The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

Director: Joseph Green
Starring: Jason Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniels, Adele Lamont, Bonnie Sharie

SYNOPSIS

A brilliant surgeon has been experimenting with transplants on the edge of the possibilities of current medical science. Travelling back to the lab one day, he's involved in a car crash that leaves him unharmed but decapitates his girlfriend. Distraught, he manages to bring her head back to life and sets about finding a replacement body. She's not so convinced, however, and sets about using her new-found telepathic link with one of his failed experiments to get revenge on the man now imprisoning her.

REVIEW

This is one of those strange movies that acts as a kind of bridge between the different eras of horror movies, from the rather staid and dry '50s to the gory and hysterical late '60s B-movie. Originally shot in 1958 but not released until 1962, this would surely have been a rather shocking movie to those who saw it back then, and yet the set-up would have been familiar to most.

The story itself essentially combines two classic set-ups – the mad scientist with a living head or brain in the lab (see the novel Donovan's Brain and its many adaptations), and the attempts to restore a former beauty despite her will as in the French classic Eyes Without A Face. Here, we flash between the scientist's attempts to obtain a new body and his girlfriend's first lamenting of her condition and then plans for revenge.

Unfortunately, it's with both of these sequences that the movie starts to wear out its welcome. The scientist's travels might have been salacious back in the late 50s, but viewed today it's interminable padding. We see several nightclub sequences that amount to absolutely nothing, culminating in a dialogue exchange with a model “man hating lesbian” (who apparently became such after dating our “hero”) that's probably far funnier today than it would have been back then.

We don't fare too much better back in the lab. The surgeon's assistant, left with a deformed arm after an unsuccessful previous transplant attempt, seems to spend an inordinate amount of time *almost* catching the girl in her attempts to communicate with the mute creature behind a locked door (another failed experiment) and the shtick wears thin quite quickly. Ditto the voice-overs/monologues from the girl as she explores her new-found powers and then finally demonstrates them in a rather unimpressive show of power.

The movie does redeem itself and show its cult origins toward the end, however. I must admit I was rather shocked at the climax, which features 2 rather surprising displays of gore that wouldn't loom out of place in a movie made 20 years later had the movie not been in black and white. First, we see somebody get their arm ripped off. Not only is this surprising for the era, we also see an unprecedented sequence where the victim takes altogether too long to die, rubbing their bloody stump all over the place leaving a trail of blood. When the creature behind the door is finally revealed, not only does he bear an uncanny resemblance to Sloth in The Goonies, but he also has no problem biting a chunk out of someone's neck in full close-up, followed by a shot of the torn flesh that could come from any modern zombie movie you wish to name!

Overall, while the movie does wear thin at many points and feels like a 45 minute movie stretched to feature length breaking point, there's still much to recommend it. Not quite the lost classic many have claimed, it's a very useful movie to watch at least ones.

6 / 10