EDITOR’S NOTE: The Brain from Planet Arous was the first movie to ever be on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 14, 1963 at 3 PM. It also aired on the first Chilly Billy Halloween show on October 31, 1964 and on September 24, 1966.

Directed Nathan Juran was the brother of Joseph M. Juran, a man who introduced Japanese and American companies to improve their work and also created the Juran trilogy, an approach to cross-functional management that is made up of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. His theory, in short, is that without change, there will be constant waste; during change there will be increased costs, but after the improvement, margins will be higher and the increased costs will make up for the losses.

Nathan had a pretty great career of directing films, including The Black Castle, The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, First Men In the Moon, Jack the Giant Killer and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.

He was unhappy with this movie, so instead of his real name, it’s credited to Nathan Hertz.

Stephen King even credited it with some of his initial success, telling Playboy, “Carrie, for example, derived to a considerable extent from a terrible grade-B movie called The Brain from Planet Arous.”

Gor (spoken for by Dale Tate) is an alien criminal shaped like a human brain who has come from a planet named Arous. He possesses scientist Steve March (John Agar) and begins to take over the world. Luckily, Vol (also the voice of Tate) has come to Earth to save us from Gor and is inside a dog that belongs to March’s fiancee Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows).

If the story of a space cop chasing a criminal to Earth who can jump bodies sounds familiar, well, they took it from the book Needle by Hal Clement. You know who else did? The filmmakers who brought you The Hidden.

The giant brain in this often gets made fun of, but you know, it works for the time that it was born in. It played double features with Teenage Monster and, obviously, as a TV favorite. After all, it’s the first movie that Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater would ever air. When the show came back on the air in September of 2023, it also was the first film shown.