The Brain That Wouldn't Die

Y'know, it's almost erotic...

Stats
FOUND AT: 99 Cents Stuff.
PRICE: $0.99 US
DIRECTOR: Joseph Green
SCREENPLAY: Rex Carlton, Joseph Green
STARRING: Jason Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniels (no, I've never heard of them, either).
RATING: Unrated. How about that...
YEAR: 1962
AVAILABILITY: Oh yeah. DVD contains theatrical trailer, uncut feature.
Also featured in "Mystery Science Theatre 3000," which may be available on video/DVD.
IMDB FUN FACT!:
"Original plans were for last reel to be in color, with the doctor's
head being cut off. Scenes were filmed with rats menacing the head."
HILARIOUS REVIEW:
(From IMDB. This one seems to be written like a poem of some sort...):

"ostinati
that awful realm

Date: 7 November 2001
Summary: It made me laugh; it made me laugh some more

SPOILERS: It takes a lot to make me discard the
ambitions and

fragile dreams of artistic significance of even the
tiniest shoestring

movie crew. This movie achieves that, and was
funny enough and

odd enough to keep me tied to the TV to the end.
The music is a"

(it goes on like this...)

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE

You find the strangest things at dollar stores. At this strange hybrid of a dollar store and a supermarket, I found, among other things like the Captain Harlock TV series scripts (episodes 1-6), the Talented Mr. Ripley script, and various comics, a video copy of The Brain that Wouldn't Die. It was some special release with Elvira on the cover sponsored by Coors and congratulated me when I played the tape, so they must be leftovers from a contest or something. If the title wasn't enough indication that the movie would suck, Elvira's likeness plastered on the box sealed the deal.

The opening credits start out with only part of the title, "THE BRAIN," then added "THAT WOULDN'T DIE" mere seconds later, to cause suspense for those people that asked to be surprised when buying tickets. "What about the brain? Did it win the World Series?" Anyway, what followed was the full credits. I always questioned why some older movies have the entire credits at the beginning of the movie, since people tend to walk out when the credits roll. Maybe it's a warning to get out of there now, because the movie's gonna suck.

The film starts with doctors operating on a man, who was just in an accident of some sort. He dies during the operation, and the younger doctor, Bill, asks the older doctor to let him try something. The older doctor, his father (whose name we never find out) woodenly states his reluctance to let his son experiment on a human being, but lets him take a shot anyway. For some reason the man's head is cut open already (no wonder he died!), revealing his for some reason still throbbing brain, and through some manipulation of the brain and heart, is revived.

As the father-son medical team wash their hands, Bill states his dream of one day being able to transplant limbs, revealing who the mad scientist is in this Frankenstein of a picture. Bill's girlfriend/co-worker Jan (though I don't remember any mentioning of her name) shows up and they practically have sex in front of his father, who says something like "If you two get married, it won't be as fun to watch!" regarding it. Bill then promises her that they'll get married in a couple weeks, indicating that she will end up dying a horrible death. He then decides to take her to his mansion/laboratory. Right before they leave, he gets a call from the mansion and has to hurry the hell up over there.

Want to have sex in my dad's car? Don't worry, he's a careful driver...

So they drive off, in Bill's convertible. The top is down, but there is no wind resistance in their faces. He decides to step on the gas, driving down a winding road (as indicated by the "Winding Road" sign). They approach a curve, and as the car approaches the barricade along the curve, it cuts to Bill rolling down a hill and then cuts to Bill rolling down a completely different hill.

He then approaches the flaming car. The camera is in the wreckage facing Bill, with a hand sticking out. Bill barely touches the hand and it moves down, and then he sees his decapitated girlfriend. Too bad we don't. He wraps her head up in his jacket. Once it's in there, it looks more like a dead skinned chicken wrapped in black fabric.

Bill then runs to the mansion through a forest as the camera shakily follows. Once he gets to the mansion, we meet his partner Kurt who has some kind of deformed hand, which we later learn is an amputated arm grafted to him that his body rejected. It looks totally different, not to mention fake, on the close-up shots. Oddly enough, he is able to move the arm. Bill puts together an apparatus consisting of liquids, tubes, and springy telephone cords attached the earmuffs on his girlfriend's decapitated head, which, with the exception of the face, is wrapped in bandages. What's odd about her head is that it appears to have been cut evenly in the middle of the neck. That was some lucky car wreck!

If it's not obvious now, Dr. Bill (Oooh noooo!) wants to attach a new body to her head. Kurt scolds him for bringing her head back to life, saying "How can you make of her an experiment of horror!?" We then find out the reason Kurt called Bill and made him hurry the hell up over to the mansion: some hideous monstrosity (composed of various tissues grafted together and injected with the Doctor's miraculous serum that makes bodies accept new tissue) is knocking on the door of the closet they locked it in. Smart move, dumbass. You made your boss speed and kill his girlfriend just so you could show him that his lump of leftover flesh is running headfirst into a door. "Aww... He thinks he's people!" But that's not all... he's moaning. Chances are it's just discovering itself and the magical things it can do in a dark room with nothing but a big imagination. Bill opens the observation door, which is big enough to put one's head through (whose genius idea was THAT?), and is shocked by what he sees, as if he hasn't seen it before.

So Bill then goes to the "Moulin Rouge," a local strip joint with none of the charm of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. It's a very long scene with no interruption, save one brief cut to the head saying something that isn't worth remembering, much less repeating. In this scene, he sits at a bar, watches a stripper, stands up, approaches her, then some people sitting at a booth get up, so he sits there and talks to a girl in the next booth until the stripper returns, distracting him from the girl, who gets jealous and leaves. Bill then follows this stripper to the dressing room, where they exchange flirty banter riddled with poor innuendo. They begin to make out, but are interrupted by the girl from the other booth, who is revealed to be another stripper. Bill leaves, yet the scene doesn't end. For some reason stripper #2 insults stripper # 1, causing them to wrestle each other on the ground, resulting in hilarity and jiggling. After a minute of wrestling, the camera cuts to the cat decorations on the wall, after which there is a "meow" and the scene ends. Finally!

Meanwhile, in the lab, Jan, who, on IMDB, is referred to in head form as "Jan-in-the-Pan," talks to the monstrosity in the closet, whose replies consist of the monstrosity banging its head on the door. Once attached to electric earmuffs, Jan sounds like a smoker, a lot like Lucille Ball before she died. Kurt then returns and the monster barks at him, scaring the crap out of him. Kurt then explains what the monstrosity is to Jan, and states that the monstrosity is worse than her. No shit. Of course a living blob of flesh is worse than the decapitated yet still living head of an attractive woman. Head then states that the serum gave her strange powers, like the ability to communicate with the thing in the closet.

I can't believe I actually accepted this job...

Later, Bill goes cruising in another convertible (where the hell did he get another car?) for women, much like he were looking for a prostitute for the best 30 seconds of his day. He meets an old friend named Donna, who he was about to take to his mansion to kill, but instead takes to the local swimsuit competition because Donna invites her friend Jeanie to come along. Foiled again! At the contest, he finds out about his old beautiful shut-in model friend named Doris.

Bill visits Doris, who is being photographed by about 10 horny men. After they leave, and some dramatic banter between Bill and Doris occurs, we find out why Doris is a man-hating shut in: she has a hideous scar on a part of her face (from some abusive boyfriend, the movie forces us to infer) that she covers with her hair. Bill convinces her that with modern plastic surgery, she can be made beautiful again, and persuades her to come with him to his mansion, which only appears to have two rooms.

Meanwhile, Kurt and Jan banter back and forth. Kurt says such things as "You're nothing but a freak of life... and a freak of death!" and makes the second jigsaw puzzle simile that can be heard in this movie. It's during this scene that I notice that whenever Jan talks, there is the sound effect similar to someone taking a hit from a bong, which only reinforces the theory that I came up with just now that you'd have to be high to truly enjoy this film. Anyway, Kurt approaches the door to the monster that he's so afraid of, and its arm, which has a sleeve, pops through the tiny door and rips Kurt's arm off. Kurt stumbles around the house toward the front door as Jan laughs maniacally, leaving a trail of blood on the wall next to the stairs, then stumbles back to the lab and dies.

Help me! I'm having difficulty putting my arm through my sleeve!

Then Bill and Doris arrive. Bill goes down to the lab, where he finds the armless, dead Kurt. After putting a cloth over him, he walks to another corner of the lab and mixes a drink for Doris. That's right. In the damn lab. As if he couldn't hide his rufies in the kitchen. Bill returns to Doris and makes another one of his hints that he makes to every woman he sees throughout the movie that he's going to kill her by saying he's not going to kill her. Doris drinks. Softcore porn music plays as Doris begins to remove her jacket ("It's getting hot in here... Is it ok if I take off my shirt?"). She stumbles around for a minute and then passes out.

Bill then begins the operation in the lab. He puts tape over Jan's mouth to shut her up (finally!) and the monster's closet knocking begins again. Bill approaches the door, to have the monster's arm poke through the door and put him in a headlock. After Bill escapes the monster's grip, it breaks through the door, and we finally get to see what this abomination truly looks like. It's fully clothed, with perfectly clean, untorn clothing. Its body is perfectly normal, but its head is similar to that of a conehead, but horribly misshapen. Its mouth, left eye, and ears are all correctly placed, oddly enough. During the struggle between Bill and the monster, the lab bursts into flames for no apparent reason. The monster takes a bite out of Bill's neck, killing him, then takes the unconscious Doris and leaves. Jan says "You should have let me die," then laughs maniacally as the film fades to black.

Consume mass quantities!

And that's it. The movie's over. THE END. It appeared to have a lot a potential, but the creators lacked the competency to allow the script to achieve its full potential. The gore and adult content in this movie is kind of shocking, considering the fact that it's from the early 1960s. What's important is that I won't be embarrassed to have this movie on my shelf, unlike Howling IV: The Original Nightmare.

BEDPAN! BEDPAN!

Normal Movie Grade:
Crap Movie Grade:

So crappy that you'll wish it was your head. Or that it was you enjoying yourself in a dark closet while idiot doctors watch.

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