Underplayed Gems

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

The Brain That Wouldn't Die poster
Directed by
Joseph Green
Genre
horror film, science fiction film, exploitation film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 22m
Rated
NR
Rating
4.7 of 10 from 138 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A mad doctor keeps his fiancée's severed head alive in a lab. He also keeps a failed experiment locked in a closet.

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What happens

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (also known as The Head That Wouldn't Die) is a 1962 American science fiction horror film directed by Joseph Green and starring Jason Evers and Virginia Leith. It was written by Green and Rex Carlton. The film was completed in 1959 under the working title The Black Door but was not theatrically released until May 3, 1962, as a double feature with Invasion of the Star Creatures. The film focuses upon a mad doctor who develops a means of keeping human body parts alive. He keeps his fiancée's severed head alive for days, along with a lumbering, malformed brute (one of his earlier failed experiments) imprisoned in a closet. The specific plot device of a mad doctor who discovers a way to keep a human head alive had been used in fiction earlier (such as Professor Dowell's Head from 1925), as well as other variants on this theme. It shares several key plot devices with the West German horror film The Head (1959). The film was in the public domain in the United States from the day of its release due to a flawed copyright notice. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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