The Brain That Wouldn't Die [PG]

After an eccentric experimental surgeon crashes his car had kills his fiancé, he becomes obsessed with a crazed quest to use his transplant research to bring her back. Taking her severed head from the wreck, he injects an improved serum into her brain keeping it, and her, alive for a time. With time against him, he determines to find her a body on which to transplant her head and make her whole again. But, unbeknownst to him, she develops strong powers that enable her to hear his thoughts and command the mutated and evil creature, a failed result of his experiments, he keeps locked in the closet. 

In a word, weird… just… really, really weird. I agree that B movies of this sort of ilk can be made entertaining and humorous and even enjoyable; just look at Roger Corman’s movies. But The Brain That Wouldn’t Die just doesn’t really cut it. 

First of all, the story is a bit of a muddle, seeming like it’s been completely constructed around the loose idea of this functioning head and brain without a body. Right from the get-go you have to suspend, no actually really forego, your belief because nothing really in this movie makes any sense whatsoever and the major area where it fails is where everyone sort of becomes a villain and as such, writer/director Joseph Green sort of comes a cropper when it gets to the climax of the film and he realises that there is no way to bring about a solid ending. We’re left with this abrupt and completely unfulfilling climax/ending that just leaves you staring at the screen in a state of deep-seated ‘wtf?’ 

On a more positive note, the performances of the greater portion of the cast were quite solid with hats off to Anthony La Penna who delivers some pretty dramatic and invested monologues. 

I would have liked to have seen a stronger performance from our leading mad scientist, Jason Evers, who just seems to saunter through the movie. He delivers charm where charm is needed, but during the scenes of intense concentration or obsession, he just becomes wooden and it’s not very captivating to say the least. 

For the most part, the camera direction and mise-en-scene is ok, but there are scenes where Green tries to do something fun and different with the camera, such as having it handheld to convey the drunken walk of a drugged victim or from the point of view of the dying captive in the burning car, neither of which work at all and just end up looking clumsy. 

Starring Virginia Leith, Adele Lamond, Bonnie Sharie, Paula Maurice, Bruce Brighton, Audrey Devereal, Eddie Carmel, and Lola Mason, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a really strange flick that just doesn’t quite make the mark. I think the major problem is that the content is so weird with the potential to make a very humorous B-grade cult flick, but unlike the fun horror of Roger Corman, this one tried to take itself a bit seriously and, as such, failed. Filled with gore, drama, ‘suspense’, and ‘horror’, it’s not a movie that I’m going to watch again any time soon.