The Brain That
Wouldn't Die
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1962 Starring: Rescued from obscurity by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3000), "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", is pretty much the epitome of a black and white, sci-fi, B movie. The dialogue and acting are cheesy and the sets minimal. Yet, despite all of its many shortcomings, this is one of funnest and most compelling black and white, B movies of the drive-in era. There is a fair amount of gore (especially for 1962), an ugly monster, brain surgery, female wrestling (but no nudity), love, treachery, cruelty, and most importantly: A philosophizing head in a pan, more commonly known as "Jan in the Pan". The story is that of a brilliant and dashing surgeon, Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers - Escape From the Planet of Apes, Basket Case 2), who has it all: A successful surgery practice with his father, a beautiful fiancee, and a research lab in a remote mountain cabin where he performs weird and cruel experiments on people. Hmmm... On a drive up to the cabin with his fiancee and surgical assistant, Jan Compton (Virginia Leith), Dr. Bill is speeding around the corners and practically daring the guard rails to approach the car. And after one turn too many at too high a speed, the car careens down a hill and while Dr. Bill is thrown clear of the vehicle and escapes serious injury, Jan is trapped in the burning wreckage. Bill makes his way back to the car and we see him reach in and wrap something about the size of, oh, let's say Jan's head, into his sports jacket. He walks the rest of the way to the cabin and we meet his laboratory assistant, Kurt (Leslie Daniels), who has a slightly deformed and useless, left arm and hand. It turns out that he had lost his arm years earlier and Dr. Bill had tried an experiment to graft on a new arm. The experiment worked at first, but the arm eventually went bad and became useless. So Bill comes into the laboratory with the head of Jan and puts it into a pan. There is blood flowing through tubes and electrical devices connected to the pan, and Jan gets to wear a hood around her head that makes her look kind of alienish. Once Jan is all hooked up, we find out Dr. Bill's nefarious plan: Find a suitable female body to attach the head of his beloved fiancee to. Okay, so the plan sounds easy enough on paper, but in actual practice is a little tougher to realize. Bill estimates that Jan's pan life is 48, 50 hours tops, so he goes out to a nightclub with exotic dancers to look for a body. He strikes up a conversation with a brunette woman in the next booth over. When a blonde dancer who was doing her act in the lounge finishes, she sits next to Bill in his booth. A few moments later they head off to her dressing room and after a couple minutes of cliche filled chat, they start making out. Then the brunette who Bill dumped for the blonde dancer walks in and as it turns out is a friend of the blonde. She is obviously miffed at the blonde for stealing her potential date and they argue a bit. Bill decides this won't work for him and leaves. The two girls then get in a fight and start wrestling on the ground. The whole sequence of the nightclub scene is more like something out of a straight exploitation picture. The set and the strangely dull acting make it seem almost realistic. And the skin and cleavage filled shots with the two women fighting is a sequence that seems somewhat out of place in this film, once again, almost as if it was out of a straight exploitation film and not a serious (albeit low budget) horror/sci-fi flick. After the strike out at the nightclub, Bill starts cruising slowly down streets in his convertible (no mention is made of where the new, non-wrecked car comes from), looking for a suitable body. He passes pretty girls walking along the sidewalks and one girl in particular, recognizes him. He offers her a lift after checking out her body and deciding that it may be a worthy candidate to replace Jan's body. But the girl sees another friend on the street and gets Bill to pull over and give her a lift to the beauty pageant that they are attending. But Bill being the careful fellow that he is decides it is too risky to cut off the girls head with a witness. One of the girls does mention however the best body she has ever seen was that of a girl they used to go to school with, Doris Powell (Adele Lamont). It just happens to be a girl Bill used to date so he heads over to her house. Bill arrives and Doris is being photographed by a 5 or 6 photographers in a scene that is pretty funny. The photographers are portrayed as leering and lecherous men, more so than professional photographers. When she tires she send all of them away. Bill stays behind and she doesn't recognize him at first. After trying to kick him out of there he tells her who he is and she starts rattling off some cheesy cliches about having trusted a man "all the way" and then being dumped. During her diatribe against all men she shows Bill a large and nasty scar on her left cheek that she covers up with her hair. Bill doesn't flinch at the site of the scar and tells her how he and his father are surgeons and could help her. Some of Doris's walls break down and she decides to trust Bill. He gets her to come out to his country place to meet with his father for a consultation. While Bill has been out on his rounds to find a suitable replacement body, Jan has come to and has been trying to get Kurt to at first kill her, and then once she realizes Bill's plan, to stop it. She does not want anyone else hurt from Bill's crazy experiments. She also is not quite right in the head anymore and tends to laugh a little evil laugh now and again. There is a closet in the lab that contains an experiment that failed. A large, mindless beast of a man is being kept in there to see how Bill's grafting experiments work. Jan has become somewhat telepathic and can control the beast, even though he is locked in the closet. Jan's warnings and philosophizing statements start to wear on Kurt and during an unguarded moment, he is seized by the beast through a small feeding/viewing door. And while the beast does not escape (yet), Kurt's good arm is torn off in the struggle. He staggers off and dies in the next room. Jan finds all of this hilarious and was encouraging the beast throughout the attack on Kurt. Bill and Doris arrive at the cabin shortly after Kurt dies. Bill goes down to the lab and finds the bloody body, and drags it out of the way. He goes back upstairs to Doris and makes them both a drink, putting a little something extra in Doris's glass. A few moments after drinking it, Doris becomes woozy and passes out. Bill takes her down to the lab and prepares her for surgery. Jan is protesting loudly the whole time and Bill becomes nervous about her apparent ability to control the beast in the closet, especially since the beast is pounding on the door. He then decides to do the only things he can do to shut her up: He tapes her mouth closed! This doesn't completely stop her however, just slows her down bit. Bill gets Doris on an operating table and has his scrubs on, and he is almost all ready to operate. He stops for a moment to contemplate things and unfortunately for him, wanders too close to the closet door. The arm of the beast reaches out through the small feeding door and grabs Bill by the neck. It won't let go and finally the door of the closet has it's hinges torn off. So here we now have Bill on one side of the door and the monster on the other side of it. After struggling through a minute of this the monster lets go of Bill to remove the door. Now that the barrier of the door is gone, the beast makes his move and closes in, leans down, and takes a bite out of Bill's neck. He has a large piece of meat hanging out of his mouth and pulls it out, inspects it, and then throws it down. Bill in the meantime is on the floor in agony, bleeding to death. During the struggle a fire started and is quickly approaching Jan. Her last bit of life is spent getting the monster to carry the unconscious Doris to safety which he does. We then hear her voice saying "I told you to let me die" and then a crazy laugh. End of movie. This movie is, and should be considered nothing but, a low budget sci-fi/horror flick. There are some intriguing aspects to it though. The previously mentioned bar scene for example. And also the car wreck near the beginning of the film where Jan loses her body. The editing of the sequences that show Bill speeding is quite effective and well done. And the near victim Doris, you feel pity for her and become somewhat involved with her character after she decides to trust Bill. With only a few exceptions, most notably Jason Evers, no one involved in this film went on to do much in the film industry. The director, Joseph Green, only directed one other picture and that was in 1986 - 24 years after The Brain That Wouldn't Die was released! The disk from Alpha Video has nothing for extras and the chapter index only has 4 chapter stops. There is a fair amount of dust, hair and whatnot on the print, along with a few washed out moments, but overall it looks just fine. The mono sound is even throughout but that is the best thing I can say about it. But in the $5-8 range, this movie is a real bargain and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes B sci-fi or horror movies from the drive-in era. Synapse Films also offers a dvd version of this movie that is listed as 85 minutes, three minutes longer than the Alpha video version I reviewed. It also is appereantly very clean and has the original trailer and some behind-the-scenes photos. I gave this dvd 4 1/2 out of five stars based on the low quality and lack of features, but I would probably give the Synapse version a 5. |
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07 June 03 |
