cult film freak: DANA ANDREWS IN 'THE FROZEN DEAD' FEATURING ANNA PALK

Dana Andrews with Anna Palk in THE FROZEN DEAD Year: 1966 Rating: **

Dana Andrews plays a German Nazi scientist in the modern era (1966) while his gorgeous niece, played by Anna Palk, who initially visited her father's manor with a friend, who quickly vanishes by morning... and both ingenues makes this almost worth the price of admission and the torture of sitting through... almost...

The previous year Andrews played another... well not a mad scientist but more an impatient one from CRACK IN THE WORLD while his time, Dana's Dr. Norberg keeps his cool, acting gentlemanly...

Dana Andrews and Anna Palk and Philip Gilbert in THE FROZEN DEAD

But Palk's doubts... a kind of dreaming premonition based on sixth sense... has to do with uncle, who has clandestine meetings with strange men that she doesn't know are his fellow secret-Nazis, gathered within a brick-laden, underground parlor: more of a basement or cellar where body parts hang from a wooden wall connected to life-giving electrodes, which is a memorably hilarious low-budget visual in itself...

Anna Palk's Jean, a lonely, lovely school girl, can't shake the feeling that her best friend wouldn't possibly just up and leave the house without a proper goodbye, so whatever tension or suspense that's supposed to pan out relies on a slow-moving, in-house "investigation" aided by the stock handsome hero from New Scotland Yard (Philip Gilbert), who himself isn't so perfect...

Anna Palk in THE FROZEN DEAD

The promising storyline of a scientist reanimating dead Nazis to make the Third Reich march forth once again – to take over the world the "right way" this time – has a lot of exploitation cinema potential but any and all shock value is moved about limply with pallid direction, attempting to – following a ton of scientific gibberish – merge all the chills into one severed head: that of the missing friend played by the equally gorgeous Kathleen Breck...

A horror-flick noggin that, completely ripping off THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, has only a few lame expressions, none of them scary, eerie or even funny to poke fun at and, so, here's the lesson learned – on bad movie night, it's best to thaw out something else.