Genre: Horror, Noir
Weirdly enough, the movie seemed to juggle a few alternate titles, and "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" may have been a last minute change, as the end credits state the title as being "The Head That Wouldn't Die." This seems to have something to do with the film's public domain status, in which something similar happened to Night of the Living Dead, which changed its title from "Night of Anubis" before release and accidentally deleting its own copyright notice. This movie does have a copyright notice on the final product, but apparently something voids it (is it because it's under the "Head" title at the end of the film? Dunno, throwing theories out there). It's a curious little error in the movie though.
Director: Joseph Green
Starring: Jason Evers, Virginia Leith, Leslie Daniel, Adele Lamont
MST Season: 5
The Movie
I hope you're in the mood to be leery, because the name of the game this week is checking out women's hourglass figures, all in the name of giving a disembodied head a new body. It's means to an end, because the only reason this movie exists is to exploit the buxom beauties that inhabit the picture. The main premise sees a scientist who finds he accidentally decapitated his fiancé in a car accident. He scoops up her head and keeps it on life support, and he goes out seeking a new body for her. Meanwhile, the surviving head begs for death and henpecks her husband's assistant.
The premise has strengths to it, the ultimate problem with The Brain That Wouldn't Die is that its premise wears thin and it limps on with one-note sequences of our male lead staring at women to a jazzy sleaze score. I'm not one to complain about the female form filling out my TV screen, but it occurs to me that The Brain That Wouldn't Die doesn't have a lot of content. It runs circles with its speeches of playing god, a nagging head that just says "Let me die," and talking about sexual attraction in pickup lines. It's not really an effective horror movie nor is it sexy enough to make me feel naughty.
There is something oddly alluring about how it tries to dip into the macabre and the taboo. It's movie that leaves you feeling gross, it's a bit gorier and more graphic than many of its contemporaries. It's never convincing, as its too cheap to convince us that a man with an arm torn off isn't just some dude with his actual arm tucked into his shirt, or that a giant monster isn't just a tall dude with a tied up rubber mask. Points for ambition though.
That's about the extent of the interest in it though. It feels padded to hell and a bit undercooked, though it's not a forgettable movie by any means. Though I do wonder what our mad scientist main character thinks is going to happen once his objecting girlfriend is unwillingly grafted to a new body. I mean, the best he can hope for is that she just leaves him. At worst...well, those are some dark depths of depressive thinking that I don't think the movie was smart enough to consider.
But apparently Virginia Leith hated making the film so much that she went to her grave having never seen it. It's probably the closest she ever had to a "star-making" role and she's pretty good in it, so that's a tad unfortunate. I doubt she would have gotten much out of witnessing it, but if there's one thing most people take away from watching this movie, it's a love for Jan in the Pan.
The Episode
It's time. Joel Robinson has left the Satellite of Love and Mike Nelson is in the theater. For some, this was the moment when the show was just not the same. For others, it was a different flavor that tasted just as delicious. I have no actual contextual insight into this transition from a fan's perspective. I first got into the series during the Sci-Fi Channel era, in which Mike was the many years established host of the show, and it was Joel that I had to warm up to by working backwards. I can say that I have done what every fan should do at least once and watched the entire series in chronological order, and I will say there is indeed a different vibe once you switch from Joel to Mike. I'd hesitate to say that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was too different after this episode, but there is something there that inhabits the show enough that it feels like the show has changed.
How does Mike do? He feels a bit awkward in his first episode, but he lets loose guns blazing. There seems like there is an overcompensation from the show's familiar cast to encourage the audience to be won over by him. His Invention Exchange of the Gutter-Bumber-Chute isn't that funny, but the Bots are kissing his ass throughout the entire segment, while the Mads invention is too vague to actually be more impressive than Mike's, though it gets more laughs just for Frank alone. Then when he gets into the theater, they try to support a few of his jokes with the sucking-up dialogue of "Good one, new guy!" and the like. What kind of sucks about this is that a lot of the jokes propped up are indeed pretty solid, and they don't need to sell the audience on the fact that Mike is a funny guy as hard as they're doing. They need to just let Mike be Mike, because he's been head writer on the series for years and obviously he's good at his job and can deliver a killer punchline.
The riffing of the film itself is pretty strong, all things considered. The film goes through lengthy phases, and Mike and the Bots evolve with it. It starts out with a long, silent surgery scene, switches to a bizarrely framed car wreck ("HELP! THE ROAD IS ATTACKING ME!"), before weaving between science lab and girl leering, before a bizarre climax of gore and melodrama. The crew leans into all of this like professionals, and plays it all up. They lighten up the darkness of Janet's suicidal thoughts with a mockery of the absurdity of her situation, while they spice up the sex appeal of the various model posing with their playing up just how sleazy it is. The climax of the movie is the big treat, as the melodrama hits high, a character loses an arm and just blindly stumbles around the house for several minutes of runtime, giving way for many arm puns along the way ("I guess you'd call that a Farewell to Arms!" "Ironically he collapses into an Arm Chair!"). There is also a sequence where a would-be victim is given what is essentially a date rape drug, but the tone is lightened with some strong "drunk-vision" that liven up a dark situation ("I LOOOOOOOOVE THIS PLACE!").
The host segments mostly take their time to make us warm up to our new host. There is a cute opening, where Mike is "training" by watching The Beast of Yucca Flats and Night of the Lepus (incidentally, the former would later get its own MST episode while the latter would feature on Rifftrax). Mike tries his first escape attempt, leading to the question that we all wonder at least once in our lives: "If it's not cheese, what is it?" Mike then shares a very embarrassing story to help bond with the Bots and it predictably backfires, while they also make hats as gifts to Jan in the Pan. They should have taken the opportunity to deliver them in person, as Janet visits on the Hexfield in the finale (played by Mary Jo Pehl), delivers a bunch of "head" and "pan" puns, and gets pissed at Mike. I guess she was a Joel fan.
Despite a few "propping up the new guy" blemishes, The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a pretty strong debut for Mike, and would probably be one of his stronger episodes of the season, at least for a few episodes when he starts delivering bangers latter in the season. While I understand the loyalty to Joel, there is enough here to believe in the future of MST3K, and I think the new guy has a lot of promise.
Good
The DVD and Blu-Ray
The Brain That Wouldn't Die has been issued three times on physical media. The first was a single disc by Rhino Home Video, featuring quality audio and video. Special features featured a full frame presentation of the uncut movie, with scratchy audio and video.
Shout Factory later reissued as a bonus episode on the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD collection, where it shares a disc with Mitchell. There are slight flaws to the video but good audio on this release, while bonus features include an interview with Joel discussing the transition to Mike on the series, and also an interview with film supporting player Marilyn Neilson.
The episode was reissued one more time on a blu-ray of the unriffed Brain That Wouldn't Die film. Strangely despite being the superior format, the transfer here is the worst we've seen yet, sporting a low contrast and a high darkness, similar to Rhino Home Video's infamous Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders disc. That being said, the transfer to the uncut film is gorgeous, pristine, and in widescreen. Also featured is an audio commentary on the film by Steve Haberman and Tony Sasso (which is very tongue in cheek and amusing), a still gallery, and an audio-less alternate scene for the foreign version of the film, in which Adele Lamont (depicted in a bikini in the film) is fully nude during her posing session, showing bare breasts and a portion of her buttocks. The bonus package makes this disc a must have (unfortunately it's discontinued), but for episode presentation, the Rhino disc is the one to keep.
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