JohnHowardReid Director: JOSEPH GREEN. Screenplay: Joseph Green. Additional dialogue: Doris Brent. Story: Rex Carlton, Joseph Green. Photography: Stephen Hajnal. Film editors: Leonard Anderson, Marc Anderson. Art director: Paul Fanning. Make-up: George Fiala. Special effects: Byron Baer. Property man: Walter Pluff jr. Camera operator: John S. Priestley. Gaffer: Vincent Delaney. Grip: John Haupt jr. Script supervisor: Eva Blair. Assistants to producer: Linda Brent, James Gealis. Production manager: Alfred H. Lessner. Assistant director: Tony LaMarca. Sound recording: Emil Kolisch, Robert E. Lessner. Producer: Rex Carlton.Not copyrighted by Rex Carlton Productions. U.S. release in May 1962 through American-International. No recorded New York opening. No recorded U.K. release. Never theatrically released in Australia. 82 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A surgeon robs graves to obtain organs for his transplant experiments.NOTES: Location scenes filmed near Tarrytown, New York, in 1959. First of three movies directed by minor film distributor Joseph Green, and the only one on which he receives a writing credit. COMMENT: Despite the presence of the lovely Virginia Leith in the title role and a joyful assemblage of other nice girls, this emerges as an el-cheapo horror flick with a few gory moments, lots of time-wasting chit-chat and extremely limited production values. Steadfastly slow, cop-out direction doesn't help either. However, the dialogue is sometimes unintentionally hilarious and this has given the movie a certain bottom-rung status on the cult circuit.

Mark I remember seeing this as a kid and was fascinated by the disembodied head. I don't really think I was very scared, but for some reason, even 50 years later, I remember almost every scene with the head. There are so many great and cheesy aspects to this movie. The dialog is just hilarious, along with the soundtrack, basically one reoccurring 1950's porn music loop during the "sexy scenes." The lustful close-ups" ... it just goes on and on with the fun.Of course, there is the climactic ending scene, where the movie makers seem to have run out of film stock, so it ends extremely fast. Kind of like a "well, that's it" moment.Best viewed with friends a bit on the loaded side I believe.

Scott LeBrun Yet another Dr. Frankenstein type attempts to play God in this memorable schlock picture. Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is an unbalanced genius with radical ideas about body part transplants. One day, he's in a mad rush to get to the family country home. His reckless driving causes an accident that decapitates his girlfriend Jan (Virginia Leith). Acting quickly, Bill scoops up her head and takes it back to the lab that's in the country home. He's able to keep Jans' head alive in a pan, and although she would have preferred that he let her die, he's determined to find a perfect donor body.Despite its reputation, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" might not be all that satisfying to some viewers, because it doesn't play out the way that one might think. It's rather slow and VERY talky, and there's a fair bit of padding as Bill spends time in a strip club ogling the bodies of the lovely ladies present. What the movie does have, however, is a script full of deliciously stupid lines. Written by director Joseph Green, based on the story by him and producer Rex Carlton, it gives Jans' severed head plenty to say. (I've heard some Internet wits refer to this movie as "The Head That Wouldn't Shut Up.") This also gives us a cool monster (played by Eddie Carmel) that remains hidden in a closet for most of the running time, only to emerge minutes from the end. There's a surprisingly high amount of satisfying gore in the full length American version. The scene where Bills' associate Kurt (Anthony La Penna, credited as Leslie Daniel) gets his arm ripped off by the monster and staggers around the house & lab is a real corker. The movie also benefits from a groovy jazz score.Evers gives a decent performance in the lead role. Leith is both a good sport and a real hoot as she rants from her place in the pan. La Penna is great fun, especially when his character undergoes an inexplicable personality change and exchanges words with Jan. Adele Lamont is tantalizingly sexy as Doris, the model who won't leave her house.Some bad B movie enthusiasts are sure to have a good time with this one. One might say that its head is in the right place.Five out of 10.

mark.waltz What kind of brainless twit would come up with such an outlandish idea? Jason Evers is a handsome doctor/scientist with some rather strange ideas of what his mission is, and when he heads out to the country with his fiancée (Virginia Leith), tragedy strikes which leaves Leith only a head in Evers' game to go where no research doctor/scientist has ever gone before. Now all he needs is a body, and he heads out to go-go joints where he interviews floozie after floozie after floozie in an effort to find someone to provide legs, torso and arms onto the "Jan in the Pan" which makes Leith look as if she's been planted on a record player. Anthony La Penna is a handicapped doctor who tries to explain Evers' theory to Leith and why he has turned to such unscrupulous methods. "The alcoholic has his bottle. The dope addict his needle. I had my research", he tells her to no avail. She finds a grunting companion in the locked cell whom she converses with in ways like, "You agree, knock once. You disagree, knock twice". It's obvious that whatever is there is equally as horrid as the bodiless Leith and that the unseen creature will be the one to bring both Evers and La Penna down once time for that occurs.One of the most absurd moments comes when La Penna is attacked by the unseen creature and appears to have his arm ripped off his torso. It is obvious that the actor's arm is actually now hiding in his shirt, and while the arm was inside the cell's small opening, his shirt was covered with some sort of dark paint to make it appear that it was bleeding. To make everything even drastically worse, Leigh starts shouting, "Kill him! Kill him!". Earlier, she had been moaning, "Please let me die" at Evers, and all of a sudden, the efforts to make it appear that she is going increasingly mad becomes just way beyond absurd. Meanwhile, Evers is out interviewing an attractive model (Adele Lamont, who slightly resembles Elizabeth Taylor) and finds out she has a bitter hatred towards men and gets a visual display of just what some man did to her. When she agrees to have him remove her own deformity, he drugs her, and there is genuine horror in the viewer's mind as she gets groggy and asks in a panic, "What did you put In my drink?". The film concludes rather violently with the revelation of the "creature" (Frankenstein meets the Coneheads) and gives no revelation of what happens to any of the characters there (including the model). I'm just surprised that the writers didn't have Leith's finale shot be of her whole head on fire and a demonic gleam in her eye. Come on, when you've already traveled down this road into ridiculousness, why not just go all the way? After all, there's no rating worse than Bomb. To make things even more eye-rolling at the end, the title pops up again, but this time it is different than the one you saw in the opening credits.