THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE-1962-On the
operating table an old doctor (Bruce Brighton) pronounces his patient
dead, but Bill (Herb “soon to be Jason” Evers), another doctor
who happens to be his son takes over and revives the patient.
While
dad is proud of his arrogant son's accomplishment he still feels
trepidation toward his actions (“The operating table is no place
for experiments”). While debating this and Bill's ambition to do
major limb transplants in the future (using his “secret compound”)
their nurse Jan (Virginia Leith) enters. She also happens to be
Bill's fiancee. Before they can have a romantic weekend Bill gets a
mysterious urgent call from his “country place” where he does his
experimenting.
With Jan in tow Bill drives like a maniac to the place
but wrecks his car. He is somehow thrown from the car and unharmed
but Jan isn't so lucky. She's decapitated in the fiery crash.
Fortunately Bill retrieves the head, wraps it in his jacket and runs
to the country place. With the help of his German assistant Kurt
(Leslie Daniel) who has a deformed arm, Jan's head is placed in a pan
with a lot of tubes and wires and is brought back to life! Meanwhile
something hideous is locked in another room in the lab. Bill goes out
looking for Jan's new body. He goes to a gin joint and tries to pick
up a dancer. He sizes her up and she seems to fit the bill but he's
deterred by another weird talking dancer. The two rivals wind up
fighting on the floor. Meanwhile Jan's head develops some kind of
psychic link with the thing in the closet (“Together we will reek
our revenge”). Kurt debates with the head while Bill still looks
for the perfect body which he believes he finds in Doris (Adele
Lamont), a hot but scarred model who poses for “a bunch
of neurotics”. Bill really shows his deceitful side when he
convinces Doris to go to the country place so her face can be healed.
Jan plots with the thing and eventually Kurt's good arm is torn off.
Somehow Kurt now with only a bloody stump crawls up the lab stairs to
the living quarters but when he gets there he crawls back down to the
lab and dies! Bill drugs Doris and plans to put Jan's head on her
body but Jan makes the thing break out of the closet and attack Bill.
Their fight is kind of doofy, involving a door and the ugly monster
biting a chunk out of Bill's arm and then examining the bloody piece
he bit off. The monster is a huge guy with a deformed face (obviously
a mask). He carries Doris away (God only knows what happened when she
woke up!) and Jan and Bill burn to death.
This exploitation sickie
was directed and co-written by Joseph Green who owned his own small
film distribution company. It's too bad he waited 24 years to make
his next and last film (THE PERILS OF P.K.). He seemed to know how
to pack a lot of sleaze, gore and fun into one movie!
Jason Evers'
egotistic oily doctor though supposedly only concerned with science
by his semi-sinister grin when ogling a woman's body seems like he
can't wait to bring her home and cut her up. While Virginia Leith's
severed head role of Jan is pretty intense it's been said she was so
disgusted by the role she gave up acting altogether (she's made her
screen debut in Kubrick's first film FEAR AND DESIRE) though she made
sporadic TV appearances later on (and is still with us at the time of
this writing). Co-producer Rex Carlston later produced a couple of Al
Adamson movies but committed suicide in 1968. For some reason Sammy
Petrillo (who with Duke Mitchell met a Brooklyn gorilla some years
before) appears as a photographer in one scene.
BRAIN was filmed
(around Tarrytown, NY) in 1959 but due to financial troubles wasn't
released until 1962.
Thanks for reading!
(imdb)
(imdb)
