The Brain That Would Not Die (1959)

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(Foreign Titles)

Nomination Year: 1993

SYNOPSIS: A scientist discovers a way to preserve a human head so that the brain can be kept alive indefinitely. That same day (wouldn't you know it), he and his fiancee are in a car accident and she is killed. He keeps her head alive in a pan down in his basement, along with his other grotesque experiments. As he goes out shopping for a new body for his fiancee, the suicidal head (which can somehow talk without lungs) grows in mental power. The head establishes a psychic rapport with the nearby "creature in the closet," which she unleashes, finally fulfilling her death wish while taking a few others along with her.

Bryan Cassidy

Smithee Award Nominations

Best One-Liner
Let's Put Our Heads Together Head, to Closet Creature: "I am only a head, and you are whatever you are, but together, we are strong!"	Sorry, this clip has not yet been made available!

Crummiest Ending

Quit While You're a Head

The misguided scientist comes down the stairs with the unconscious body of a model he once dated -- he lured her and drugged her. But the head has other plans. She shows him the dead body of the housekeeper and, in terror, the scientist conveniently backs up against the closet. A meaty arm comes crashing through the wooden door and begins choking the mad doctor to death. In the struggle, script-specific chemicals are spilled, which start a roaring fire in the basement. With the doctor dead, the "Closet Thing" takes the body of the girl upstairs, leaving the head to burn. In a dramatic final line, the head says, to no-one in particular: "I told you you should have let me die." We know how she feels and couldn't agree more.

Sorry, this clip has not yet been made available!

Directors

Director	Claim to Fame
Joseph Green

Cast

Actor	Character	Claim to Fame
Jason Evers	<Not Yet in Database>	In The Brain That Would Not Die, Claws, and Basket Case 2, which would be his final role. Was in a lot of '60s-through'80s TV.
Marilyn Hanold	Peggy Howard	Bombshell who was the titular Brain/Head That Would Not Die. Sadly never made it much bigger than eye candy bit parts on TV shows.
Virginia Leith	<Not Yet in Database>
Eddie Carmel	<Not Yet in Database>	Called "The Jewish Giant," one of the tallest men on Earth; was in the circus


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