The Brain That Wouldn't DieMovies like The Brain That Wouldn't Die
- Key Features:
- Mad scientist, Body horror, Gothic horror, Obsession, Medical ethics, Frankensteins monster, Reanimation, Exploitation film, Revenge, Isolation, Science gone wrong, Monster movie, Cult classic
- Tone:
- serious, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Cult film enthusiasts, Exploitation cinema aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Disgust → Horror
The Brain That Wouldn't Die

Dr. Bill Cortner and his fiancée, Jan Compton, are driving to his lab when they get into a horrible car accident. Compton is decapitated. But Cortner is not fazed by this seemingly insurmountable hurdle. His expertise is in transplants, and he is excited to perform the first head transplant. Keeping Compton's head alive in his lab, Cortner plans the groundbreaking yet unorthodox surgery. First, however, he needs a body.
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
Blackmailing a young couple to assist with his horrific experiments the Baron, desperate for vital medical data, abducts a man from an insane asylum. On route the abductee dies and the Baron and his assistant transplant his brain into a corpse. The creature is tormented by a trapped soul in an alien shell and, after a visit to his wife who violently rejects his monstrous form, the creature wreaks his revenge on the perpetrator of his misery: Baron Frankenstein.

A brain surgeon marries a femme fatale, causing his life to turn upside down. Things go more awry when he falls in love with a talking brain.

Unperturbed by the disastrous outcome of his previous meddling with the dead, Dr. West continues his research into the phenomenon of re-animation; only this time, he plans to create life – starting with the heart of his young protégé Dan's dearly deceased Meg Halsey.

The brains of a Russian taxi driver and a wealthy businessman are brought together in one body by a mad scientist.

Dr. Eric Vornoff, with the help of his mute assistant Lobo, captures twelve men for a grisly experiment; His goal to turn them into supermen using atomic energy. Reporter Janet Lawton, fiancée of the local lieutenant, vows to investigate Vornoff's supposedly haunted house.

A medical school dropout loses his fiancée in a tragic lawnmower incident and decides to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, he was only able to save her head, so he goes to the red light district in the city and lures prostitutes into a hotel room so he can collect body parts to reassemble her.

Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.

An evil scientist implants the brain of a murdered high school student into an animatronic Tyrannosaurus, who later wreaks vengeance on the bullies who killed him, and is reunited with his sweetheart.

In an attempt to convince Minnie that he hasn't forgotten to buy her an anniversary present, Mickey Mouse ends up promising to take her to Hawaii. Funds being short, he applies for a job as lab assistant to the sinister Dr. Frankenollie, who happens to be searching for a donor to provide his monstrous creation with a brain.

Rescued from the guillotine by his devoted dwarf Fritz, the Baron relocates to Carlsbruck, where he continues his gruesome experiments.

Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.

A criminal psychologist loses his arm in a car crash, and becomes one of three patients to have their missing limbs replaced by those belonging to an executed serial killer. One of them dies violently, and disturbing occurrences start happening to the surviving two.

A deformed tormented girl drowns herself after her lover is framed for murder and guillotined. Baron Frankenstein, experimenting with the transfer of souls, places the boy's soul into her body, bringing Christina back to life. Driven by revenge, she carries out a violent retribution on those responsible for both deaths.

With the help of student assistant Boris and stolen university equipment, Dr. Harry Wolper plans to clone his dead wife. But then he meets Meli, an egg donor for his experiment, and they fall in love. Faced with choosing between his deceased wife and Meli, Dr. Wolper sees his situation in a new light when Boris' own new love, Barbara, falls into a coma. Meanwhile, another professor tries shutting down the cloning project.

In the 1960s, a nurse's last day on her job is ruined when a doctor inadvertently creates a cyst monster that terrorizes the office.

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

Dr. Bonner plans to live forever through periodic gland transplants from younger, healthier human victims. Bonner looks about 40; he's really 104 years old. But people are starting to get suspicious, and he may not make 200.

Dr. Blake runs a TV show called "Independent Thinkers", which is sort of a Scientology-like self-help/religion program. But he's not making his audience think any more independently - with the help of an alien organism he calls The Brain, he's using brainwashing and mind control. The only thing that stands between them and world domination is a brilliant but troubled high school student with a penchant for pranks...

A timid young grad student madly in love with her scientist boss offers her body to his research.

An unconventional scientist, struggling to care for his terminally-ill wife, embarks on a journey to develop a cure for her. However, his methods of treatment and tampering with human DNA, could lead to the extinction of humanity.

When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.

The mummy of a cursed pharaoh and a reanimated corpse terrorize a medical university. Only an Egyptologist and a college professor, the deranged Dr. Frankenstein, may be able to stop the creatures before it's too late.

It's 2 A.M. in St. Louis when a routine scientific experiment goes terribly wrong and an explosion shakes the city. A scientific team investigates, clashing with an intergalactic, voltage-devouring creature that vaporizes them.

A scientist taints his mother's scientific experiment with his own drug that transforms pain into a pleasurable experience. Unfortunately for the three women involved in the experiment, the drug works a little bit too well.

A field surgeon suffering from PTSD after combat in the Middle East creates a living human out of body parts in his Brooklyn lab.

A scientific experiment involving subjecting a corpse to an extreme charge of electricity accidentally revives an executed criminal and makes him impervious to harm, allowing him to seek revenge on his former partners, and deal similarly with anyone else who gets in his way.

As the result of a head injury, brilliant computer scientist Harry Benson begins to experience violent seizures. In an attempt to control the seizures, Benson undergoes a new surgical procedure in which a microcomputer is inserted into his brain. The procedure is not entirely successful.

A young neurosurgeon inherits the castle of his grandfather, the famous Dr. Victor von Frankenstein. In the castle he finds a funny hunchback, a pretty lab assistant and the elderly housekeeper. Young Frankenstein believes that the work of his grandfather was delusional, but when he discovers the book where the mad doctor described his reanimation experiment, he suddenly changes his mind.

Baron Victor Frankenstein has discovered life's secret and unleashed a blood-curdling chain of events resulting from his creation: a cursed creature with a horrid face — and a tendency to kill.

Dr. Clayton Forrester figures he can rule the world if he deadens his subjects' brains by making them endure terrible movies. Exploiting his access to nearby satellite-dwellers Mike Nelson and his robot pals, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, Forrester makes them watch "This Island Earth", a cheesy 1950s spaceship film. But when Mike and friends make funny comments throughout the movie and others that follow, Forrester's plan looks increasingly flimsy.

An alien from planet Davanna, whose population has developed a terminal blood disease caused by nuclear radiation, is sent to Earth to acquire fresh human blood for his people.

Eccentric scientist Victor Von Frankenstein creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil, he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

A young man visits his fiancé's estate to discover that her wheelchair-bound scientist father has discovered a meteorite that emits mutating radiation rays that have turned the plants in his greenhouse to giants. When his own wife falls victim to this mysterious power, the old man takes it upon himself to destroy the glowing object with disastrous results.

The quiet Rose works in women's fashion clothing, hoping to be a designer. A traffic accident damages her face. She gets experimental stem cell treatment, leaving her stronger and prettier than ever - but there's a side effect.

A mad scientist captures young women and drains their blood, in order to keep alive an ancient, evil duchess.

Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene, who tells him that she has just killed her husband. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that he invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

The son of the inventor of a matter-transporter, which turned him into a monster when he tried to transport himself along with a tiny housefly, continues to pursue his father's experiment, while his own two sons attempt to extricate him, themselves and the family name from further disaster and scandal.

An astronaut returns to Earth as the no-pulse host of an alien monster's embryos; he is discovered by a loony farmer who find ways to feed his new critter.

Experiments in biological warfare have destroyed all but a few remnants of the human race. Alone in a lab, eight students work feverishly to create a vaccine before they are forced outside in search for food. It is then that the surviving scientists discover creatures mutated by the plague. Now they prepare to do battle against their worst fear: The Terror Within.

Driven by biological excess, a young man and woman search for sexual fulfillment, unaware of each other's existence. Unfortunately, they eventually meet, and the bonding of these two very unusual human beings ends in an explosive and ultimately over-the-top sexual experience, resulting in a truly god awful love story....

A top secret experiment intended to produce a superhuman has gone terribly wrong. Now the creators, trapped in a remote desert outpost, are being pursued ruthlessly by their creation.

In medical school of an elite university, campus starts sown with corpses. The police have no clue who is responsible for the carnage. Nobody suspected Barbara, a beautiful young innocent looking whose only concern seems to be the fashion. However, under the facade of frivolity, hides the most lethal and unforgiving of the killer: Barbykiller…

In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.

Once again tampering with mother nature to disastrous results, Dr. Herbert West continues his research while serving time in a maximum security prison for his previous exploits. West's limited prison-cell experiments are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a new prison doctor and the brother of the girl who suffered from West's experiments 13 years earlier.

A technician brings a frozen specimen of the original Blob back from the North Pole. When his wife accidentally defrosts the thing, it terrorizes the populace-- the local hippies, cops, drunks and bowlers must all face the Blob!

A mad scientist's DNA experiment on the bones of a mysterious jungle creature brings the carnivorous beast to life, and only his former assistant Ash Mattley and CIA operative Claire Sommers can stop it.

When Dr. Frankenstein is killed by a monster he created, his daughter and his lab assistant continue his experiments.

Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.

A scientist working with genetics creates a horrifying flying creature that feeds on human blood. Following a gruesome trail of dead bodies, Scotland Yard investigators must scramble to halt its ravenous rampage.

Emily Johnson, her boyfriend Bobby and their friends Clare and Jude are recent college grads driving cross-country, taking a last vacation together before they face the "real" world. An accident leaves them hurt and stranded on a lonely Louisiana road. When the ambulance arrives, it whisks them to Mercy Hospital.

After escaping from an insane asylum, a medical student assumes the identity of a mysterious dead man, who appears to be his doppelganger, and gets lured to a sinister island ruled by a mad scientist and his malformed men.

Ottavio Camaldoli is a professor of Latin and Greek. An honest and gentleman, he is considered a "fool" by everyone around him. But what would happen if this defenseless man, a victim of petty daily abuses in his social life, at work, and even at home, were to receive another man's heart transplant? Especially if this other man, the donor, were a brutal criminal with the sinister nickname of "O Barbiere" (The Barber)? Would Ottavio Camaldoli, after inheriting the heart, automatically become a criminal? Science tells us that these are just silly, ancient beliefs. But what if Donna Carmela, the Barber's ruthless mother, were convinced that her son is still alive thanks to the heart now beating in the professor's chest?

A mad doctor builds a robot in order to steal a valuable Aztec treasure from a tomb guarded by a centuries old living mummy.

Within the decadent walls of the Frankenstein mansion, the Baron and his depraved assistant Otto have discovered the means of creating new life. As the Baron's laboratory begins to fill up with stitched body parts, the Baroness dallies with the randy new manservant and soon the decadent, permissive household is consumed by an outrageous, bizarre and hilarious combination of death and dismemberment.

Mutated by his own secret formula, Dr. Alec Holland becomes Swamp Thing; a half-human, half-plant superhero who will stop at nothing to rescue government agent Alice Cable and defeat his evil arch nemesis...Even if it costs him his life.

David, a college student, is looking for a job. He is hired by Dr. Stoner as a lab assistant for his research and experiments on snakes. David also begins to fall for Stoner's young daughter, Kristina. However, the good doctor has secretly brewed up a serum that can transform any man into a King Cobra snake-and he plans to use it on David.

Doctor Frankenstein creates a mate for his monster, a woman called Eva, who promptly rejects the male creature. In turn, the doctor becomes obsessed with Eva, and tries to make her a perfect Victorian woman.

Canadian scientist, Dr Geoff Burton takes up a position at a new institute in wintry Dresden in order to contribute to their most important project—a human regeneration gene—that also has the potential to make something miraculous out of a personal tragedy that has haunted him for years.

A woman goes back to the island where her parents were killed. They had been working on a cure for cancer and accidentally raised the dead by angering a voodoo priest. With the woman is a group of mercenaries and they meet up with some other researchers. They raise the dead again and all hell breaks loose

Dr. Bock, the chief of medicine at a Manhattan hospital, is suicidal after the collapse of his personal life. When an intern is found dead in a hospital bed, it appears to Bock to be a case of unforgivable malpractice. Hours later, another doctor, who happens to be responsible for another case of malpractice, is found dead. Despondent, Bock finds himself drawn to Barbara, the daughter of a comatose missionary.

When relatively healthy patients begin having 'complications' during simple operations and ending up in comas, a concerned doctor defies her male superiors when she suspects a secret plot.

A rogue scientist near a small desert town arouses the suspicion of the town's doctor when his lab assistant is found dead from a case of acromegaly, which took only four days to develop. As the doctor investigates, aided by the scientist's new female assistant, they discover that something is devouring local cattle and humans in increasingly large quantities.

A disgruntled researcher injects his former employers' meal with a serum that turns their sushi into flesh-eating monsters.

Atomic scientist/pilot Doug Martin is missing after his plane crashes on an reconnaissance mission after a nuclear test. Miraculously appearing unhurt at the base later, he is given sodium amethol, but authorities are skeptical of his story that he was captured by aliens determined to conquer the Earth with giant monsters and insects. Martin vows to use existing technology to destroy them.

A scientist and his sidekick accidentally clone a journalist and decide to turn the mistake into Repli-Kate, their idea of the perfect woman, who loves, beer, football, and frat parties.

Charles Dexter Ward, a wealthy scientist, uses an ancient diary and human remains to begin a terrifying and bloody pursuit for immortality.

During the critical experiment that would rid David Banner of the Hulk,a spy sabotages the laboratory. Banner falls in love with the spy, Jasmin, who performs missions only because her sister is being held hostage by Jasmin's superiors. Banner and Jasmin try to escape from the enemy agents to rebuild their lives together, but the Hulk is never far from them.

The head of a major cosmetics company experiments on herself with a youth formula made from royal jelly extracted from wasps, but the formula's side effects have deadly consequences.

A horror-thriller in which a doctor and his teenage daughter are terrorized by flesh-eating zombies at a truck stop.

In 1993, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project receives a transmission detailing an alien DNA structure, along with instructions on how to splice it with human DNA. The result is Sil, a sensual but deadly creature who can change from a beautiful woman to an armour-plated killing machine in the blink of an eye.

Three manic idiots—a lawyer, a cab driver and a handyman—team up to run a ballet company to fulfil the will of a millionaire. Stooge-like antics result as the trio try to outwit the rich widow and her scheming big-shot lawyer, who also wants to run the ballet.

In 1989, a misunderstood teenager has a high school crush — who just happens to be a handsome corpse! After a set of playfully horrific circumstances bring him back to life, the two embark on a murderous journey to find love, happiness…and a few missing body parts along the way.

A surgeon transplants the heart of an ape into his ailing son with horrific results.

During WWII, Germans obtain the immortal heart of Frankenstein's monster and transport it to Japan to prevent it being seized by the Allies. Kept in a Hiroshima laboratory, it is seeming lost when the United States destroys the city with the atomic bomb. Years later a wild boy is discovered wandering the streets of the city alone, born of the immortal heart.

A team of scientists go to a nuclear mining facility to investigate a possible meltdown and instead find a large amount of cloned dinosaurs.

After being driven to extinction, great bloodthirsty dinosaurs come back to life with the assistance of a demented genetic scientist. She plans to replace the human race with a super-race of dinosaurs who will not pollute the planet.

A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.

A cliché hunchbacked evil scientist's assistant aspires to become a scientist himself, much to the displeasure of the rest of the evil science community.

Residents of peaceful Pebbles Court, Homesville, are being used unknowingly as test experiments for a new 'Body Drug' that causes rapid body decomposition (melting skin etc.) and painful death.

Two brothers, scientists Scott and Tony Nelson, develop an amplifier which enables a person to enter a 4th dimensional state, allowing him to pass through any object. Scott experiments on himself and discovers that each time he passes through something he ages rapidly. He begins killing people, sucking out their life energies and regaining his youth as a result.

The neurological inner workings of romantic relationships between men and women are studied for science.

An accidental overdose of gamma radiation causes a mutation in scientist David Banner's DNA: now whenever he becomes angry, he metamorphoses into a seven-foot-tall, 330-pound, mindless muscular green creature.

Seymour works in a skid row florist shop and is in love with his beautiful co-worker, Audrey. He creates a new plant that not only talks but cannot survive without human flesh and blood.

A horror anthology containing three stories: a female college student working a graveyard shift is terrorized by a serial killer; a hair transplant goes horribly wrong; and a baseball player loses an eye and gets a new one from a recently executed murderer.

A brutal mugging leaves Grey Trace paralyzed in the hospital and his beloved wife dead. A billionaire inventor soon offers Trace a cure — an artificial intelligence implant called STEM that will enhance his body. Now able to walk, Grey finds that he also has superhuman strength and agility — skills he uses to seek revenge against the thugs who destroyed his life.

A young doctor in a US hospital administers a powerful and untested cocktail of drugs to a coma victim. But instead of curing him, it triggers a powerful "out-of-body" experience and enables the patient - a depraved and dangerous loner - to inhabit other people's bodies and, through them, take revenge on the bullying medical students who were accidentally responsible for his condition.

Medical student Ted Grey graduates at the top of his class and quickly joins an elite pathology program, whose top students invite him into their circle. There he uncovers a gruesome secret: They play a game in which one tries to commit the perfect, undetectable murder, then the others compete to determine the victim's cause of death.

The hilarity begins when professor Sherman Klump finds romance with fellow DNA specialist, Denise Gaines, and discovers a brilliant formula that reverses aging. But Sherman's thin and obnoxious alter ego, Buddy Love, wants out...and a big piece of the action. And when Buddy gets loose, things get seriously nutty.

Aliens punish one of their own by sending him to earth. The alien is very violent, and when the body he occupies is damaged, he is forced to find another.

A deranged scientist creates a ray that can shrink people down to doll size.

Fascinated by the human brain and its capacity for ruthlessness, psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis has spent her life investigating the interior lives of violent people. With each case, she came closer to developing a unified field theory of what makes a killer. Along the way - steering away from the conventional wisdom of her colleagues - she explored the world of multiple personality disorder.

Medical researcher Frank, his fiancee Zoe and their team have achieved the impossible: they have found a way to revive the dead. After a successful, but unsanctioned, experiment on a lifeless animal, they are ready to make their work public. However, when their dean learns what they've done, he shuts them down. Zoe is killed during an attempt to recreate the experiment, leading Frank to test the process on her. Zoe is revived -- but something evil is within her.

When the Universe decides what it wants, it's pointless to resist. With his family's life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world – or destroy it.

When a comet passes close to the earth, machines all over the world come alive and go on homicidal rampages. A group of people at a desolate truck stop are held hostage by a gang of murderous 18-wheelers. The frightened people set out to defeat the killer machines…Or be killed by them.

A team of Arctic researchers find a 40,000 year-old man frozen in ice and bring him back to life. Anthropologist Dr. Stanley Shephard wants to befriend the Iceman and learn about the man's past while Dr. Diane Brady and her surgical team want to discover the secret that will allow man to live in a frozen state.

Seattle medical examiner David Krane is obsessed with solving his wife's murder. A possible solution presents itself in an experimental "memory" serum designed by a neurobiology professor, which has the ability to transfer memories from one person to another, but with potentially fatal consequences.

Marc, a successful, ambitious man, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and is given a few months to live. Unable to accept death, he decides to cryogenically freeze himself. The love of his life is devastated. Seventy years later, Marc becomes the first cryogenic resuscitated person in history. But this doesn't happen in the idealized way he dreamt of.
