Behind the Couch

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...

1965 Dir. Daniel Haller Loosely based on HP Lovecraft’s short story The Colour Out of Space , Die Monster Die revolves around hunky All-American scientist Stephen Reinhart, who travels to England to visit the family home of his fiancé, Susan Witley. He discovers the locals shun the Witley place and eventually happens upon the source of the family’s spooky reputation around town; Mr Witely (Boris Karloff) has hidden a luridly glowing meteor in his basement, and is using its radioactivity in hideous experiments on plant and animal life. Horrific consequences ensue, particularly when it becomes apparent the house’s occupants have been affected by the meteor too… When Lovecraft was writing The Colour Out of Space (1927) his intention was to fashion a story which dealt with something entirely outside of human experience or comprehension. The titular colour is eventually revealed to be a living entity and the horror Lovecraft weaves not only seeps out of the colour’s effect on the ...

In 1967 Michael Reeves directed The Sorcerers , a curious blend of horror and sci-fi in which Boris Karloff stars as an ailing scientist who creates a device that enables him to control the mind of a young man and share the sensations of his experiences. It isn’t long before the scientist’s wife, drunk on power and obsessed with experiencing new things, begins to indulge her increasingly perverse desires, including murder. The original story and screenplay was conceived and written by John Burke; however when Reeves and Tom Baker re-wrote sections of it at Karloff's behest, Burke’s credit as screenwriter was relegated to ‘Based on an idea by.’ This ‘error’ was eventually corrected in Benjamin Halligan's 2003 biography of Reeves. It is also the raison d’être for a new book by Johnny Mains, an award winning editor, biographer, horror film historian and renowned authority on the vintage horror anthology series, The Pan Book of Horror Stories . The Sorcerers by John Burke det...

1982 Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace When a distraught man carrying a creepy Halloween mask is brutally murdered in his hospital bed, Dr Dan Challis teams up with the victim’s daughter to find out why. Their investigation leads them to the small Southern Californian town of Santa Mira and the bizarre Silver Shamrock toy factory. The snoopy duo soon discovers that the company’s sinister director has a diabolical plan involving ancient Celtic witchcraft, Stonehenge mysticism and booby-trapped Halloween masks to cull America’s kiddie population. Not a sequel in the strictest sense of the term, Halloween III often gets a raw deal from critics and fans of the series. In an attempt to bring something fresh and interesting to the franchise, producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill planned to produce an anthology of films using the Halloween title and featuring different stories set in and around All Hallow’s Eve. As such, Halloween III: Season of the Witch bears no relation to the prior inst...

1940 Dir. Jean Yarbrough Dr Paul Carruthers (Bela Lugosi) devises a plan to extract revenge on his employers, the owners of a cosmetics company, whom he believes have exploited and betrayed him, getting rich on a product he created. Concocting a new aftershave (!), he offers it to the sons of his employers and then releases an electrically enlarged bat, trained to hone in on the distinct aftershave (!!), and slaughter its wearer. The series of mysterious deaths sparks the interest of roving reporter Johnny Layton (David O’Brien) and photographer, One-Shot McGuire. The two set out to investigate the murders and put a stop to the diabolical mastermind orchestrating them, before they too become victims of the ‘death-diving’ giant bat. The Devil Bat was produced by PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), one of the more modest production studios of Hollywood’s ‘Poverty Row.’ PRC produced mainly low budget B-movies, particularly horror films, westerns and melodramas. The film compris...

1933 Dir. Frank Strayer A small German village is plagued by a number of mysterious deaths, all of which leave the victims drained of blood. The town elders suspect the work of vampires and a number of large vampire bats are spotted in the area. Sceptical Police Inspector Karl Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) suspects the work of a psychotic serial killer who needs the blood drained from his victims for some sort of bizarre experiment… Is he right? Well, he’s not wrong. The Vampire Bat is a surprisingly entertaining piece of schlock that also stars Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Aside from the big names attached to it, the film’s only other notable trait is that is was one of the first films to attempt to capitalise on the success of Universal’s horror epics Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). It mixes elements from both these films (and a slew of others) to intriguing, but arguably unmemorable effect. The somewhat loose story ambles along briskly enough and there are a couple...

1960 Dir. Georges Franju Christiane (Edith Scob) is horrifically disfigured in a car accident caused by her father's reckless driving. Her father, famed surgeon Dr Génessier, is driven by guilt and despair to abduct young women, surgically remove their faces and attempt to graft them onto Christiane’s own scarred face. When Christiane realises what her father is doing, she decides that the time has come to show him that he cannot control everything… This was Franju’s feature film debut. Preceding it was a series of short films and documentaries, notably The Blood of the Beasts , a documentary about an abattoir. While not the first film to follow the exploits of a deranged surgeon, Eyes Without a Face was certainly the first to do so in such a poetic, provocative and literate way. It addresses notions of identity, morality, obsession and hope. Written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, writers whose earlier work such as Celle Qui N’Etart Plus and D’entre les Morts had ...

1963 Dir. Roger Corman After his exquisite, highly literate Poe adaptations ( House of Usher, Premature Burial and The Pit and The Pendulum ) Corman returned to directing with this cautionary tale of dangerous curiosity and existential crisis. Dr Xavier (Ray Milland) is a scientist who has concocted a serum that allows the human eye to see through anything! Against the advice of his colleagues Dr Brant (Harold Stone) and Dr Diane Fairfax (Diana van der Vlis), he experiments with the serum on himself. Sure enough, he is able to see through things! Walls! Paper documents! Clothes! However, this being a cautionary tale about the dangers of venturing into scientific realms we probably have no business venturing into, things inevitably turn bad for our intrepid doc. After accidentally pushing Dr Brant to his death from a window, Xavier goes on the run and winds up as a fairground sideshow act, looking into people’s minds and reading their thoughts and social security numbers and bein...

1971 Dir. Al Adamson Long before there was Freddy vs Jason , and  Alien vs Predator , there was the incomprehensible yet utterly sublime Dracula vs Frankenstein . Beginning its celluloid life as a follow up to schlock filmmaker Al Adamson’s Satan’s Sadists , Dracula vs Frankenstein was intended to be a biker movie. Somewhere along the way though, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster were added to the  mix. This film has it all: astounding dialogue, terrible acting, cheap and cheerful special effects. Best worst movie ever? Read on... The basic story follows Judith Fontaine (Regina Carrol) as she searches for her missing sister, who, unbeknownst to her, has been abducted by the evil Dr Frankenstein. He's been abducting women for his devilish experiments in his secret lab in an amusement park on a grotty pier. It's never clear what his experiments are or why he needs women. He rambles on about ‘life-giving serums’, the ‘illusion of reality' and how one of the women h...