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Jim Grayam (Jeff Hunter) is about to assassinate his boss, portrayed by Dana Andrews, in the William Conrad-directed Brainstorm.

In a recent piece on Timothy Carey’s The World’s Greatest Sinner, I forgot to mention that it is one of 16 films from ther 1960s in a new category on the Criterion Channel called Hollywood Crack-Up.

This is part of the intro to the 16 films:

“What happened to America in the 1960s? Amid the stream of social upheavals, a wave of films emerged depicting mental illness, madness, extreme emotional states, and chilling violence—jarring transmissions from a new generation of Hollywood iconoclasts that seemed to evoke the very breakdown of the studio system itself.”

Lots of good stuff here – John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate; Samuel Fuller’s 1963 mental hospital epic, Shock Corridor; Richard Brooks’ 1967 black & white classic cinematic vision of Truman Capote’s true crime book In Cold Blood.

Of the 16 films in the category, I had seen all but one, and that one I had never even heard of, despite several notable things about it, at least notable to a film nerd.

Number 1 for me is that it was directed by William Conrad. That’s fat Frank Cannon to anyone who lived through the ‘70s. But, perhaps more importantly, he was the narrator of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. His stentorian voice accrued many credits, and he was a well-used character actor, most notably as one of the titular characters in the 1946 movie version of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, menacingly wisecracking about the bright boys in the diner with fellow assassin and film noir stalwart Charles McGraw.

But I had no idea that in the late ‘60s, Conrad had a directing contract with Warner Brothers. He made three movies for them, all in 1965 – Two On a Guillotine, starring Connie Stevens and Dean Jones; that was followed by My Blood Runs Cold, a “noir” starring Troy Donahue and Joey Heatherton; and, finally, Brainstorm, starring Jeffrey Hunter, who also starred in 1965 as Capt. Christopher Pike in the rejected Star Trek pilot episode “The Cage,” and Anne Francis, the same year she was an It girl while starring in ABC’s Friday night female detective series Honey West. She was known as the “private eyeful” in the show that was canceled after a single season.

Also in the cast, classic film noir star Dana Andrews (Laura, Where the Sidewalk Ends, etc.), who was also the most thin-lipped man in film history, especially in Brainstorm, where he plays an evil, constantly cuckolded wealthy industrialist.

I had never heard of this, or any of the William Conrad-directed movies of 1965. And there is a reason why. If the other two are anything like Brainstorm, run, run very fast.

It starts off with promise. Hunter’s character, Jim Grayam, a Brainiac analyst, is driving when he finds a car stopped on railroad tracks, with a train coming and a woman inside, either sleeping or passed out.

Unable to wake her, he smashes the window, cutting his hand in the process, and starts the car just in time. The woman turns out to be Lorrie Benson (Anne Francis), the young and suicidal wife of his millionaire boss Cort Benson. He brings her home, where Lorrie berates him for saving her. Cort writes him a check for a thousand bucks for saving his wife, he returns it, and that gesture makes the wife fall for the analyst. They fall in love and suddenly Hunter’s character is being accused of making perverted phone calls. Then his car disappears from work, and it seems everyone is conspiring against him. 

Both he and Mrs. Benson know that Cort is orchestrating the events that make it look like Grayam is losing his mind. Along the way we learn that Grayam spent time in a mental institution as a teen, something Cort Benson discovered and is now exploiting.

Since Benson has spent so much time and expense to make others think Grayam is losing his mind, Grayam comes up with The Most Fiendish Idea Ever Conceived By The Human Brain!​​ (that’s an actual tagline from the film’s release).

He decides that since everyone thinks he is losing his mind, he will shoot Benson in a very public setting and claim insanity to release himself and Lorrie from Benson’s all-encompassing grip. What? Really?

That doesn’t seem like a good idea. And it is not.

And, sorry Anne Francis, but you just don’t make it as a film noir femme fatale. There’s a certain something missing that is required to drive a man to murder.

I thought this movie was so bad I wondered why I had never heard of it. And then I wondered how well it is known. I Googled contemporary reviews of Brainstorm, meaning reviews from critics who saw it upon its release in 1965. The New York Times reviewer wrote: “Up to a point the story cuts ice. Then it slips into absurdity.” Today show critic Judith Crist called the film “a sub-B potboiler for those who find comic books too intellectual.”

And then I found a recent post by an internet reviewer who saw it the same place I did, the Criterion Channel.

“Directed by William Conrad who is best known as an actor, Brainstorm is a tight and fairly entertaining late film noir. There is enough flair in the presentation that make one regret that Conrad’s turned more to performance and less towards direction. Somewhat hampered by the jazz score, as many lesser budgeted films of this period were, the movie still is bolstered by fine performances and reveals that organically develop from the noir plotting.”

Ugh! There is so much wrong with that paragraph. 

To begin with, it’s not even close to being a “tight and fairly entertaining late film noir.” It starts off like a noir, but from the very public murder of the super villain, played by no-lipped Dana Andrews, on, it is pure D-movie nonsense. Seems like after they killed the villain, they had nowhere to go but down.

And then there is this bit from the internet film reviewer: “Hampered by the jazz score, as many lesser budgeted films of this period were…” 

What the? The jazz score is one of the best things about this sad sack TV movie reject, and what the internet reviewer is referring to with the “many lesser budgeted films” using jazz soundtracks, I will never know. 

Of course, the plan backfires. Lorrie finds yet another man while Jim Grayam will likely spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum, an ending similar to Samuel Fuller's 1963 psychological thriller Shock Corridor, where a reporter (Peter Brock) hungry for a Pulitzer has himself committed to an insane asylum in order to solve the murder of an inmate, but ends up a permanent inmate himself.