Just watched the Casa Negra DVD - Wow!

I have been a nut about this movie since I first saw it in the mid-1960s when I was 10 or 11 years old. Of course, I know it as "The Brainiac". Our local ABC tv station ran a horror double feature on Saturday nights (wish I could remember what it was called), and I became addicted to the incredible movies they showed. My mom and little sister would try to stay awake and watch with me, but they rarely lasted - I never even got tired! My mom would occasionally stop laughing and comment about something she thought was pretty scary. "The Brainiac" freaked her out! At first she was laughing at the monster's appearance, then it started to bother her, and then...when he went for a snack the first time, scooping the brains from the bowl, she was completely into it as a horror film.

I always hoped that I would get to see this film again, but it didn't happen until almost 20 years later when it came up on "Commander USA's Groovie Movies". I taped it, and have watched and enjoyed it a few times through the years. I recently bought the CasaNegra DVD, and watched it last weekend, and I almost can't say enough about it. The movie looks great, except for a flaw as it nears the end. I'm thinking this is not my disc but the film itself. There is a vertical "strip", like a piece of cellophane tape, top to bottom on the left side of the screen, that is slightly distorted. Once it starts, it continues through to the very end of the film. But it didn't ruin anything for me. I watched the movie in Spanish, with English subtitles, and what a joy to hear the actors' real voices!

But I mainly want to comment on some of the extras on the DVD. There are a printed essay and biographies that are very informative, and that I got a lot out of. But I especially enjoyed the audio commentary by "Kirb Pheeler". Does anyone know his true identity? After watching/listening, I googled that name, and was actually ticked off at some of the negative comments I stumbled upon. "Kirb" is critcized as a "fan boy", for fawning over this movie in his commentary, for not telling the viewers "anything they didn't already know", etc. So I want to say that I enjoyed the commentary as much as I did BECAUSE it was done by a real fan who got as big a kick out of the whole thing as I do! And the biographical material he covers in his commentary, repeating some of what is elsewhere on the DVD, WAS very informative to me. I was especially interested to learn, through the DVD extras, that the theory exists that "El Baron del Terror" may have been made by this particular group of filmmakers as an intentional parody. I was struck by this possibility when I noticed (somehow for the first time, LOL) Rene Cardona,Sr. seeming to struggle mightily not to burst out laughing when Abel Salazar is smooching, then attacking, Cardona's on-screen wife.

One fault I find with "Kirb". There is a "mini version" of some interactive web thing he has going (I haven't checked that out)in which he states that the scene between The Count and the hooker was never shown on US TV. It IS on my tape from Commander USA's show, and it's complete, as is the head-under-water shot in the later scene of the newlywed husband hanging in the shower. I don't remember ever seeing the changing pictures under the opening credits, which "Kirb" says were never shown on US TV. I tend to think I would remember those, and don't, and that part of my tape got screwed up so I couldn't check.

And "Kirb" asked the question I've always asked: If the Baron sucks the victims' brains out with his tongue, how do they end up in the big bowl? He doesn't attempt to answer but here's my theory, for what little it may be worth: THAT'S why his head "inflates"! He sucks the brains out with his tongue and is able to store them in his inflatable head (like a chipmunk's cheek pouches) and somehow get them out again, all whole and intact. After all, it is only a movie.