The Oozing Skull (Cinematic Titanic)

Film Year:  1971
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Al Adamson
Starring:  Grant Williams, Kent Taylor, John Bloom, Regina Carrol, Vicki Volante, Angelo Rossitto, Reed Hadley

The Movie

Initially titled Brain of Blood, this gross horror flick is a more graphic tale in the vein of The Brain That Wouldn't Die or The Atomic Brain.  In The Oozing Skull a dying foreign ruler plans on saving his own life by transplanting his brain into another body.  But when a proper body is unavailable, his brain is transplanted into the body of a disfigured simpleton until a new one can be found.  But he finds the simplistic and violent personality taking over.

Director Al Adamson is fairly known in cult circles for directing Dracula vs. Frankenstein, while MSTies would eventually best know him for his bizarre but memorable final film Carnival Magic.  Knowing what types of films Adamson made over his career helps put The Oozing Skull in perspective, knowing it's not exactly unique among his filmography.

This is a fairly cheap and inane Frankenstein-like tale of body switching.  The film's monster, the mentally handicapped and disfigured Gor, is poorly designed.  His defining face is less a disfigurement and more of a melted bald cap that's wrapped around his face.  Even worse, its unable to cover his entire head, leaving giant gaps of the actor's hair visible (humorously enough a sideburn that's just sitting at the side of his face).  It makes the production look even cheaper than it already is.

There's a bit of gore here as well, with some gooey operation sequence porn for anybody who is interested.  We also get long lingering shots of brains, which according to IMDB trivia were acquired from a local butcher.  It's the only real sensation of this movie, which is unfortunate because it makes an ugly movie cause an even bigger gag reflex than it might have had it been fake looking.

The Riff

Cinematic Titanic bursts onto the scene of the riffing world, welcoming Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, and J. Elvis Weinstein back into the riffing world, joined by Mary Jo Pehl (who had previously done riffs for Glitter and The X-Files for Rifftrax at the time).  The Oozing Skull is not a very appealing movie for them to start out with, but I have to give them points for making this thing pretty funny.

Unlike other releases by the Titans, this show features no intro as our performers jump right in.  The first thing you notice is that they slip right into the riffing format like a glove, as if they never left.  The chemistry is sound as well, as J. Elvis re-establishes himself and Frank and Mary Jo make their onscreen riffing personas very notable, despite neither being regular riffers on MST (Frank had riffed a portion of Last of the Wild Horses, while Mary Jo had done a segment of Quest of the Delta Knights).  The Oozing Skull helps re-establish an appreciation for all three, as they are often overlooked in favor of the more prominent actors on the show.  Cinematic Titanic especially helped make me a big fan of Mary Jo, whose delivery often plays like gangbusters for me.

"She's got two stalkers?  That tramp!"

There are four host segments, none of which are all that memorable.  If anything they're examples of what host segments could be in this format, keeping the performers in silhouette while performing little skits that leave a bit to the imagination.  They're usually pretty fun if not outright funny, as we have Frank bring in a weak stomached special guest, Joel generates a discussion on tasteful entertainment value, Trace fixes the lead actress's makeup, and J. Elvis comes up with a love theme (this last one is probably my favorite).  These segments rarely last very long and really seem to be a road to a singular punchline, but they're fine.

With a gross and ugly movie at the center, the riffing needs to sell this first release by the Titans hard.  And it does sell it.  When this disc came in the mail way back when I felt like it was money well spent.  Right out the gate Cinematic Titanic establishes itself as a wonderful successor to the Mystery Science Theater legacy.

Good

The DVD

The Oozing Skull was initially released by Cinematic Titanic exclusively through their website.  Audio and video were both good, though the film itself was at a lower resolution than standard def.  There were no special features.  Shout Factory later rereleased it in their Complete Collection set, in which it shared a disc with the following show, Doomsday Machine.  This disc also contained a bonus interview with J. Elvis Weinstein, where he discusses the history of the show, how it evolved from studio to live, and briefly touches upon why it ended.