The Brain That Wouldn't Die
August. 10,1962 NRDr. Bill Cortner and his fiancée, Jan Compton, are driving to his lab when they get into a horrible car accident. Compton is decapitated. But Cortner is not fazed by this seemingly insurmountable hurdle. His expertise is in transplants, and he is excited to perform the first head transplant. Keeping Compton's head alive in his lab, Cortner plans the groundbreaking yet unorthodox surgery. First, however, he needs a body.
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Reviews
Fantastic!
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Director: JOSEPH GREEN. Screenplay: Joseph Green. Additional dialogue: Doris Brent. Story: Rex Carlton, Joseph Green. Photography: Stephen Hajnal. Film editors: Leonard Anderson, Marc Anderson. Art director: Paul Fanning. Make-up: George Fiala. Special effects: Byron Baer. Property man: Walter Pluff jr. Camera operator: John S. Priestley. Gaffer: Vincent Delaney. Grip: John Haupt jr. Script supervisor: Eva Blair. Assistants to producer: Linda Brent, James Gealis. Production manager: Alfred H. Lessner. Assistant director: Tony LaMarca. Sound recording: Emil Kolisch, Robert E. Lessner. Producer: Rex Carlton.Not copyrighted by Rex Carlton Productions. U.S. release in May 1962 through American-International. No recorded New York opening. No recorded U.K. release. Never theatrically released in Australia. 82 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A surgeon robs graves to obtain organs for his transplant experiments.NOTES: Location scenes filmed near Tarrytown, New York, in 1959. First of three movies directed by minor film distributor Joseph Green, and the only one on which he receives a writing credit. COMMENT: Despite the presence of the lovely Virginia Leith in the title role and a joyful assemblage of other nice girls, this emerges as an el-cheapo horror flick with a few gory moments, lots of time-wasting chit-chat and extremely limited production values. Steadfastly slow, cop-out direction doesn't help either. However, the dialogue is sometimes unintentionally hilarious and this has given the movie a certain bottom-rung status on the cult circuit.
This is a cheap and cheerful horror entry from 1962 that could easily have been made twenty years earlier, where huge swathes of conversational plot contrivances are passed between static characters in virtually blank sets. With echoes of Frankenstein, this story alerts us to the experiments of accomplished Doctor Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) who may or may not have been stealing amputated limbs from the hospital in which he works, to further his mysterious efforts. When his fiancé appears and pours herself all over him (still in the same scant hospital set) and says "There is nothing that can keep us apart," you hope against hope that nothing disastrous will befall the young couple.Yet, the plot is cruel, and pretty soon an appalling and awkwardly (cheaply) staged car crash occurs that tragically separates Jan's head from the rest of her. Worry not, for love conquers all and soon, her bandage wrapped head, fully made-up you understand, is brought back to life while Doctor Bill finds her another body.My tone is glib, of course. And while I am a nobody who will never amount to anything, the people behind this film have recorded something that will live on on celluloid – however, the tone here is never entirely serious. Although it is played straight – possibly too straight – and the imagery is occasionally gruesome (indeed, this was completed in 1959 but claims of its 'tastelessness' delayed its release for three years), there is a drive-in Saturday afternoon, tongue-in-cheek quality to this designed, it seems to me, to make teenagers groan and roll their eyes whilst enjoying every earnest moment.
We just saw this for the first time today,on Comet TV. It was disturbing to me only in the fact that the head transplant is really going to be done! See here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37420905/the-surgeon-who- wants-to-perform-a-head-transplant-by-2017 (freakin lunatics!- The Dr even looks creepy!)Otherwise, a cheesy sci fi with cheesecake. It seemed like a long movie for some reason. Maybe it was boring in some parts and move too slow. I would not say it is kid friendly. A little gore and little too sexy in some scenes.Good for a rainy Saturday or a Halloween weekend.
I was two when I saw this movie and it scared me so badly I was afraid of closets, and people with covers up to their neck. I had a few nightmares but soon got over the scare. I think that movie is what made me so weird, I like telling scary stories just to see if I can scare the crap out of someone. I usually do. The creepy things that hide in the shadows of the closet. The movie was in my memory but I couldn't remember all of it. I was unable to sleep one night and there it was on Sci-Fi, and I got a good laugh at it, not believing that I had ever been afraid of the movie. In so many ways it's so third rate it isn't even funny. It's also very corny. Now if they were to do it today and take way the ridicules dialog it could work. Maybe get Kane Hodder to be the monster in the closet.