Free Movie Friday: The Brain That Wouldn't Die

It's a whole movie for free: The Brain That Wouldn't Die! Just click on the link, and it's yours.

Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is a successful scientist with a beautiful fiancée named Jan Compton (Virginia Leith). After a horrible car accident decapitates Jan, Dr. Cortner collects her severed head and rushes it to his laboratory, where he revives it and manages to keep it alive in a liquid-filled tray.

Dr. Cortner now decides to commit murder to obtain an attractive new body to attach to his fiancée's head. As he hunts for a suitable specimen, Jan begins to hatch some murder plans of her own. Filled with hatred for Cortner because he won't let her die, she communicates telepathically with a hideous mutant in the laboratory cell, telling it to kill the scientist.

Like Jan, this movie sat for a long time before untimately getting release. It was shot in 1959 and released in 1962. Perhaps it too spent the time in a film developing pan. In any event it's a really fascinating look at male/female relations and it endures today (unprofitably, I admit) because the metaphorical potential of the story is greater than the telling. Much, much greater.

Incidentally I was going to title this one Free Movie Friday: A Double-Header! My plan was to showcase this movie along with They Saved Hitler's Brain. Incredibly that title is NOT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. How could someone have taken the trouble to maintain the copywrite on that one? They must have lost money on that license. Well it's worth seeing, but not on Free Movie Friday.