The Brain That Wouldn't Die!

The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a humdinger of a low-rent movie. Essentially this is a 50's beat generation variation on the classic Frankenstein theme.

We meet our obligatory mad scientist Dr.Bill Cortner played with a calm mania by Jason Evers. He is the privileged son of a successful surgeon and a rising talent himself, but he is encumbered with a pronounced "God complex". He and his best girl Jan Compton (Virginia Leith) are driving to his vacation house which holds his secret experiments when a car wreck seemingly kills her. Rescuing her head from the wreckage he scampers to his house and then works to connect it to his secret formula which allows the head alone to live.

We soon meet his assistant Kurt (Leslie Daniels), a mutilated scientist who is desperate to get his injured arm healed and we encounter a secret  and exceedingly monstrous creation hidden behind a large wooden door. While the assistant talks to the unhappy head, our mad doctor slinks around the town going to one strip club after another looking for the "perfect body". He's pretty picky and has to abandon one potential dame after another when he is unable to get away with her without someone else being aware. His exceedingly creepy trolling for girls is perhaps the most unsettling detail in a movie filled with mutant monsters, twisted limbs, and severed heads. Eventually he finds the right girl, but by then his girlfriend has used her telepathic abilities to frustrate his mad schemes.

This one is an absolute hoot, a classic low-rent and low-brow offering which offers up the usual mishmash of overwrought dialogue. To bother to pick at the lack of reasonable motivation by many of the characters is a waste of time as most of the things they do are meant merely to keep the narrative plugging along. The special effects are pretty grisly by and large but lame enough to keep any real sense of gore at bay.

I'll have to give this movie some credit though for presenting in its lead character, played by Evers, one of the most unredeemingly dreadful human beings ever portrayed on the big screen. This guy cares for no one else but himself at any single moment in the movie, and when he gets his just reward, as he must, the lout is completely deserving. 

This is not a movie I'd probably watch again, at least until I forget that I saw it the first time.

Rip Off