The MST3K episode was released on VHS by Rhino Home Video in 1996 and as a single-disc DVD in April 2000 the uncut version of the original movie was also included as a bonus feature. Writer Jim Vorel ranked the episode considerably lower, at #125 in his ranking of MST3K's 191 episodes, saying, "It’s a dark, fairly ugly movie with extremely cheap sets, but Mike’s presence puts the crew into an upbeat, energetic state that contrasts nicely with it." In a poll of Bring Back MST3K Kickstarter backers, which raised money for an eleventh season of the show, The Brain that Wouldn't Die was ranked #23. Jan in the Pan is the nickname given to the female lead by the characters on the show. This film was the first movie watched by Mike Nelson in Mystery Science Theater 3000, after he replaced Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson) on the series. The film was featured in episode 513 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. In December 2015, Shout! Factory released a Blu-ray edition of the uncut film, with a high-definition transfer taken from the negative. ![]() Running 85 minutes, this version features more of the stripper catfight, as well as some extra gore. Home media Īn uncut, 35 mm print was used in the Special Edition release by Synapse Films in 2002. The movie was picked up for release by AIP and released in 1962 on a double bill with Invasion of the Star Creatures. The main theme, titled "The Web", was composed by Abe Baker and Tony Restaino and was noted for creating a sinister mood. He was the subject of a photograph by Diane Arbus, titled "The Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970". The monster in the closet was played, in his first cinematic role, by Eddie Carmel, a well-known Mandatory Palestine-born circus performer, who worked under the name "The Jewish Giant". Some prints of the film use both the opening title The Brain That Wouldn't Die and the closing title The Head That Wouldn't Die. The title was later changed to The Head That Wouldn't Die. The film was shot independently around Tarrytown, New York, in 1959 under the working title The Black Door. The screen goes black, followed by Jan's maniacal cackle, welcoming her long awaited death. As the lab goes up in flames, Jan says "I told you to let me die". Bill dies, and the monster carries the unconscious Doris to safety. The monster, a seven-foot giant with a horribly deformed head, bites a chunk from Bill's neck. Their struggles set the laboratory ablaze. When Bill goes to quiet the monster, it grabs Bill through the hatch and breaks the door from its hinges. Jan protests Bill's plan to transplant her head onto Doris's body. He drugs her and carries her to the laboratory. Kurt dies from his injuries.īill lures an old girlfriend, figure-model Doris Powell, to his house, promising to study her scarred face for plastic surgery. When Kurt leaves a hatch in the cell door unlocked, the monster grabs and tears off Kurt's arm. Jan begins communicating telepathically with a hideous mutant, an experiment gone wrong, locked in a laboratory cell. ![]() ![]() He hunts for a suitable specimen at a burlesque nightclub, on the streets, and at a beauty-contest. He ignores her pleas, and she grows to resent him.īill decides to commit murder to obtain a body for Jan. But Jan's new existence is agony, and she begs Bill to let her die. ![]() He and his crippled assistant Kurt revive the head in a liquid-filled tray. Bill recovers her severed head and rushes to his country house basement laboratory. While driving to his family's country house, Bill and his beautiful fiancée Jan Compton become involved in a car-accident that decapitates her. Bill Cortner saves a patient who had been pronounced dead, but the senior surgeon, Bill's father, condemns his son's unorthodox methods and theories of transplanting. The film was in the public domain in the United States from the day of its release due to a flawed copyright notice. It shares several key plot devices with the West German horror film The Head (1959). 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. 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 film focuses upon a mad doctor who develops a means of keeping human body parts alive. The film was completed in 1959 under the working title The Black Door but was not theatrically released until May 3, 1962, under its new title as a double feature with Invasion of the Star Creatures. The Brain That Wouldn't Die (also known as The Head That Wouldn't Die or The Brain That Couldn't Die) is a 1962 American science fiction horror film directed by Joseph Green and written by Green and Rex Carlton.
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