Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Brain That Wouldn't Die

(1962) ***


Mad scientist Dr. Bill Cortner has been hard at work developing drugs designed to prevent tissue rejection during limb transplants. His unethical methods have yielded messy results, including a growling creature heard but not seen behind a locked door in the laboratory. While speeding down winding roads with his fiancĂ©e, Jan, one day, he crashes his car. Bill is fine but Jan is decapitated. A funeral is held and everyone is sad. Just kidding. Bill takes Jan’s head back to his laboratory and in true Herbert West style keeps her alive on a tray (this is actually pretty gross for 1962 standards) with the intention of finding a hot girl to murder so he can attach Jan’s head to the body. Jan is actually opposed to this plan and spends her time being pissed at Bill while formulating an escape plan with the creature behind the door. Meanwhile Bill finds his body donor, convinces her to come back to his place, and drugs her.

Then some bad stuff happens.

Wow, what a gem of a find! The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is great, stupid fun. This is classic “mad scientist” stuff. The fx are decent and overall the film is fairly graphic. It’s obvious that elements of Re-Animator were taken from this film including Herbert West’s sour mad scientist. This is the first film from my 50-Chiller-Movies pack that was worthy of the $20 purchase. So bad it’s wonderful.

The creature behind the door is finally revealed.



Don't take my word for it, watch a clip:
The Brain That Wouldn't Die

7 comments:

Johnny Sweatpants said...

"Don't take my word for it, watch a clip!"

- You are such a cheeseball, I love it! You should seriously consider a career change in informercials!

Octopunk said...

Yet another movie that's been given the MST3K treatment! Amazing. This movie was in the first episode that featured Mike in the main seat instead of Joel, and they often referred back to "Jan in a Pan" after screening it.

The main character is a classic basement scientist; he does all his revolutionary work with one table and some test tubes. And of course the locked room for his hideous mistakes.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Mary Jo Pehl had her first (rather grating) screen appearance as Jan. Then she went on to be Nuwena and Clayton's mom and other annoying characters. (Unless I'm mixing her up with the thin Best Brains girl.)

Are you guys allowed to tread where the SOL has gone?

Octopunk said...

Oh, sure! A lot of those movies are in the Horrorthon tradition. You just can't watch them with Joel/Mike and the bots, as it dimishes the required suffering.

I don't really have the gumption to watch MST3K-treated movies without the little silhouetted guys, so I don't do it.

Anonymous said...

"required suffering" -- you guys crack me up

50PageMcGee said...

having watched thon movies with octo and with summerisle, bad ones, companionship is the only thing that gets you through. question is this, which one of us is servo, which on is crow and which one is mike/joel?

Johnny Sweatpants said...

I've never seen an episode of MST in my life but I think I'm ready!

Malevolent

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