Director: Joseph Greene
Writers: Rex Carlton, Joseph Green
Producer: Rex Carlton
Cast: Herb Evers (aka Jason Evers), Virginia Leith, Anthony La Penna (as Leslie Daniel), Adele Lamont, Bruce Brighton, Paula Maurice, Bonnie Sharie, Lola Mason, Marilyn Hanold, Doris Brent, Eddie Carmel, Bruce Kerr, Audrey Devereau, Arny Freeman, Fred Martin, Sammy Petrillo
Surgeon Dr. Bill Cortner (Herb Evers) has an automobile accident that decapitates his fiancée Jan Compton (Virginia Leith). He brings her head to the lab he has in his secluded country home. Using an experimental drug he has invented, Cortner keeps Jan’s head alive. Then Cortner conducts a search for another beautiful woman’s body to graft onto his fiancée’s head. Meanwhile, Jan wishes she were truly dead, but she also develops a telepathic bond with another horrible Cortner experiment (Eddie Carmel) locked in the lab’s closet.
The Flashback Fanatic movie review
The low-budget must have necessitated the simple plot, and that makes the equally necessary exploitation elements stand out that much more: sexy women, monsters, and gore. Add to this the bare bones sets, repetitive girl-watching scenes, and repetitive sexy saxophone music interspersed with a couple of obtuse dialogue rants, and you have the components for a surreal time capsule of a movie.
The movie’s protagonist, Dr. Bill Cortner, is probably everything that the late 1950’s American male aspired to be. He is a handsome and successful professional with a devoted and beautiful fiancée. Based on his behavior right from the first scene in this film, it also seems that his scientific ambition has more to do with ego than humanity. Winning a Nobel Prize would probably be just another status symbol to this establishment icon. If one thinks I judge the good doctor too harshly, don’t forget about his ruthless goal of finding a woman to abduct and kill to give his fiancée’s still living noggin a perfect playground for his erector set. I guess that could qualify as true love for a mad scientist. He appears to be the kind of dude that can have his pick of the ladies, yet he is going to all of this criminal medical trouble to make his beloved Jan whole again. I still can’t help but believe his ambition and arrogance play a big part in it. He also seems hell-bent on proving that he’s not just a chip off the old block but a better scientist and doctor than his old man. Maybe he is also channeling some of that oh-so American virtue of making something of himself and trying to deny the advantage of being a successful doctor’s son. Then again, Bill Cortner could just be a sociopathic jerk.
This flick is one of that subgenre of horror probably initiated by the French film Eyes Without a Face, aka The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (1960). Although not released until 1962, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die was made in 1959. Many other films would follow concerned with scientists killing for human raw materials to try to restore the beauty of their loved ones.
Like many low-budget works of schlock, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die has some time-wasting bits of business that I get a kick out of. You can almost hear the director in some of the scenes shouting to actor Herb Evers, “Take more time! Pause! Think! Look around! Rest and pant a little bit before moving on!”
Of course, ogling sexy women is always a great time-waster. This film’s plot sets up those leering sessions quite handily. Dr. Bill needs to make his rounds in a hurry to find Jan’s new body and we are along for the ride. First stop: the strip joint. It was really a man’s world back then. I have seen plenty of movies from the '50s through the '70s where guys drag along their gals to see strippers do their thing. The female customers usually pleasantly applaud alongside their male dates. In this movie, we see a wonderful reaction of contempt from one female customer fed up with her guy as he is watching the dancer. I also never cease to be amazed that our protagonists in these times could just walk right into strippers’ dressing rooms as if that is to be expected by the talent and the management. Ah, the good old days…
Speaking of ogling, the fourth bathing beauty that Dr. Bill scopes out at a body beautiful contest is none other than Marilyn Hanold, who would appear as Princess Marcuzan in 1965’s Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster. Geez, and wouldn’t you just know it, Dr. Bill not only has two spur-of-the-moment dates accompany him to this leer-fest, one of the two women even suggested attending the event to him. Yeah, it was a man’s world all right. Women not only endured the men escorting them ogling other women, some women even encouraged a hetero guy’s most base instincts. To top it off, this very accommodating date tells Dr. Bill that she knows of a figure model with a great bod he should check out.
Thanks to Dr. Bill’s never-quite-satisfied standards, we ride along with the good doctor to another time capsule of lechery, the figure model photo shoot. Six shutterbugs are gathered around Doris Powell (Adele Lamont) and clicking away as she strikes bikinied poses in her apartment. Again, our hero strolls right in and makes himself at home until Doris dismisses her group of photo fanatics for the night.
The time-wasting champ in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is Leslie Daniel as Kurt, Dr. Bill’s assistant. This guy frets, rubs his chin, listens at the door, paces, sits down, stands up, and then repeats for an eternity before deciding to check out some noises he is hearing down in the basement lab. Again, I swear that I can hear the director bellowing, “Take more time!”
It would be most unkind of me not to commend the most unnecessarily protracted death scene in film history that manages to leave a nice bloody streak along the walls. “Take more time to die!” screams our director.
Herb Evers, as Dr. Bill Cortner, is smooth and determined. I almost believe it is just love driving him along in his awful scheme to provide his fiancée a new body. He also manages to put across some real menace in a couple of darkly humorous lines to his potential victims.
As Jan, Virginia Leith does a fine job conveying sympathy and madness with nothing more than her eyes and raspy voice as a decapitated living head. There are some reaction shots of her eyes downcast in what appears to be a moment of shame at what violence she has provoked. It’s a nice schizoid touch. Her crazed and mocking laughter is also very effective. Yeah, yeah, I know... How does a decapitated head talk and laugh without lungs? It’s a miracle of mad science, dammit! We have sexy women, cool convertibles, and monsters; I am satisfied.
Speaking of monsters, Jan has company in the lab; the sum total of all of Dr. Cortner’s mistakes, as his assistant puts it. Giant Eddie Carmel portrays the thing locked in the lab closet. There is a lot of dread created regarding this experimental being before its reveal.
The film manages a bleak and sleazy tone with its simplicity and single-minded approach. It is a minimalist horror movie that, in its cheap and voyeuristic way, creates a cold and delirious atmosphere.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die seems to be as much an indictment of American male ambition as it is a condemnation of amoral experimentation. Stopping at nothing to achieve a professional goal and catch a trophy wife can lead to all sorts of malevolent mischief. There just may be a moral mired somewhere in all of this schlock. Or it could just be giving us all of the exploitation goodies that it could afford wrapped up in a mad science package.
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