghastly Horror. How it works is this, we open with a zombie snapping necks like Pixy Stix and some homicide detectives who try to sort out the mess. One of the detectives rubs his chin thoughtfully, and we flashback to Echo of Terror for 20 minutes. Somewhere in the middle, we flashback even further for some mad scientist stuff with the immortal John Carradine who puts a transistor radio, or some such, into a catatonic Vietnam vet's brainpan. As a result, Roy Morton tragically loses his personality and slides into an electronic crush, kill and destroy mode. He becomes a crime world enforcer where we eventually catch back up with him at that jewelry heist where the bag of loot gets lost and he starts turning people inside out (literally) to find the goods. But don't get too comfortable with him, because we flash forward again and a revenge plot boils up to make sense of that zombie junk from the first of the flick. Sorta.

Notables: No breasts. 15 corpses. Gratuitous ransom note. Message written in blood. Severed head in a box. Scissor murder.

Quotables: Joe's one mean dude, "Look, you don't know this guy! He gets his kicks out of HURTING people!"

Time codes: Shot of the Jerry Lewis restaurant (10:48). Adamson gets gunned down (11:50). Carradine's big mad-scientist scene (26:30). Regina Carrol zombies out (1:20:20).