Dr. Bill Cortner (Herb Evers) is a doctor with some radical
ideas on how to preserve human life. After showing up his dad in the operating
room, he races off with his girlfriend, Jan (Virginia Leith), for the weekend. One
car accident later, Bill is rushing his girlfriend’s severed head down to his
basement lab. He puts her in a pan filled with
a chemical than can keep body parts alive. He then slinks around town looking
for a replacement body, while Jan discovers she can telepathically communicate
with another experiment that lives in the basement.
This is probably the tenth or eleventh time I’ve seen this
film (thanks in no small part of MST3K and numerous midnight movie shows that
had it in regular rotation.) I think it’s one that really improves after
repeated viewings. I’m not going to go so far as to say it ever becomes good, but
it allows you to appreciate just how lurid and sleazy this movie attempts to
be. There is a lot of objectifying women, a catfight, and even some significant
gore in a film made in 1962. This time around it really struck me how much
this movie is a blueprint for its gorier and racier successor, Re-Animator (1985). Despite all its
cheapness and technical flaws, the leads do a great job. Dr. Cortner is truly loathsome,
and his quest to murder a girl for her body is presented as nothing less
than repellant. It’s fun to watch Jan’s seething anger bubble over into insanity,
which leads to a very satisfying comeuppance for Bill.
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