As a technical achievement, this poverty-stricken adventure is much more sophisticated than the two films above ... but that's not saying much.

Jerry Warren's films are technically competent in a minimal sense; there are fewer absurdities here than in the films of Ed Wood Jr, for instance. But Wood never made a movie that put an audience to sleep. Known facetiously as The Incredible Petrified Movie this is 70 static minutes in which nothing of importance seems to happen. It's one for Einstein to figure out: a relatively short film that's interminable. I had to watch it twice, as I kept nodding off. In the afternoon.

There's a diving bell that looks like an inflated balloon from the outside. Whether on the deck of its winch boat or underwater, the direction ducks the necessity of showing how people get in or out of it. The interior looks about 3 times the size of the exterior and is simply a semicircular wall. Half the show takes place in this non-set, all of it shot from the same angle. The divers are lost. They're perplexed. They exit and explore. But nobody seems to work up much of a sweat, unless it's to bicker and carp at each other. Eventually they end up in a maze of caverns (some of which seems to have been shot in a cave in Arizona) that is more boring than the diving bell, and at least as fake. When the rescue comes, we get a non-ending to a non-exciting film.

The sole reason to watch this turkey is John Carradine, who is consistently effective no matter what terrible scene he's given to play. All the semi- and non-actors around him just stand back, and he shines; the film actually seems like a movie for a few moments. Unfortunately, the other players, including the well-known Robert Clarke don't have his ability to emote, and their scenes are grim and slow. Get the picture?

The print of this bomb, so bad it was delayed two years for the bottom half of a rip-off double bill, is immaculate. The photography is basically good, and the sound recording not bad either, and it's a shock to see this looking better than it has a right to. It's been transferred flat, but by cropping the picture on a widescreen television, some of the sets look a little less ridiculous.

The extras contain a 1959 trailer for The Incredible Petrified World that starts with a line saying we'll never see another movie with the impact of this motion picture! Most of the trailer is stock footage of earthquakes and lava floes from One Million, B.C.. One long, uninterrupted piece of stock footage appears to be the 1940s scenes of an octopus fighting a shark, used by Ray Harryhausen in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (coming in October).

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Atomic Brain, Love After Death, & The Incredible Petrified World rates:
Movie: 1) Poor 2) Poor 3) Poor; but that's not the point with these oddball turkeys
Video: 1) Good + 2) Good 3) Excellent
Sound: 1) Fair 2) Fair 3) Excellent
Supplements: alternate opening for The Atomic Brain; trailers, montage of covers of sleazy horror comix (70's, I'd say).
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: September 25, 2003