Dr. Bill Cortner (Patrick D. Green) is a brilliant scientist. He’s also quite insane. For years he has been working in the field of organ transplantation with little to no success. Then after a long awaited achievement, his celebrations are short-lived when his fiance, Jan (Rachael Perrell Fosket), loses her head in a car accident. Unprepared to lose the woman he loves, he manages to revive her head. But a head cannot live without a body, and Bill goes on a desperate mission to acquire one, no matter the costs.
Set during the sixties, and based on the 1962 film of the same name, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a fun-filled throw back to those mad scientist cinema adventures that were once so popular. The acting is as melodramatic and as over-the-top as they come, but that fits the time setting. Everything in film was way more dramatic back then; directors didn’t require their cast to be subtle, and director Derek Carl follows the same mantra here. The cast all capture that heightened acting style wonderfully and seem to be having a ball playing in this world. As Cortner, Patrick D. Green shines; he’s the archetypal charismatic mad scientist. Green’s performance is oddly reminiscent of Chris Evans’ in Not Another Teen Movie. He’s the smug, smarmy guy that all the women want to tame. Bill is also a very passionate guy and Green gets plenty of opportunity to showcase his lung capacity as Bill has a proclivity for shouting. He shouts when he’s happy, angry, frustrated, and upset. Normally this would be seen as a slight on the acting, but within the film’s parameters, it works.
For the most part, narratively speaking, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die follows the same course of the 1962 film, though Carl does add in a couple of new strands, and several new characters. He also sets the satire level to maximum and happily takes aim at some of the absurd beliefs and traditions that were the norm back then. The film’s end credits feature a series of side-by-side character comparisons between this and the original movie, which is a nice touch and perfectly demonstrates what remains the same and what has been altered.
This is a film that isn’t afraid to poke fun at itself, or the time period in which it is set. The result is a steady trickle of jokes that riff off one or the other and will have you grimacing and guffawing from one scene to another. For the times in which we are living, a film as silly as this is a very welcome thing; it’s a film in which you can disappear into and forget the troubles at your door. As fun as it is though, the pace and plot do start to drag towards the end. The narrative begins to get repetitive – how many times can Bill fail at finding a body for Jan – and the jovial tone becomes somewhat lost.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die isn’t the only mad science movie on this year’s line-up – Cyst also taps into that same mythos. Though tonally and visually rather different, the combination of the two would make for a great double-feature. With two similarly themed films on the one schedule, it appears that this once forgotten sub-genre could be on the cusp of a fully-fledged renaissance. If others are as carefree and fun as this, then they might be just what we need.
An energetic and fun throwback to the golden days of camp, kitsch, and mad scientist horror, The Brian That Wouldn’t Die is a humourful, though slightly stodgy, delight.
The Brain that Wouldn’t Die was reviewed at Arrow Video Frightfest Halloween.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
Summary
Hyper-stylised and packed full of humour, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die makes for very entertaining viewing.
