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As so many on here know, I revel in trashy horror. So, the other day--Monday, I believe--when I walked into our bedroom, and saw David watching the 1962 film "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," I knew I had reached my limit.
This is Virginia Leith as Jan Compton. She was decapitated, in a car accident, but Jason Evers, as Dr. Bill Cortner--a mad scientist; I mean, is there any other kind?--has kept her alive, and, boy, she won't shut up! Sexist pigs could use Jan to justify their anti-women stance. By the time the film reached its close, even I wanted Jan to shut up!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As you might expect, though, the head gets the best lines. The most farcical thing I have seen, since Mary Jane Croft voiced basset hound Cleo, on the old TV show "People's Choice!"
Meanwhile, one of the doctor's failed experiments, a gangly smashed up man thing, with a face looking like a cross between a vegetable and a smashed in version of 'Teenage Frankenstein,' engages in arguments with Jan, the head, who argues with just about everyone who comes into the lab. Hell, she's a trapped head! What else can she do?
My fondest hope for Virginia Leith, who went nowhere fast, is that she did not look upon this as the role of a lifetime. What else could she do with it?
I know the doctor gets his comeuppance when the deformed monster breaks out, and kills him. I don't know what happens to Jan.
Today, someone like Jan could have become a TV news anchor. Hell, they are little more than talking heads, anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poor Jan! The girl just couldn't get a break!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 comments:
This was one of the many films that formed my "proto queer education" via the curricula of my very first gay friend. We must have watched scenes from this abomination three or four times a week, usually at 4am after making mini pizzas in the toaster oven (between highlights from "Valley Of The Dolls", "The Best Of Everything" and "Female Trouble").
Virginia Leith's performance is THE reason to sit thru this tedious turkey. With this one film, she became an immortal of the silver screen (if only for 50 years: once the internet really hit, and began trivializing everything that was once considered rarefied high camp, such niche fame instantly faded).
I've always wondered whether there was anything resembling an actual script, or Virginia simply improvised and bluffed her way through it. She basically yaks like a Greek chorus as the minutes crawl by: alternately bemoaning her fate, cursing her deranged scientist boyfriend, and coaxing/provoking the "monster in the closet" (hmmmm...) to escape and kill said boyfriend.
When she finally succeeds, her closing speech became a legend of grade z cinema: as the scientist falls dead in front of her tray, and the lab collapses in flames around her, she cackles wildly and whispers over and over:
"I told you to let me die..."
I cannot believe I had never
seen this. And to think that
David, of all people, was
watching this. Still<
Virginia Leith's performance
and presence is astonishing,
and one cannot take their eyes off
the screen, after she appears!
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