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Customer Reviews of The Brain That Wouldn't Die/Amazing Transparent Man

Head, Anyone?
THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE was considered so distasteful in 1959 that several cuts and the passage of three years was required before it was released in 1962. Today it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have taken the thing seriously even in 1959; the thing is both lurid and lewd, but it is also incredibly ludicrous in a profoundly bumptious sort of way. <
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>The story, of course, concerns a doctor who is an eager experimenter in transplanting limbs--and when his girl friend is killed in a car crash he rushes her head to his secret lab. With the aid of a few telephone cords, a couple of clamps, and what looks very like a shallow baking pan, he brings her head back to life. But is she grateful? Not hardly. In fact, she seems mightily ticked off about the whole thing, particularly when it transpires that the doctor plans to attach her head to another body. <
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>As it happens, the doctor is picky about this new body: he wants one built for speed, and he takes to cruising disconcerted women on city sidewalks, haunting strip joints, visiting body beautiful contests, and hunting down cheesecake models in search of endowments that will raise his eyebrow. But back at the lab, the head has developed a chemically-induced psychic link with another one of the doctor's experiments, this one so hideous that it is kept locked out of sight in a handly laboratory closet. Can they work together to get rid of the bitter and malicious lab assistance, wreck revenge upon the doctor, and save the woman whose body he hankers for? Could be! <
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>Leading man Jason Evers plays the rougeish doctor as if he's been given a massive dose of spanish fly; Virginia Leith, the unhappy head, screeches and cackles in spite of the fact that she has no lungs and maybe not even any vocal chords. Busty babes gyrate to incredibly tawdry music, actors make irrational character changes from line to line, the dialogue is even more nonsensical than the plot, and you'll need a calculator to add up the continuity goofs. On the whole THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE comes off as even more unintentionally funny than an Ed Wood movie. <
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>Director Joseph Green actually manages to keep the whole thing moving at pretty good clip, and looking at the film today it is easy to pick out scenes that influenced later directors, who no doubt saw the thing when they were young and impressionable and never quite got over it. The cuts made before the film went into release are forever lost, but the cuts made for television have been restored in the Alpha release, and while the film and sound quality aren't particularly great it's just as well to recall that they probably weren't all that good to begin with. <
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>Now, this is one of those movies that you'll either find incredibly dull or wildly hilarious, depending on your point of view, so it is very hard to give a recommendation. But I'll say this: if your tastes run to the likes of Ed Wood or Russ Meyers, you need to snap this one up and now! Four stars for its cheesey-bizarreness alone!

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Head of it's class!
One of the best of the head-in-a-box genre (see also "The Head" (1959) Victor Trivas, dir; "The Frozen Dead" (1966) starring Dana Andrews) this particular movie is enlivened by the relentless saxophone score and the notion of a man out shopping for bodies for his decapitated fiancee at strip clubs. Hey! Might as well have the best! <
>The story is straightforward and stupid: a car crash decapitates the fiancee, so of course the only rational response to this predicament is to keep her head alive in a box in the basement. Why couldn't he keep her body alive, too, then just stitch them back together? Well, the scientist boyfriend must have lost his head because he didn't think about this course of action. Or many he was thinking with his little head and seized the opportunity to create a more bodilicious girlfriend with some cut and paste action! <
>Anyway, the girlfriend gets jealous...watch out for a woman scorned! "No baby, it's not like that. I was at the strip club looking for new bodies for you!" Yeah right try that out around MY house and see what happens. Anyway, the plan goes awry and the nasty humanoid critter gets out of the closet (Ohhh I'm in a cold sweat over that one) and the movie finally ends. And not with the expected bang, either. <
>Fabulous hideous terrible schlock. Highly recommended!!

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The stereotype that wouldn't die
Any movie of this genre is by definition already a mediocre film, and the makeup, dialogue, (and in this film the sound synchronization) work well to preserve the stereotype. Because of this, it easy to overlook the film's real highlights. <
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>As a cultural artifact this film is pretty progressive. The elements of sex and gore are surprisingly avant-garde for 1959 and still remain very effective. The plot is also very concrete, as the film doesn't bite off more than it can chew. However, probably the greatest highlight is the cinematography. The driving scene in the beginning uses cameras planted low to the ground on the sides of the car, and really give a sense of the winding course and speed of the car and the sudden shock of the accident. A steep-sloping camera angle soon afterward emphasizes the difficulty the Doctor faces walking up the long staircase to his front door. Handheld, unfocused cameras communicate a feeling of dizziness with amazing effectiveness in a later scene where the doctor druggs the model with sleeping pills. Also, the use of lighting in the dance club scenes are particularly interesting. <
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>This film breaks a lot of interesting ground, but the sophisticated aspects of this film are eclipsed by the unprofessional nature of the genre itself. Perhaps this is the wrong kind of movie for the right kind of director.