More On THE BRAIN FROM PLANET ERIS, I mean AROUS

It occurred to me after I finished the previous entry that not only is Gor, the title character in this movie, an agent of Chaos.  So is the interstellar policeman looking for him, the Brain From Planet Arous named Vol.  (He is pictured above with George the dog.)

 

This is why I believe this:  Vol shows up and comes on like the RESTORER OF ORDER in this story, explaining that Gor is a criminal type who only wants to mess stuff up for Earthlings.  To prevent that, Vol needs to ship him back home.  So the Earthlings follow instructions and everything gets squared away, right?  When he sees things are back under control, Vol modestly slips away into the night. ORDER IS RESTORED.

 

 

WRONG.   

 

 

 

HERE'S THE PROBLEM.  In previous scenes, Steve, who has been under Gor's control for some time, has forced a meeting of all the heads of state of the really important countries.  He's already shown them that he's able, and willing, to vaporize any country that screws with him.  They're all going to meet at Indian Springs the next day to Gor can start taking over the planet in earnest.

 

How the funk are they going to explain this to Beijing, the Kremlin, and Washington D.C.?  "Oh, sorry, I was possessed by THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS but he's gone now, honest."  Steve/Gor earlier proved to them that he was invincible by allowing someone to shoot him.  The bullet had no effect.  With Vol gone, guess how he's going to have to prove Gor is no longer a threat?

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS

 

This is EXACTLY how I look when I'm "feeling the spirit" of Eris, Goddess of Chaos.

 

I CLEARLY WAITED MUCH TOO LONG TO SEE THIS PICTURE!

This 1957 sci-fi spectacular, starring John Agar, Joyce Meadows, Robert Fuller and (uncredited) George the German Shepherd, is not an underappreciated film by any means.  It's on every list of really boss science fiction movies, which is one reason I have regretted not seeing it all these years -- even as I rebelled against the constant hail of "you've GOT to see it" advice from the cinematic Thought Police.  But as a Discordian teaching film, this one is beyond underappreciated.  In fact it's never been mentioned before, as far as I know.

 

LET'S CLEAR THAT UP RIGHT NOW.

Steve March (Agar) has discovered what looks like a problem with his Geiger counter.  It keeps reporting short bursts of radioactivity, source unknown.  As Steve's co-worker, Dan Murphy (Fuller) points out, that's not supposed to be possible; radioactivity registers as a steady clicking on the counter; it can't just turn itself on and off.  But the Geiger counter appears to be working fine.  Further tests show that the apparent source is something in the area of a spot in the desert called, rather fittingly, Mystery Mountain.  They decide to head out there with their canteens and their scientifical type equipment to GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS. 

THINGS GO SOUTH FROM HERE when the intrepid explorers encounter something terrifying in a cave that looks just like the one where they filmed key scenes in Attack of the Crab Monsters.  Dan disappears completely and Steve comes home to his fiancée, Sally (Meadows), behaving very strangely indeed.  When he's not kissing the daylights out of her he's hunched over in pain.  And then he starts exploding stuff with his mind, and laughing as cities burn...WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

It started to come together in my mind when Steve called all the representatives of the really big-name countries together so they could see how dangerous and unstoppable he'd become.  The image above is a screen capture of Steve as he lights up with joy while BLOWING STUFF UP WITH HIS MIND.  Why was that so familiar?

At the end of the movie I decided to watch the trailer.  I think it was famed movie critic Chris Holland (or one of his B-movie brethren) who said "movies are just watered-down trailers," and this turned out to be an excellent example of that.  The words on the screen read:  A WORLD TOTTERS ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS WHEN THIS MAN'S BODY IS INVADED BY...THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS!  And there was the above image again.

Then it hit me.  All you have to do is change the spelling a little, not really even the sound of the name, and you get THE BRAIN FROM PLANET ERIS!!!  What more frightening specter of doom could you find in the 1950s, when they lensed this movie, the peak of the most Aneristic decade in this nation's history?  All anybody wanted after the horrors of World War Two was peace, prosperity...ORDER.  And here we had one of the cheerleaders of orderly scientific progress laughing merrily as he set off an atomic explosion with his mind.

Well, it just reminded me irresistibly of Eris and her brother Ares, roaming the battlefields.  He used to enjoy the carnage while she tasted the confusion and controversy. 

 

When Steve put paid to the menace, what did they restore?  ORDER.  They restored ORDER. 

Although I can't help wondering what they said when they had to explain themselves to the Great Nations Of The World the next day when everyone got together as scheduled. 

Quote of the Day

(Robert De Grimston, co-founder, co-leader and token Christ figure of the Process)

 



'I look back on it all and find parts of my Processean experience excruciatingly embarrassing.  With self-imposed gullibility, we swallowed utter garbage under the rubric of such nostrums as "I'm sure it's valid on some level."  By that dizzy criterion, notions of a flat earth are valid, also.'

 

Edward Mason, his name in the Process Church of the Final Judgement: "Brother Luke"

 

I just want to point out how utterly Discordian that justification is.  Because, you know, all statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.

I Have To Admit I'm Impressed...

A Utah woman, Barbara Bagley, has been cleared by the Utah courts to sue herself for damages in the rollover-accident death of her husband, Bradley Vom Baur.  I hope it's not only in the USA that you can see this sort of utterly confusing legal decision.  It would be brutally unfair not to share this kind of insanity with the whole world.

 

My favorite detail?  Bagley has one attorney, Reid Tateoka, representing her as the widow and heir of the man killed in the accident.  She has another, Peter Christensen, representing her as the motorist who killed her husband.  That must be costing her a mint.  Attorney Takeota commented in the press that even if the widow wins her suit against the motorist, she won't see much money out of the deal. 

 

MAYBE BECAUSE OF ALL THE LEGAL FEES SHE'S GOING TO OWE?