Directed by:
Joseph GreenVOD (1)
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In this 1950's cult classic, Dr. Cortner's (Herb Evers) central interest in medical science could be construed as beneficial to society - but not in an ethical, moralistic capacity. Instead of healing, he is attracted to the reanimation of the dead through electric shock. And when his fiancée, Jan Compton (Virginia Leith), is decapitated in an accident that he causes, Dr. Cortner becomes obsessed with the idea of making her whole again. He keeps her head alive in his laboratory, in part, by a serum he has developed. Dr. Cortner searches the streets for an attractive body for Jan, but she begins to resent Bill for not allowing her to perish in the accident. Back at the lab, an embittered Jan begins to plot her revenge… (Echo Bridge Entertainment)
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Imagine the following: a man fresh from a car accident wraps his wife's severed head in a jacket, then runs several kilometres to a friend's lab to save the face and brain, delivering the body later. If you are able to accept this premise, you’re halfway there. This film is preceded by the reputation as one of the ugliest and bloodiest of the Golden Age of science fiction, and what's interesting about it is the tragic backstory of its creation. Producer Lex Carlton borrowed money from the Mafia to make it, spent six years trying in vain to pay it back, and then committed suicide after threats from the mob. The film didn't pay off in the box office because the distribution company, American International, found it so distasteful that it pulled it from theaters a few days after it was released. Considering that I know the context of the time, which was not yet used to crap like this, I don't really blame them. At first, the film gingerly tests the audience; there’s the talking head on the table, lying in a puddle of blood and hooked up to tubing, or the sight of the disfigured arm of one of the protagonists, and in the last ten minutes a spiral of violence unfolds with a severed arm spraying blood and leaving a mark on the wall. And the ending? What the monster does to the doctor's neck at the last minute must have had the same effect at the time as it did on the Czech viewer who, two decades later in this country, ran out of the cinema to vomit at the premiere of Alien, when the embryo unexpectedly pops out of John Hurt's stomach. I like it when a movie surprises me, so I’m happy. Another good thing is the fact that Virginia Leith, even though you can only see her head, plays it really well, she's awesome. The pleasant jazz music is fine, too, as the doctor picks out his victim on the streets and in the audience of a beauty contest, to which he would sew his wife's head. It doesn't hurt once in a while to indulge in this kind of pulp entertainment, approved by Tarantino and the Shockproof Film Festival.
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Photo © American International Pictures (AIP)
