The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962)
When surgical nurse Jan Compton is tragically killed in a car crash, her fiancé Dr Bill Cortner retrieves her severed head and keeps it alive by means of highly unorthodox (!) and ethically iffy experiments. Despite Jan's protestations, he then sets out to find a suitable body for her, by any bloody means necessary…
With its low budget, outrageous premise, and a lurid title promising all manner of exploitative thrills, the most shocking thing about The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is that it’s actually a deceptively thoughtful B-movie. Opening with a woman’s disembodied voice pleading ‘let me die, let me die’, the screenplay by Rex Carlton and director Joseph Green ruminates on some big and interesting ideas. While it can’t claim to be a feminist film, The Brain nonetheless has some feminist themes throughout it - such as bodily autonomy, patriarchal oppression, societal beauty standards and, perhaps most pointedly, the literal objectification of women. Other ideas thrown into the mix include self-determination, free will and the right to die. Even though Jan (Virginia Leith) spends most of the film as a disembodied head on a laboratory workbench, she exhibits active agency and is the most head-strong (pun intended) character, absolutely determined to reclaim control over her own life. Leith delivers a fabulous performance, deftly conveying Jan’s despair, rage and eventual unhinged desire for revenge.
With its central idea of a surgeon who resurrects the severed head of his dead wife and keeps her alive against her will, the film is entrenched in Frankensteinian ideas about morality, mad science and man-playing-God. There are indeed echoes of other ‘mad surgeon’ films throughout – including Eyes Without a Face, The Witch’s Mirror and Frankenhooker - in which male characters, mired in guilt, become obsessed with surgically correcting an injury (or death) they have caused to a woman (usually a daughter, wife or girlfriend). Eventually their drive becomes more selfish and less about obtaining redemption for themselves, or health and happiness for their patient. Science can be advanced; careers can be furthered. Before long, the woman simply becomes objectified, an inconvenient living reminder to the surgeon of his failures and inadequacy.
Bill (Jason Evers) garners little sympathy with his selfish and reckless deeds. Even before the accident that killed Jan, he was gaining a dodgy reputation because of his outlandish theories and research. He was at odds with, and in competition with, his father (Bruce Brighton), also a renowned surgeon, who cautioned him about his research. After the accident, when Bill has retrieved Jan’s head from the burning wreckage and set up a secret lab in his country house – lots of bubbling test-tubes and glass tubes filled with liquids – he is cautioned again by his assistant Kurt (Leslie Daniel). Kurt was part of earlier failed experiments of Bill’s and no longer has the use of his injured arm. He talks about the soul and his belief that it inhabits the brain and the heart, but he also has some very dated opinions about living with a disability. There’s also another ‘failed experiment’ who is confined to a locked room in the lab and is really not happy about it…
When Bill decides to find a body for Jan, despite her insisting she just wants to die, ideas regarding the male gaze and the impossible beauty standards women are held to come to the fore. Bill visits various exotic dance clubs and browses the performers like he’s flicking through a catalogue. He literally drives around in search of the perfect body, ogling women as they walk by. He comes across a beauty pageant - ‘Miss Body Beautiful’ - and encounters former acquaintance Doris Powell (Adele Lamont), an artist and model. Even though Doris, who tells Bill ‘I don’t date men’, is self-assured and in control of her own life and career, Bill still manages to prey on her insecurities regarding her appearance - she has a scar on her face which he promises to heal. As a gay woman, she is of no use to Bill, who has started to view women only in terms of his own needs and wants, making her a perfect candidate for his planned surgery to provide Jan with a body. Despite the clunky editing, overly frantic score and uneven performances, these moments are shocking – not least when he spikes her drink – and all-too prescient in the midst of today's epidemic of violence against women and girls.
Just a year before the film’s release, Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days (1961) was performed for the first time, and shares some striking similarities in terms of themes and the literal and figurative confinement of a female character. It centres on Winnie, a woman buried under mounds of earth, who reminisces about better days. While she’s not quite a disembodied head, Winnie, like Jan, represents a woman whose free will is severely limited by her physical and existential circumstances. Many years later, Jennifer Lynch would tackle similar ideas in her darkly twisted fairy tale, Boxing Helena (1993), the titular character of which is the obsession of a surgeon who removes her arms and legs and places her on a shrine to admire.
As events hurtle clunkily towards a fiery climax, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die fulfils its trashy promise of exploitation and tawdry gruesomeness. However, that it does so in such a weirdly thought-provoking way, speaks to the wealth of ideas it considers – intentionally or not – throughout its story. There’s even a disarming moment of poignancy. When Jan reflects ‘People fear what they don’t understand’ it’s like she’s speaking directly to us, the audience, in 2025.
