Today, brothers and sisters, is Virginia Leith’s birthday. I hope everyone is as excited as I am.
Wait, what’s that? You don’t know who she is? Well, lemme tell ya about a little movie called The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Or, possibly, The Head That Wouldn’t Die (it’s listed as the former in the opening credits, but the latter in the closing credits…surprisingly, they don’t seem to have put very much thought into this movie).
This is one of the real Trash Classics. There’s actually a sort of plodding, grotesque grandeur to it, and though it isn’t majestically awful on the same level as “Manos” The Hands of Fate, it is one of those that I felt compelled to actually own on DVD. Not the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, either. The actual, unedited, original film. It’s terribly delightful.
It’s a pretty simple movie. I won’t go into too much detail (you really should see it for yourselves), but here’s a quick synopsis: A brilliant young surgeon, Dr. Bill Cortner, has developed a revolutionary new technique for transplanting organs and limbs and generally working medical miracles, but the scientific community looks down upon his work for some reason never fully explained (his own father, also a doctor, tells him in one memorable scene, “You shouldn’t experiment until you KNOW the results!” which, as MST3K pointed out, indicates that Dad isn’t too clear on the meaning of the word “experiment”). So he works at his country house, conducting his experiments in the basement along with his assistant, Kurt (who works for Dr. Bill in hopes that his shriveled arm can be healed). Pretty standard mid-century mad-scientist set-up, really.
Just as Dr. Bill is about to go away for a romantic weekend with his nurse/girlfriend, Jan Compton, he gets a panicked phone call from Kurt that something has gone terribly wrong. So he and Jan race out to the country house. Problem is, Dr. Bill is a less than perfectly skillful driver, and in one of the worst celluloid imitations of a car crash ever, he loses control and sends the car rolling down a hill. Tragically, Jan is killed in the crash, though Dr. Bill is thrown clear and escapes injury.
The car is on fire and Dr. Bill can’t save Jan…entirely. So, he cuts off her head and takes it with him. Hey, don’t judge the man ‘til you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, okay?
Next thing we know, he’s keeping Jan’s head alive until he can find a body for it. He does this by leaving it propped up in a saucer of dark liquid with lots of tubes running in and out. And for the rest of the movie she just sits there, whispering (no lungs, you see) in a vaguely threatening way at poor Kurt and repeatedly (and famously) pleading, “Let me die.”
Meanwhile, the search for a new body for the love of his life inevitably leads Dr. Bill to a strip club (well, a burlesque hall...it WAS 1962, after all). ‘Cause, I mean, where else would you go, right? Two of the dancers get into a catfight over him, which scene is probably the whole reason they made the movie, so he leaves and instead chooses a nude model that he used to know years ago in some way the movie is far too lazy to make clear. They head back to the summer house, and of coursehilarity bone-chilling terror ensues.
The movie is notable for two reasons. First (SPOILER ALERT as if anyone cared) it has probably the greatest death scene in the entire history of motion pictures. When Kurt’s arm is ripped off by the monster in the basement closet (the result of the spectacular failure of an earlier experiment), he takes a full five minutes to die (trust me, it seems longer). He staggers around the basement, spraying and smearing blood everywhere and moaning. Then he wanders upstairs into the living room, staggering and moaning but inexplicably leaving no blood (a few minutes later, when Dr. Bill and his chosen victim show up, she sits in the chair Kurt had recently collapsed into and doesn’t realize anything is up). Then he goes back into the basement, staggers around a little bit more, slumps into a corner, moans for another minute or so, and finally dies. And while all this is happening, of course, his arm is clearly visible tucked inside his lab coat. Words can’t do this scene justice; you have to see it (it is inexplicably not up on YouTube, but if I can figure out how, I’m gonna fix that).
The scene is legendary, and has had homage paid to it by many filmmakers since, including Joss Whedon himself in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is impossible that the filmmakers didn’t realize how ridiculous this scene is. They must have decided, “Well, we wanted to make a good movie whose popularity would last for decades, but we clearly haven’t managed that, so let’s just put in a death scene at once so mind-numblingly tedious and jaw-droppingly bizarre that we’ll be remembered for that instead!”
Worked.
The other thing that makes this movie notable, though, is Jan herself. She’s become a Trash Classics icon, known as “Jan in the Pan” thanks to the riffing of the MST3K boys (and this film, the first of the Mike Nelson era, provided one of the best episodes ever; if you have Netflix, I urge, nay, beg you to rent it here). She is equal to Ed Wood’s Criswell or the inestimable Torgo. Her face (and only her face) is on T-shirts and posters, her name is a running joke among a certain subsection of our society, and the actress has drawn adoring crowds at horror conventions across the country.
That actress, of course, is Virginia Leith, and as I said at the beginning of this entry, today is her birthday (where else but here could you get information like this?). She’s 76 and still plugging away, so raise a glass to her tonight for the forty-plus years of joy she’s provided bad movie fans everywhere. Happy birthday, Virginia. I hope your next 76 years are as good as the first 76.
Wait, what’s that? You don’t know who she is? Well, lemme tell ya about a little movie called The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Or, possibly, The Head That Wouldn’t Die (it’s listed as the former in the opening credits, but the latter in the closing credits…surprisingly, they don’t seem to have put very much thought into this movie).
This is one of the real Trash Classics. There’s actually a sort of plodding, grotesque grandeur to it, and though it isn’t majestically awful on the same level as “Manos” The Hands of Fate, it is one of those that I felt compelled to actually own on DVD. Not the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, either. The actual, unedited, original film. It’s terribly delightful.
It’s a pretty simple movie. I won’t go into too much detail (you really should see it for yourselves), but here’s a quick synopsis: A brilliant young surgeon, Dr. Bill Cortner, has developed a revolutionary new technique for transplanting organs and limbs and generally working medical miracles, but the scientific community looks down upon his work for some reason never fully explained (his own father, also a doctor, tells him in one memorable scene, “You shouldn’t experiment until you KNOW the results!” which, as MST3K pointed out, indicates that Dad isn’t too clear on the meaning of the word “experiment”). So he works at his country house, conducting his experiments in the basement along with his assistant, Kurt (who works for Dr. Bill in hopes that his shriveled arm can be healed). Pretty standard mid-century mad-scientist set-up, really.
Just as Dr. Bill is about to go away for a romantic weekend with his nurse/girlfriend, Jan Compton, he gets a panicked phone call from Kurt that something has gone terribly wrong. So he and Jan race out to the country house. Problem is, Dr. Bill is a less than perfectly skillful driver, and in one of the worst celluloid imitations of a car crash ever, he loses control and sends the car rolling down a hill. Tragically, Jan is killed in the crash, though Dr. Bill is thrown clear and escapes injury.
The car is on fire and Dr. Bill can’t save Jan…entirely. So, he cuts off her head and takes it with him. Hey, don’t judge the man ‘til you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, okay?
Next thing we know, he’s keeping Jan’s head alive until he can find a body for it. He does this by leaving it propped up in a saucer of dark liquid with lots of tubes running in and out. And for the rest of the movie she just sits there, whispering (no lungs, you see) in a vaguely threatening way at poor Kurt and repeatedly (and famously) pleading, “Let me die.”
Meanwhile, the search for a new body for the love of his life inevitably leads Dr. Bill to a strip club (well, a burlesque hall...it WAS 1962, after all). ‘Cause, I mean, where else would you go, right? Two of the dancers get into a catfight over him, which scene is probably the whole reason they made the movie, so he leaves and instead chooses a nude model that he used to know years ago in some way the movie is far too lazy to make clear. They head back to the summer house, and of course
The movie is notable for two reasons. First (SPOILER ALERT as if anyone cared) it has probably the greatest death scene in the entire history of motion pictures. When Kurt’s arm is ripped off by the monster in the basement closet (the result of the spectacular failure of an earlier experiment), he takes a full five minutes to die (trust me, it seems longer). He staggers around the basement, spraying and smearing blood everywhere and moaning. Then he wanders upstairs into the living room, staggering and moaning but inexplicably leaving no blood (a few minutes later, when Dr. Bill and his chosen victim show up, she sits in the chair Kurt had recently collapsed into and doesn’t realize anything is up). Then he goes back into the basement, staggers around a little bit more, slumps into a corner, moans for another minute or so, and finally dies. And while all this is happening, of course, his arm is clearly visible tucked inside his lab coat. Words can’t do this scene justice; you have to see it (it is inexplicably not up on YouTube, but if I can figure out how, I’m gonna fix that).
The scene is legendary, and has had homage paid to it by many filmmakers since, including Joss Whedon himself in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is impossible that the filmmakers didn’t realize how ridiculous this scene is. They must have decided, “Well, we wanted to make a good movie whose popularity would last for decades, but we clearly haven’t managed that, so let’s just put in a death scene at once so mind-numblingly tedious and jaw-droppingly bizarre that we’ll be remembered for that instead!”
Worked.
The other thing that makes this movie notable, though, is Jan herself. She’s become a Trash Classics icon, known as “Jan in the Pan” thanks to the riffing of the MST3K boys (and this film, the first of the Mike Nelson era, provided one of the best episodes ever; if you have Netflix, I urge, nay, beg you to rent it here). She is equal to Ed Wood’s Criswell or the inestimable Torgo. Her face (and only her face) is on T-shirts and posters, her name is a running joke among a certain subsection of our society, and the actress has drawn adoring crowds at horror conventions across the country.
That actress, of course, is Virginia Leith, and as I said at the beginning of this entry, today is her birthday (where else but here could you get information like this?). She’s 76 and still plugging away, so raise a glass to her tonight for the forty-plus years of joy she’s provided bad movie fans everywhere. Happy birthday, Virginia. I hope your next 76 years are as good as the first 76.
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