"The Brain That Wouldn't Die" -1962.

Tagline: "It's madness, not science!" Why can't it be both?

Let's talk poster: This one is a bit light, actually. The assistant with the gibbled arm

is nowhere to be seen and they missed a great opportunity to showcase a catfight between two strippers.

My biggest complaint is the brain souffle in the background. The only brain that is ever visible is still inside a guy's head

and that's at the very beginning of the movie. Sorry poster people, you only get a C+.

Plot: The arrogant Dr. (there's another kind?) Bill Cortner performs many...shall we say "groundbreaking"...medical experiments.

This doesn't sit well with his father, the surgeon. Bill's specialty? "Transplantation and electric regeneration." Bill's dad (on the left)

doesn't like having to cover for his son when corpses and recently amputated limbs start to go missing. But Bill needs parts to practise his craft, and you can't make an omelette (or a brain souffle) without breaking a few eggs. Bill has even practised on his assistant, Kurt,

who was once a surgeon himself until he got a boo-boo. Kurt is a titch worried about Bill's newest experiment, a monster built from assorted parts that is kept locked behind a (presumably strong) door

in the basement of a house deep in the "woods". A phone call from Kurt sends Bill and his temporarily full-bodied fiancee Jan hurtling down country roads

at fiancee-decapitating speeds. Sure enough, moments later there is the most unrealistic car crash in the history of cinema

and Bill is sent flying through the windshield (maybe) and rolling down two different hills

at the same time. He then stumbles his way down the hill (the car went further than he did, I guess) and sees (we are to assume) his headless girlfriend still seated in the car.

 Bill gets himself a little head (giggle!)

and scootches himself off to the conveniently close house in the "woods". There, Kurt is disappointed to find that Bill hasn't brought him fresh watermelon

but instead the detached (but otherwise unscathed) head of Bill's fiancee. Great! More work for Kurt! Using a new mystery serum that somehow provides ample oxygen without lungs, Bill soon turns his fiancee from Jan to Jan In The Pan.

Bill then wastes no time looking for an attractive female body to put under Jan In The Pan's pan. After all, he only has "48 to 50 hours" before the head dies...in spite of the title. Upon awakening, Jan In The Pan immediately notices two things: 1- she hates Bill for not letting her die, and 2- she has telekinetic abilities and can communicate with the monster behind the door.

That, dear reader (no "s"), is a recipe for disaster. Which reminds me, I'm going to make my own recipe for a casserole and name it "Disaster", just so people will say "Have you seen my recipe for Disaster?" Anyway, Bill is out shopping for sluts,

so he heads (giggle!) down to the local strip club.

He gets more than he bargained for and high tails it out of there.

Meanwhile Jan In The Pan is honing her telekinetic abilities and chatting with the monster. She becomes obsessed with seeing the monster and orders it to weaken the door. Jan In The Pan is also having a tête-à-tête (sorry, couldn't resist) with Kurt,

who is disgusted with Bill's unholy experiments. It's easy for her to get under Kurt's skin. Bill checks out the local streets

for a from-the-head-down kind of girlfriend and bumps into one he knows.

Just as he is about to drive off with her another woman shows up and invites herself along. Bummer! On the bright side, they are going to a "Miss Body Beautiful" competition

(I have already picked the winner)

and Bill soon finds himself alone with a model

who only does body photos because of her disfigurement.

Score! Bill explains that he can fix her face and soon she is convinced.

They leave a note for her friend (Bill "writes" one for her)

and Bill manages to drive to the house without decapitating anyone. Meanwhile, it's supper time at the ranch (ooh! Disaster casserole! My favourite!) and Kurt gets sloppy while feeding the monster, which doesn't end well for Kurt.

                                         ("No! My arm! Not that!")

Kurt staggers around for a while, finds his way upstairs and realises his gibbled arm is not useful for opening the door.

So he sits in a chair to collect his thoughts,

 decides against doing the crossword, and elects to go downstairs to die quietly. That makes me sad, because you may have thought Kurt was a bad guy, but he's perfectly armless. (Boo! Hiss!) Bill arrives moments later with his unwitting body.

Strange that there isn't blood everywhere, including the chair Kurt was just sitting in. Huh. Anyway, Bill offers to mix a drink for his new friend and finds Kurt dead downstairs. Oops. But he forges ahead (giggle!) with his plans and fixes the drink

(which amounts to pouring booze into a glass, apparently) and adds a little something for flavour. And to knock her out.

If I had a nickel for every woman who was carried around unconscious in a B-movie, I could invent a time machine, buy a spear gun, go back in time and stop William Castle from making "13 Frightened Girls". I'd be a hero. Anyway, Bill brings Miss Body downstairs to operate.

Jan In The Pan begins to argue with Bill so he puts a single piece of tape over her mouth.

Silly Billy! Jan In The Pan doesn't need to speak to the monster! Bill wanders too near the door
and....BLAMMO!

Which is why I never wander too close to the door where I keep enormous undead creatures.

The monster knocks over something flammable

while struggling with Bill, bites a chunk off his neck

and leaves him for dead. (Eeewww! Gross!)

Monster or not, he's still a guy, so he picks up the nearly naked Miss Body

and scootches on up the stairs, leaving Jan In The Pan to become Jan In The Pan Roast.

Jan leaves us with her words of wisdom "I told you you should have let me die!" and we fade to black as Jan giggles merrily.

Things I learned from this movie: 1- it was filmed in 13 days, largely in the basement of a New York Hotel...and it shows, 2- the monster was a very large man by the name of Eddie Carmel. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel he gained the nickname "The Jewish Giant" but he grew up in The Bronx.

At 7' 6" he was already fearsome without the goofy makeup.

Like so many very large people, Eddie was also very gentle. Carmel has been quoted as expressing regret that he couldn't be taken seriously as an actor because of his size. One quote is: "I'd like someday to reach the point when I'm known as the reverse Mickey Rooney". That day never came for him, as he died at the young age of 37 from the pituitary illness that gave him his massive size and kyphoscoliosis (abnormal curvature of the spine). Eddie is seen here with his parents in a photo taken by famed photographer Diane Arbus,

3- Virginia Leith hated this movie so much she refused to return to complete her post-production voice-over work. Many of those lines were done by the actress who played the nurse (on the right)

at the beginning of the movie, 4- filmed in 1959, but because the censors were having a field day with the blood and sexual references, not released until 1962,

5- if you're a surgeon and your patient dies you are apparently allowed to experiment on his corpse without consequence, 6- ironically, the things that make Bill a mad doctor in this movie (replacing limbs, reanimating dead tissue) are fairly common practise now,

7- they must have filmed the shots with Bill hooking up his beakers last, since one beaker has a cotton stopper instead of a rubber one,

 8- apparently that serum also makes you speak like Lady MacBeth.

It's time! Let's play "Guess That Mess"!

If you guessed the photo of Michael Jackson didn't belong, you are correct! You have won a half-eaten tuna sandwich and a copy of my own B-movie:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfKr81y4JRM

And if you prefer to laugh at bloopers instead of really crappy movies try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-wpR4sC7dY
but be warned, there's a disturbing scene of a fat guy without a shirt.