THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)

DIRECTED by Joseph Green.

SCREENPLAY by Rex Carlton & Joseph Green.

STARRING  - Jason Evers as Dr. Bill Cortner,  Virginia Lee as Jan Compton,  Bruce Brighton as Dr. Cortner senior,  Anthony La Pena (credited as Leslie Daniel) as Kurt,  Eddie Carmel as The Monster.

PLOT  - Dr. Bill Cortner is a brilliant and gifted young brain surgeon, his theories lie at the cutting edge of Neuroscience, there is only one problem...his total and utter lack of any ethics or morals of any kind.

Cortner and his fiancee, Jan, are driving home one night when they are involved in a hideous car crash. Jan is decapitated in the accident. Believing he can save her, Cortner flees the burning wreck, taking Jan's severed head with him. He heads back to his laboratory and with the help of his deformed assistant, Karl, he revives Jan's head in tray full of life giving liquid.

Jan is horrified at her new "life" and begs Cortner to kill her, but Cortner refuses, promising that he can - and will - find her a new body to transplant her head onto.

Cortner embarks on a quest to find Jan's new body. He begins lurking in sleazy nightclubs and stalking ex-lovers, looking for an unfortunate victim with a perfect figure, so he can decapitate them and graft Jan's head onto her "new body".

Little does Cortner know however, that Jan's unnatural resurrection has granted her telepathic powers. Telepathic powers that she is now using to contact the thing that lurks in his cellar - a misshapen mutant, a by product of one of Cortner's earlier experiments that went wrong. The mutant wants revenge on the man who corrupted his body and so does Jan, and together they might just get it...

DIALOUGE  - Jan - "Let me die."

PERFORMANCES  -  Jason Evers makes for an interesting lead protaganist. Cortner is on the surface a respectable scientist - he's charming, suave and clean cut ( in other words, a typical 1960's leading man ), however, scratch the surface and underneath lies an utter sleazebag. Whether he's lurking around dodgy nightclubs creepily seducing women he intends to use as lab rats or coldly trying to justify his unsound methods, he comes over as a genuinely nasty piece of work.  Evers nails this duality perfectly - Cortner is a Jekyll and Hyde type personality, only Cortner doesn't have to drink a potion to become a monster...he's already there from the beginning.

We don't see much of what Jan is like pre-decapitation as she's only really in one scene before the accident. Virginia Leith portrays her as a typical simpering 60's female lead at this point, after the decapitation though she becomes a much stronger character. Leith imbues Jan's head with a sense of cold anger that emanates towards Cortner, even when she's begging him to end her existence it comes over more as an angry command rather than a despairing plea. It gives the impression that due to her resurrection Jan has lost something in the process and become something less than human.

Anthony La Pena is Cortner's assistant Kurt. Kurt is really just a standard Igor to Cortner's Frankenstein. He has a deformed hand which Cortner promises to fix one day, but really he's just leading him on to be sure of his continued assistance, presumably Cortner's not paying him anything. He doesn't do a lot except shuffle around the laboratory and die horribly when the mutant tears his arm off, but at least he gets a pretty effective death scene.

SFX - The main effect of Jan's talking severed head is achieved simply enough, they clearly just cut a hole in a table and got Virginia Leith to kneel down and stick her head through it. With the set dressing added around it the effect works well enough. If this film was made today they'd probably do exactly the same thing, they'd just add a bit more prosthetics to make it look bloodier and more convincing.

The cellar mutant gets to wear a lopsided Halloween mask for his deformed face and...that's about it in terms of special effects for this movie.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Usually 1960's sci-fi movies are quite tame and pedestrian when it comes to the depiction of sex and violence - not so with this film. Whilst these elements may still appear tame by today's standards, in the 60's this film did push the envelope somewhat.

One thing that must have shocked 60's audiences was the film's leading man visiting what to all intents and purposes where sex clubs. To see actresses portraying what where basically sex workers was rare back then. You never see anything explicit of course, it's all in the implication, but it was a daring move at the time and probably also an unexpected story development. It all serves to add a level of sleaze to the movie and further highlights the duality of Cortner's character, of just how much his real self deviates from the respectable vaneer that he cultivates to all around him. Oh...and just in case it sounds like this is all getting a bit too highbrow there's also a scene where two prostitutes wrestle each other in thier underwear...

The violence is pretty extreme for the time too, especially when poor old Kurt gets his arm ripped off, he stumbles about in agony, bleeding profusely, getting the claret all over everything that crosses his path...

Whilst you can tell the actor has just stuffed his "missing" arm into his coat, it's the sheer amount of blood that he gets everywhere that must have been an eye opener for drive-in audiences throughout the land back in the day.

We also get some close up shots of brain surgery too...nice.

RATING  - 'The Brain That Wouldn't Die' is a nice little piece of exploitation schlock. Whilst it's not a classic, it's got a fun sleazy undertone to it and an interesting central protaganist. It's a typical mad scientist story, even back in the 60's it was already unoriginal, but it does what it does very well and it must have shocked the hell out of your Grandma all those years ago.

Overall 3 and a half decapitated fiancées out of 5. A sleazy little gem.