Two films for Halloween that fail to deliver the scares

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the Warner Archive Collection has also recently released 1966’s The Frozen Dead starring Dana Andrews. Andrews plays Dr. Norberg, whom we learn is a former (or still active?) Nazi living in London twenty years after World War II. Norberg has been conducting experiments on frozen Nazi soldiers, hoping to bring them back to life and reintroduce them into society. Except he has no idea that his superiors want them back to rebuild the Third Reich and continue their mission of world domination.

Norberg has some qualms about this, but his experiments have been less than successful, leaving his subjects in various states of psychological breakdown. He needs a living brain to study so he can figure out what’s going wrong during the revival process. Enter his niece and her college classmate. The friend is barely in the house before Norberg’s assistant takes it upon himself to murder the girl so Norberg can finally have the brain he needs. From this point on, the film is basically a remake of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die with the head being a slightly less annoying version of “Jan in the Pan” (you MST3K fans will get that reference).

Poor Dana Andrews must have really needed the money to take on this role after a long career in such prestigious films as The Ox-Bow Incident, Laura, The Best Years of Our Lives and a truly classic horror film, Curse of the Demon. (He also appeared in a film called Zero Hour! as Lt. Ted Stryker … a film that obviously influenced the makers of Airplane!) Here, he has to put on a fake “Cherman” accent and talk to a head. He also has a wall of arms he hopes the head can control, and a freezer full of Nazis in full uniform which he and his assistant then have to partially disrobe to conduct their experiments (which seems rather time consuming and awkward).

The Frozen Dead certainly isn’t scary, and it certainly has more than a few unintentional laughs (watch for a crew member standing behind a wall at one point wondering if he should get out of the shot), but at least it’s interesting especially if you’ve seen The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. The Warner Archive DVD features a newly remastered edition of the film, and it looks surprisingly good with vibrant colors (in the terribly over-lit sets) and only a few minor scratches early in the film. Unfortunately, there are no extras, no subtitles, or a chapter menu (although the film does have chapter markers that you can skip through with your remote). This is as bare bones as you can get, but at least the film looks remarkable for its age.

As Halloween fare goes, neither film is very scary but they both have elements that some may find fit for the holiday. Let’s Scare Jessica To Death is certainly the more mysterious of the two and could have you on edge wondering what exactly is wrong with the town or if Jessica is truly nuts. The Frozen Dead has the “mad scientist” and a telekinetic, disembodied head. Your level of enjoyment may vary, but given the choice, I’d watch The Frozen Dead a second time.

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and The Frozen Dead are available directly from the Warner Archive Collection. The Frozen Dead is also available from Amazon.com through the link below. This review is based on retail copies of the DVDs provided to CliqueClack by the Warner Archive Collection.