This one's basically an update of Boris Karloff's Mad Doctor cycle of the 1930s and 1940s, many of which were actually made at Columbia. It concerns an ex-gangster teaming up with an eminent German scientist who has fallen into disrepute of late; together, they contrive to re-animate a series of dead bodies (apparently, their second life-expectancy is very short!) in order to eliminate the people involved in convicting the mobster  unsurprisingly, some of the victims end up themselves as zombies!! <br /><br />In this respect, the film is mildly entertaining  but, in view of the utter lack of novelty on display (the means of resuscitation may have changed but the result is the same as before), it tends to feel draggy even at a mere 69 minutes! A measure of the film's low-budget is the fact that the montage half-way through of the zombies' exploits is assembled from shots that would eventually form part of the film's very own climax! The lead here is played by lanky Richard Denning (from TARGET EARTH [1954] and THE BLACK SCORPION [1957]  neither of which I've watched) as a scientist/cop. By the way, director Cahn later made the similarly cheapskate IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958).<br /><br />CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN is actually the first Sam Katzman-produced horror film I've checked out  and it's one of four that were recently packaged together in Columbia's ongoing "Icons Of Horror" series of genre Box Sets; a second, THE GIANT CLAW (1957), followed this straight awayand, even if I wasn't exactly enthused with either of them, I'd still like to catch up with the remaining two titles (namely THE WEREWOLF [1956] and ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU [1957]). Incidentally, watching this I was reminded of a couple more low-brow sci-fi outings I had rented as a double-feature DVD some years back, which I might as well add to my collection at this juncture i.e. Edgar G. Ulmer's very minor THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960) and the semi-interesting THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)