Il cervello che non voleva morire

This is wonderful over-the-top entertainment for fans of sleaze cinema. Some people apparently don't like this film because everyone in it is evil. Thankfully, that is true. There's nothing more boring than all those nice, bland heroes and heroines. Yecchh!! Our cast here is totally over-the-top "bad". Leslie Daniels in particular as the doctor's Igor-like sidekick puts on his best (or should I say worst?) Richard III impression, complete with withered hand and drawn out Shakespearean rant. A classic ham! And there's cheesecake for everyone with busty babes bursting out from every corner (as long as the doctor has to find a new body to crown his girlfriend's head on... well, who wouldn't pick the creme de la creme?). There's even a fabulous (meee-owww!) cat fight between two strippers that probably levitated a lot of audiences back in 1960. And ... RE-ANIMATOR fans will love the similarities of the angst-ridden head in the tray trying to seize a little power. So, how can anyone say this film is bad in a bad way? You want "good", go watch DONOVAN's BRAIN, a very competent but forgettable little film made several years earlier. This film is a like a mad, campy Halloween party. Leave your attitude behind, and try to enjoy it!

With all the "teasecake" in Brain (shot in 1959 but released in 1963), the locations (a loner wandering through strip clubs, swimsuit contests, a model's studio, in a convertible following and picking up women on the street) and the wolfish emphasis on full-length shots of near-naked stacked women, the movie has the sensibility and style of the men's magazines of that time (with symbolic titles like Rogue, Knave, Dude, Bachelor, Caper, etc.). It's surprising that it hasn't been remade and updated, even if only for the cable or home video market, like Not of This Earth, Little Shop of Horrors, How To Make A Monster and other B programmers. Sure it's a cheap little film but that's the fun of it.

We might call "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" a B-movie, but it actually wasn't too bad. Granted, the concept was pretty outlandish, but the movie is worth seeing (if only for sci-fi fetishists). The plot of course has Dr. Bill Cortner (Herb Evers) keeping lover Jan Compton's (Virginia Leith) decapitated head alive. The head befriends a monster (Eddie Carmel) in the closet.

Sound far-fetched? It is, but the movie's pretty cool. And I remember that Diane Arbus titled one of her photos "Jewish Giant Visiting His Parents in Brooklyn", and I think that it was Eddie Carmel in that photo. The things that we see in life...

Mystery Science Theater 3000 rescues another classic from the dust bin -- and with a new victim for the mind-melting film-watching experiments. Mr. Nelson must suffer through this movie, but we can enjoy his suffering.

Let's see -- where to begin. Slinky babes, sleezy music, severed heads, a closeted monster, a body-beautiful contest, a model who doesn't date men because she hates them all (just like the title character in KISS ME, KATE). And that's just for starters.

A man loses his wife -- well, actually he loses her body but keeps her head, see? Then, of course, since he's a mad scientist, he has to go cruising around looking for a new body so she will be a whole woman again -- 'cause he's not into anything kinky, see?

But guess what? Just like the Wolfman, this unappreciative head just wants to die. How ungrateful, huh?

The dialogue is so overly unintentionally hilarious, you must hear it to believe it, and even then it's hard to believe.

This is a surreal existential treatise that has the subtitle, "A celebration of betrayal." Throw in some sci-fi and morgue humor, and you have a classic! And the closeted monster and the drugged model live happily ever after. What other movie could give you all of this?

This movie reminds of of an old black and white horror comic --- not the good ones, like TALES FROM THE CRYPT or CREEPY, but their sleazier offshoots like NIGHTMARE. And while the film is pretty bad by normal standards, it ranks high on the whacked-out-imagination meter, and maybe even higher on the anything-to-creep-you-out chart. I mean, anyone can make a movie where a guy's arm is torn off but it takes a special brand of sicko to make him a cripple with only one good arm and then tear THAT ONE off --- AND have him stagger around the room smearing the walls with blood from his stump. Ouch. The disembodied head is also pretty creepy when you actually think about it, thanks in large part to a quite good performance by Virginia Leith. And that mutant in the closet is a seriously ugly dude.

Oh, and one other thing: Meow.