Trail of the Screaming Forehead

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Fantasy, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Aesthetically and thematically, director Larry Blamire's outrageous camp-fest Trail of the Screaming Forehead resuscitates and satirizes bottom-of-the-barrel 1950s sci-fi movies such as X the Unknown and The Creeping Terror. Blamire's tale revolves around the scientific discovery that foreheads (and not brains) house human intelligence.

In a misguided attempt to prove this axiom, scientist Dr. Sheila Bexter (Fay Masterson) injects a serum called Foreheadazine into the cranium of her colleague, Dr. Phillip Latham (Andrew Parks) -- whose head rapidly balloons to the size of a watermelon.

Meanwhile, a spaceship packed with furrowed brows crash-lands on Earth, and the brows promptly attach themselves to every human in sight.

To complicate matters, dozens of locals also get wind of the scientists' project and decide to investigate; before long, the entire seaside community is swarming with addicts of the Foreheadazine drug, a problem that doubles in size when two liquor-happy sailors arrive in town with a boatload of frozen human bodies.

Blamire re-creates the visual look of '50s sci-fi films such as The Blob by shooting in shockingly bright rotogravure colors -- a photographic process he dubbed Crainioscope.

Stop-motion demigod Ray Harryhausen -- who reportedly inspired this work thanks to such classics as Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad -- is listed as presenter, and his influence can be seen via the special effects of the ballooning heads.