SATURDAY AFTERNOON B-MOVIE CRAP-FEST: “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” (1962)

I have a theory about bad films. I’m not sure if this is the best time or place to talk about it, since comparatively few people ever actually read these reviews, but here you go: I believe that bad movies - particularly bad SF movies - are a more interactive form of entertainment than their high-budgeted A-list counterparts.

That doesn’t make ‘em *good* movies, of course, but it *does* make the interplay between crap artist and crap viewer a bit more…uhm…direct? Intimate? A bit more give and take?

Think about it: If you go see a multi-zillion dollar SF film - the latest Trek film, for instance - everything looks completely real and, if not logical, at least it’s internally consistent according to the hambone pseudo logic they play by in the Trekiverse. What need, then, is there for suspension of disbelief? If, on the other hand, you’re watching the original Trek series from the ‘60s, then you need to expend considerable mental effort in order to avoid noticing that the walls are just plywood, that the Captain’s Chair is just a super attenuated recliner, that Mr. Spock is just a horse-faced dude with a lot of eyeshadow on, and not an alien, and so on. Curiously, a lot of Trekies can’t do this, they can’t watch the original show because it’s just too cheesy for them.

The same is true of any 60s, and most 70s SF shows, and movies, too: The story is the thing, and in order to get to the story, you have consciously avoid the obvious fakeness of it all. The Prisoner is probably the best SF show ever made, and yet objectively it’s silly as hell and knows it. To get to the good stuff, then, you have to deliberately shut down the part of your brain that says “That’s just a damn weatherbaloon, it’s not a monster!”

If you can do this, you’ll be rewarded. If you can’t do this, then all you’ll get is what you can see, which is usually pretty sad.

People ask me how I can watch such crappy films, and don’t I long for something better to watch? Well, of course I do, but as a friend of mine once said, “Good Movies are a dime a dozen, but a truly bad film is forever.” Or, if that’s too allusive for you, let’s quote The Tick: “Sanity is a one-trick pony chum, but when you’re good and crazy - woo-hoo! The sky’s the limit!” My point being that if you can do that - if you can ignore the ‘oh, this is all crap, can’t we just go watch football’ part of your brain - then there’s a kind of narrative freedom that only this kind of trashy film can give you; a dream-logic and incoherence that - for me, anyway - feels kind of liberating as a contrast to my 9-to-5 rational life.

I’m not sure this week’s film is the best example of how this works, of course, but you get my point, right?

PLAY BY PLAY

We start out with a genuinely creepy blank black screen, and a woman’s plaintive voice pleading “Let me die, let me die.” Then the titles come up, and immediately after that, we’re introduced to Dr. Bill Cortner and his dad operating on a guy.