Director: Joseph Green
Stars: Jason (Herb) Evers, Virginia Leith
Snack Report: Halloween Smiley Cookies from Eat ‘N Park
Way back on Fright Night #18 (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) I mentioned that themes of alien invasion and subversion were very big back in the 1950s. Another really popular postwar horror/sci-fi subgenre in the 50s was talking severed heads and/or disembodied brains. Some of them were really quite good, like Donovan’s Brain (1953) and Eyes Without a Face (1960). But others were pretty awful, like Brain from the Planet Arous (1956), and tonight’s Fright Night Feature, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962).
Shot in 1959 under the working title of The Black Door, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die sat on the shelf for three years thanks to various censorship and distribution issues. Eventually it was released as part of a double feature with Invasion of the Star Creatures.
Here what passes for a plot…
Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is a brilliant but also slightly psychotic neurosurgeon, and as we see in the first scene, his dad is also a neurosurgeon. Dr. Dad declares the patient dead, and Bill asks if he can take a crack at reanimating the corpse. You see, Bill does a bit of extracurricular creative medicine on the side (i.e., conducting experiments on people). Dad is embarrassed but secretly sort of proud when Bill saves the patient’s life with one of his crazy experimental techniques.
Bill mentions that he’s working on a drug that will eliminate transplant rejection. “You can’t play God,” Dad says, as they debate medical ethics. And oh, by the way, says Dad, the hospital is getting pissed that all of their amputated limbs and discarded organs are getting scavenged out of the trash. He knows they suspect Bill, and he’s tired of covering for him. As the best defense is a good offense, Bill says “So what?”
Then just as Bill and Jan, his fiancée (Virginia Leith), are making plans for the weekend, Bill gets a call from his assistant – something’s wrong at the country house. You know… that thing… nudge nudge… in the basement?
Driving like a maniac, Bill crashes the car within easy walking distance of the house. (As they say, most accidents happen within a mile or two from home.) Bill is thrown clear, but poor Jan gets burned up and decapitated! He retrieves her head from the car, tucks it under his arm like a football, and runs for the end zone the sinister house mentioned earlier.
Assistant Kurt answers the door and tries to tell Bill about the emergency, but Bill is determined to save Jan, or what’s left of her. They head for the lab, which is equipped with a folding table and other science-type things (but not as cool as Dr. Vornoff’s lab in Fright Night #8 – Bride of the Monster!).
Bill and Kurt put Jan’s head in a dissecting pan, shoot it up with his experimental drug, and hook it up to a multitude of tubes and wires. He hopes he can keep her alive for a couple of days until he can find a suitable body and transplant her head onto it.
When Jan wakes up, she is most definitely not happy. She begs him to let her die, but Bill in the driver’s seat here, so to speak. His mind is made up, so shut up, Jan-in-the-Pan. (Perhaps he’s wondering how she can talk with no lungs and maybe even no larynx?)
Kurt agrees with Jan. His shriveled, paralyzed arm is the result of one of Bill’s earlier experiments, and of course there’s that monster locked in the closet, another of his failed experiments on human guinea pigs. Bill also tells Kurt to shut his piehole. And as for the monster… “Keep the door locked” is his best advice.
Kurt wonders how Bill will get a new body for Jan’s head, and Bill basically says “Mind your own beeswax.” Because obviously, it involves separating someone else’s body from its current head.
The first place one would go, naturally, to find a perfect body is the local strip club. Bill auditions a promising candidate, but the interview ends with two strippers in a catfight (literally – the camera pans to a pair of cat paintings and someone saying ‘meow!’).
Meanwhile back at the lab, with plenty of time on her (nonexistent) hands, Jan realizes she can communicate telepathically with the Closet Monster, described by Kurt as “the sum of all Dr. Cortner’s mistakes.” She realizes what Bill has done to him, but also what he has in mind for her and some other innocent victim.
Bill just can’t seem to get a woman alone. While cruising for girls, he runs into some female acquaintances who just happen to be going to a beauty contest! The only reason I can think of for this is to have more opportunities for scantily clad women and to fill up some time in the movie.
One of his companions suggests he look up Doris, a beautiful girl from school who was disfigured by a jealous boyfriend. Sounds like the ideal body donor!
In another even more bizarre sexy scene, Bill shows up at Doris’s apartment, where she’s parading around barely dressed on a stage with photographers taking her picture. She’s suspicious at first, but he lures her in with the promise of free plastic surgery. Who could resist that?
Again back at the lab, Jan is up to no good. She argues with Kurt and when he gets too close to the closet door… the monster reaches out through the door and RIPS HIS DAMN ARM OFF! (And it was his good one, too!) He bleeds to death, but only after a very prolonged death scene lasting two full minutes, Jan giggling insanely the whole time.
Bill and Doris arrive back at the country house, where he drugs her and carries her down to the basement lab. Jan starts to berate him, and soon bedlam ensues! The hideously deformed Closet Monster is finally revealed in all his glory (played by standup comedian, singer, and circus performer Eddie Carmel, aka the “Jewish Giant.”)
Closet Monster grabs him through the door, rips it off its hinges, and drags him around the lab. They knock over a beaker, and of course the liquid bursts into flames! In one last shocking bit of gore, he takes a big juicy bite out of Bill’s neck, shows it to the camera, then carries Doris away to safety.
Jan in the Pan cackles madly – “I told you to let me die!” – as she and the diabolical doc go up in flames – but mostly behind a black screen, because special effects cost money.
In an ending that’s all too perfect for this train wreck of a movie, the final title card appears with the wrong title (“The Head That Wouldn’t Die”) and a copyright date of 1960.
*****
Some 40+ years later, in their tradition of selecting the very best of the worst, Mystery Science Theater 3000 reintroduced The Brain that Wouldn’t Die to audiences of the 1990s. In fact, it was the first “Mike” show after the departure of original host Joel Hodgson. Mike and the Bots did a great job ridiculing this movie, but it was so bad on its own (de-)merits, we were able to heckle it ourselves without the help of our robot friends.
*****
Here’s some trivia (brain food perhaps?):
- The DVD version features an different version of the scene where Doris poses for photographers in which her bikini is exchanged for a barely-there negligee. The censors must have had a field day…
- Leading man Jason Evers was originally credited as Herb Evers. He changed his name, but couldn’t change his career.
- One of the photographers in Doris’s apartment is an uncredited Sammy Petrillo, famous Jerry Lewis impersonator and one of the stars of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) (directed by our old friend Bill Beaudine from Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula – Fright Night #10).
- Some of Jan’s lines in the film were dubbed by Doris Brent, who played a nurse in the film. They say Virginia Leith hated the movie so much that she refused to return for post-production.
- The original ending was supposed to be in color with the doctor’s head being cut off and menaced by rats.