The Brain That Wouldn't Die

Directed, Screenplay by Joseph Green

Original Story by: Rex Carlton and Joseph Green

Starring: Herb Evers
          Virginia Leith
        Leslie Daniels

‘Let me die . . . Let me Die,’ a female voice begs before the opening credits even roll on this claimed-to-be sci-fi classic.

A surgeon tires of losing patients by doing everything ‘in the books.’ He wants to do more, experimenting with immoral, unethical and thought-to-be-impossible procedures and transplants.

When his girlfriend is fatally injured in a car accident, he is able to save her decapitated head and bring her brain back to the living. Keeping her brain alive he searches for a suitable body to transplant her head onto. Not only to save his girlfriend, but to prove his ideas right.

A lot of people have great things to say about this film, some of them may be right.

For a low budget 1962 affair, the production values are very good. It is a very well made and directed film. The script is more inventive then it is good, somewhat lacking at times in depth and characterization.

The script feels more like a starting point, then a finished piece. It doesn’t really serve Evers and Leith that well. The story feels more like a concept then a fleshed out completed piece. The characterization isn’t as deep or complex enough for Evers as it should be, with his character being more of a stock ‘Mad Scientist.’ Other characters are more one-dimensional, mostly throw-away and barely in the film.

It is not that the script is bad, just average and needed some work.

The highlight of this film for me is Virginia Leith’s performance. For the majority of the film we only see her head on a table, after all she was killed early on. Leith had no use of her body, drastically limited mobility, and could only uses her facial expressions for her performance.

With these limitations put on her she does a very fine job of portraying a character who at first begs for death and then descends into madness and lust for vengeance and develops mental powers.

The biggest drawback with the film is its similarities to The Brain, released around the same time, and Donovan’s Brain, released a few years earlier and based upon the Clifford Sidomak Novel.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Is this a sci-fi classic? Not really. In the end it is an underwhelmingly average movie that doesn’t quite get to the level it should have.

RATING: 5.5