The unethical surgeon Dr. Bill Cortner (Herb Evers) is developing a technique of transplantation of organs and members using a serum against rejection. When he has a car accident with his girlfriend Jan Compton (Virginia Leith),he saves her head only, and tries to find a woman with a beautiful body to transplant Jan's head against her will.

I found the low budget movie "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" very underrated in IMDb. The story is not so bad, and certainly inspired "Frankenhooker" and "The Man with Two Brains". The acting and the direction are very reasonable, and there are some mistakes of edition (for example, when Dr. Bill Cortner is having a conversation in the car with his friend on the sidewalk),but these errors just contribute to make the movie funnier. The make-up of the creature is great. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Cérebro Que Não Queria Morrer" ("The Brain That Did not Want to Die")

I bought this DVD for $1 at Walmart. After seeing it, I might just return to the store and try to get my money back! The only reason I gave the movie a 2 and not a 1 is that the story has a few novel story elements, though it really never rises to the level of being interesting. This film has all the earmarks of being a made for the drive-in theaters market--ultra-low budget, amateurish acting and a liberal dose of sex (for an early 60s film). In fact, I wonder if perhaps the only reason the film was made was to make a fast buck AND because someone knew some strippers they could use as extras. The film is about a wacko doctor who wants to transplant his girlfriend's severed head onto the body of an unsuspecting donor. Most of the potential donors are skanky strippers or a model--whose only real purpose in the film is to titillate as they remove most of their clothes. However, they keep too much on to make the movie even worth watching for the naughty bits and the film isn't quite awful enough to merit watching by bad film buffs.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a great example of how something can really go wrong and not be produced and directed by either Arch Hall or Ed Wood. Believe it or not other people made some really rotten pictures.

I wonder what Virginia Leith did to insult the movie gods at 20th Century Fox so that her contract was not renewed and she was reduced to being Jan in the Pan. Jason Evers as our lead mad scientist looks like he's about to blow lunch with every piece of tripe dialog he says.

Evers is doing all kinds of experiments with brains of lower order creatures and then his girlfriend Leith is in a bad auto accident where she is decapitated as Jayne Mansfield was reported to have been in real life. But she's got a scientist boyfriend who saves the head and brain and keeps it alive with Frankenstein like gadgets. The same year Nazis would do the same for Hitler in They Saved Hitler's Brain.

So Virginia Leith from playing Jan Compton now plays Jan In The Pan, one of the great character names ever. At least The Brain That Wouldn't Die has one memorable screen credit.

After that Evers starts searching for desirable women with pulchritudinous bodies to take Leith's place and they start going missing in his area and law enforcement becomes interested. The last one he settles on is Adele Lamont one sultry dish I will admit.

Of course it all ends badly mainly because he's kept around some other failed experiments. Isn't that the way with all movie mad scientists?

This one is bad in a colossal sense. And Ed Wood or Arch Hall had nothing to do with it.