The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

Brain_that_wouldnt_dieBeing big fans of The Man in the Pan (who occupied our site banner before we had an artist friend do a re-design) we were keen on exploring one of the inspirations for Re-Animator, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

Superficially silly sci-fi movies like this, are conduits for exploring timeless questions like “who decides end of life?” and “what are the moral implications of advances in medical science?”

These are neat philosophical questions wrapped up in the bow of entertainment (or a head, wrapped up in a shawl in the case of this B&W drive-in classic).

Pioneering neurosurgeon Dr Cortner is in a power struggle with his pioneering neurosurgeon dad, who complains that the operating theater is no place for experimentation. Dad, however, loses out and it turns out the fruit of his loins is all about tinkering, especially when there’s seemingly nothing to lose (“the patient’s dead anyway!”). Through some unconvincing mucking about with the cerebral cortex, the patient suddenly springs to life and Doc Sr is eating crow.

Flash forward and Dr Cortner, along with girlfriend Jan, is a menace behind the wheel. The lead foot rolls into a ditch, killing Jan although he escapes unscathed. While the wreckage is smoldering, Dr Cortner reaches in and removes Jan’s head from the scene, wraps it up, and scuttles back to his lab where he places the noggin in a photography tray with a bunch of tubes leading back to it along with a blood supply.

Despite lacking a larynx, Jan is quite vocal concerning her opposition to her current state, but the doc remains undaunted, hunting down a body so he can put his paramour Humpty Dumpty all back together again.

However, because this, like many a science fiction flick, is a cautionary tale for the creeping advancement of scientism, things don’t go off sans hitch. There’s a Frankenstein monster-type creature obscured behind a wooden door, with whom Jan’s severed head can inexplicably communicate and who does her bidding. The creature is played by Tel Aviv-born Eddie Carmel, AKA, The Jewish Giant, an entertainer who suffered from giantism and cast long shadows and wrecked havoc for tailors at a towering 7’3.

Brain_that_wouldnt_die_carmelAlso known as The Head that Wouldn’t Die, director Joseph Green’s 1963 opus suffers from languid pacing and occasional forays into film noir saxophone romance. Still, it’s a curious film that’s worth a look.

The internet has become an external hard drive for our memories, so maybe we’ll someday only exist as brains, minus physical bodies as this film depicts. Who knows? The BBC even broached the subject of whether this would be possible in an era of so-called “digital immorality.”

*** (out of 5)

Click on the Link to listen to our THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN”T DIE podcast!

 

Quarantine

QuarantineposterQuarantine is a cash-in retread of the superior [REC] and features that awful woman from Dexter, about whom it’d be uncharitable to say, nearly ruined the series if that wasn’t pretty much correct.

Here, Jennifer Carpenter as Angela is in full-bore annoyance mode, playing an LA journalist doing a meet & greet/ride-along with local firefighters for a news series about how they live.

The gregarious crew quickly take to the chatty tank-topped young TV personality and explain the finer points of hook ladders and how the Dalmatian came to be associated with fire halls, but soon… all the goodwill is ruined by one of the miked up firemen, who bets he “can bang her by morning.”

That might’ve made for a better movie. Surprisingly, Angela’s not put off by their laddish antics, and is just doin’ her job.

Then, an actual emergency piques the interest of reporter Angela and her accompanying videographer. They head out in the truck on a call to a local apartment complex where an elderly Latina woman is behaving irrationally, shaking uncontrollably. A cop inquires about what’s amiss and is gruesomely bitten through the neck.

Now the puff piece specialist has a real story on her hands as she’s among a collection of first responders and tenants who’ve been quarantined in this apartment complex.

QuarantineQuarantine uses a variation of “found footage,” musty in 2008 and which hasn’t improved since, liberally employing electronic news gathering video while addressing the conceit of why they’re not setting the camera down in the midst of the tumult and helping, by repeatedly saying “it’s for the public good.” Or some such thing. Right.

Anyway, the camera sways to and fro, sickening the viewer more than any of the kills, which pile up fast and furiously.

One of the building’s inhabitants, as luck would have it, is a veterinarian who explains similarities between the rash behaviors they’re all witnessing and rabies outbreaks.

Soon, Centers for Disease Control personnel and helicopters are on the scene with “shoot to kill” orders for anyone trying to leave the complex. If they had such a directive outside multiplexes when Quarantine was showing, there’d be a near-stampede and a gaudy body count.

(And no, they cannot get cell service as that’s somehow been shut off).

There is a very sickening broken leg and a scene in which CDC officials collect samples from an unlucky victim’s brain. What brain-dead Quarantine lacks in substance and intelligence, isn’t compensated for by nice cinematography. Everything’s blue, blue, blue. It looks like utter sound stage crap.

** (out of 5)