#leslie daniel

"PLEASE…LET ME DIE!"

I have a slightly fraught relationship with Mystery Science Theater 3000. For the most part, my feelings are highly positive: Especially in the Joel Hodgson era, the show oozes love, finds pleasure in maligned and forgotten movies, and only veers into negativity when the film is really insulting. In some cases (many, possibly even most!), MST3K renders the unwatchable watchable, opening the viewers' eyes to a whole world of production that they might otherwise consider unthinkable. Occasionally, though, I worry about some of the programming choices. I don't think that the beguiling oddity PHASE IV really deserves to be riffed upon; ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE may be ridiculous, but it knows that and enjoys itself accordingly without anyone's help; and when we get into the territory of a gorgeous work of art like DANGER: DIABOLIK!, it's really like…what the hell are you guys thinking?!

Anyway. Just in case you're worried that I'm about to try to hot take-ify the infamous BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, that's not what's going on here. This is a perfectly absurd, surprisingly gory and sleazy movie with about one page worth of original content couched in enough padding to protect it from a nuclear holocaust. It's the perfect movie for MST3K, and it's a good thing that so many people have seen it that way. Still, I think it has a little more to offer than just being mindbogglingly dumb and incompetent. A little.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, which crawled so FRANKENHOOKER could run, concerns the exploits of cold-hearted surgeon Bill Cortner (Jason Evers), who is frustrated by the cowardice of colleagues who won't let him randomly experiment on the patients who enter his operating theater. He gets a golden opportunity to dick around in God's domain when his shitty driving decapitates his fiancée Jan (Virginia Leith); he hauls her noggin off to his country estate, where he is fully prepared to preserve her consciousness until a suitable replacement body can be had. While Bill cruises strip clubs and bikini contests for transplant material, Jan discovers that his reanimation techniques have given her psychic powers, and she forms a deadly bond with a Thing (Eddie Carmel) locked in a nearby closet. The two monstrosities plot their bloody revenge amid an avalanche of exciting monologues from Jan about her horrific existence.

In spite of its astounding cheapness and its shred of a plot, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE has a certain amount of chutzpah that makes it endearing, perhaps even uplifting in some perverse way. You think for sure that when Jan wakes up in the pan, it's going to break her heart, but she immediately downshifts to righteous wrath. Virginia Leith reportedly hated this movie, but you wouldn't know it from the gumption she gives her bombastic tirades about how nothing could be more horrifying, and thus more powerful, than herself. Meanwhile, Bill encounters a string of hardboiled adult entertainers who are so streetwise, and so fiercely protective of themselves, that it's actually kind of affecting to watch this seemingly well-heeled doctor slip around their defenses with his veneer of normality in order to do something awful to them.

Adele Lamont in the much shorter, less gory, less nude cut of the movie. Always check your running times!

Of particular interest is poor Doris (Adele Lamont), implied to be a lesbian with the most beautiful body anyone has ever seen, but with a hideously scarred face courtesy of a man who she once "trusted—all the way!" It's painful to watch Bill maneuver relentlessly to gain Doris' hard-won trust, especially since they used to know one another; back in school, Bill defended the disfigured Doris from male mockery after her "accident", and now he's leveraging his heroic track record to fuck up her life even worse. Bill has a Patrick Bateman-like habit of speaking so frankly as to appear to be kidding, escaping all suspicion. He plies Doris with the promise of an experimental makeover, not-joking, "I'm gonna make your face beautiful again. Cut it off and give your body away." Finding this threat impossible to take seriously, Doris relaxes, and heads off to her potentially tragic fate. In this sequence, the padding and repetition almost work to the film's benefit; Doris tries so hard, over and over, to get rid of Bill, that you really wind up feeling like it's not her fault that he eventually bends her to his will. Especially if you've ever been worn down by an ill-intentioned man like this, you gotta feel for Doris.

"A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y." Diane Arbus, 1970

The other cast member you might feel for is the "mass of flesh" made of "broken limbs and amputated arms" that Bill keeps in the closet, played by sideshow performer Eddie Carmel. The "Jewish Giant", made most famous by Diane Arbus, is caked in makeup to make him look optimally freakish, even though "freak" was once an official job title for the actor. Carmel is an interesting guy who also held titles such as mutual funds salesman, standup comedian, and rock singer in the band Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons. He's worth looking up, even if his presence in this exploitation movie is limited to the finale.

The last thing I'll say about THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE is that it is occasionally stylish, much to my surprise. In between the endless monologues and meandering-around, there are shots that look like cinematographer Stephen Hajnal actually enjoyed setting them up—and there is occasional evidence of some form of humor, like the Grecian-style bust that foregrounds Bill's entrance to the country lab with Jan's severed head under his arm. Just because I noticed this, today I am going to find out if Jennifer Lynch's art house shocker BOXING HELENA would make a good double-bill with THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. I actually feel slightly worse about that movie, since Lynch made it when she was very young, laboring under her own immaturity and her father's towering reputation, which is apt to magnify her youthful mistakes. Somehow that feels just as grim to me as what happens to poor Doris.

Forgive my shitty picture of my TV, I have limited means here!