The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

My introduction to this flick is comprised of two distinct memories. The first is how, some time while I was in early middle school, I saw the very beginning on Sci-Fi Channel, namely the opening credits and the first scene in the operating room, before turning the channel (don't ask me why). The other, which is far more vivid, is when a clip from it was shown on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, during a game of Film Dub. It was a scene of a man with a deformed hand talking with a woman's head in a dish, before his arm gets gruesomely ripped off by a monster that reaches out through a slat in a door (even while watching the actual movie now, I can't help but think of Colin Mochrie yelling, "Buy an encyclopedia! Buy an encyclopedia!"). I can't recall when I learned that the latter was from this film but, regardless, that was all I did know about it until I finally saw the whole movie... which, despite its public domain status, wasn't until 2024. As you've likely guessed by this point before I've even said it, this was another Blu-Ray I bought off that vendor at G-Fest, but I didn't get around to it until that November. When I did, I actually ended up watching it twice in one day, as one of the extra features was the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that featured it (not the first time I've done that with these Scream Factory releases, either). And while I'm not an MST3K devotee by any means, having only seen a handful of episodes when I was younger and revisiting them when they appear as these kinds of special features, I can say that episode proved to me that I find Joe a lot more entertaining than Mike. I should probably cut Mike some slack, since that was his very first episode, and I've been told he improved as he went on, but I found his delivery and overall demeanor to be lackluster and bored. But, regardless, I can also say that this was another movie I bought from that vendor that turned out to be a dud overall. It starts out well enough, and doesn't waste time in getting to the real crux of the plot, but once that's established, it really meanders around for nearly the entire hour it has left, with even the scenes with "Jan in the pan" not even being that entertaining. It's definitely more violent than you would expect for a movie from this period, not to mention sultry, and the music score is definitely memorable, but on the whole, it's a dull talk-fest.

(And just a heads up, no pun intended, I know there was a remake released in 2020, but I'm not going to review that, at least not for right now. You got those modern day follow-ups/remakes of The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster, but I'm drawing the line at what I've heard is a shot-for-shot remake. As if this movie needed the Gus Van Sant treatment.)

When Dr. Cortner fails to save a patient of his on the operating table, he reluctantly allows his son to try his own, very unorthodox method of resuscitation. To his shock and amazement, Bill manages to get the man's heart beating again. Still, Cortner doesn't agree with his son's radical theories and experiments, especially his belief that he can successfully transplant entire limbs and organs from one body to another. Just as he and his fiancee, Jan Compton, are about to leave to spend the weekend together, Bill is told of an important phone message from a man named Kurt, asking him to come up to his family's large country house, where Bill has conducted his experiments. He and Jan head up there, only for Bill's reckless driving and the curving road proving to be a disastrous combination. He crashes through a guardrail on a sharp curve, and while he's thrown clear, he heads back to the burning wreckage to find that Jan has been decapitated. Gathering her severed head, he rushes to the house and there, in the laboratory down in the basement, he and Kurt, his assistant, manage to revive her using an apparatus and a special serum that Bill has devised. Now, Bill intends to give her a new body by murdering the first good-looking woman he can persuade to come to the house alone, but he only has two days before Jan dies for good. Meanwhile, Kurt, himself the subject of one of Bill's unsuccessful transplant experiments, with his badly deformed left hand being the result, warns that another, a hideous creature that's kept locked behind a door in the lab, is growing violent and almost broke out the night before. Bill, however, decides to concentrate on Jan, and searches everywhere he can for a potential new body for her. Unbeknownst to him, Jan now despises him for what he's done to her, and the special serum that's keeping her alive for the time being is giving her telepathic powers, allowing her to communicate with the creature, and they are planning a combined revenge against him.

As you may expect, this low-rent movie was the work of some equally low-rent people, specifically Rex Carlton and Joseph Green, its respective producer and director, who also wrote the screenplay together. The thing is, though, I have very little to say about either of them (that newspaper clipping about Carlton was the only image I could find of either one). Carlton, whose career began at the end of the 40's, was a producer and occasional writer on a number of movies that I've never heard of, such as 'C'-Man, Guilty Bystander, Mister Universe, Josette from New Orleans, The Devil's Hand, and Blood of Dracula's Castle. As much as I may love old horror flicks and, at the very least, know of a number of very obscure films, I'd never heard of those latter two, nor stuff like Nightmare in Wax and such (not surprisingly, none of those movies have very high IMDB scores; not that you would expect them to). Unlike Green, who lived to be 71 when he died in 1999, Carlton only made it to 53, as he committed suicide in 1968 when he failed to pay back the mob for some money he borrowed in order to get a movie made. In fact, he was involved with so many movies around that time that they continued to be released two years after his death. As for Green, I have even less to say about him, as he only directed one other movie after The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and that wasn't until 1986. In fact, he has very few other credits after this flick on his IMDB page, and is said to have later ran a small, self-titled company that distributed various foreign films.

With our lead character of Dr. Bill Cortner (Herb Evers), we have yet another extremely ambitious scientist who feels that science must move forward, no matter what the conservative establishment, including his own father, have to say about it. At the beginning of the movie, he does prove that he can get results with his unorthodox methods when he manages to successfully resuscitate a man whom his father had failed to save, but his father still doesn't approve of them. And recently, he's been trying to perfect a method of transplanting entire limbs and organs where the body will readily accept the new parts, using limbs from amputee operations in his experiments up at his family's secluded country house. He admits he's made "a few mistakes," namely his assistant, Kurt's, diseased and mangled left hand, and the hideous creature he keeps locked behind a door in the lab, but insists he's learned from them. But just when it seems as though Bill is going to get away from his experiments for at least a weekend in order to spend time with his fiancee, Jan, Kurt calls him up to the house, saying it's urgent. With no other choice, Bill drives up to there with Jan, but decides to go like a maniac, despite how curvy and twisting the road is. This leads to him crashing through a guardrail, with the collision throwing him clear of the wreckage but decapitating Jan. Once he realizes what's happened, he scoops up Jan's head and literally runs to the house, heading immediately down into the laboratory. There, he uses a special serum he's concocted, as well as an elaborate apparatus, to revive Jan's head and keep her conscious. Now, knowing he can only keep this up for no longer than a couple of days, he intends to put his transplant methods to the ultimate test and graft her head on to another body. Despite Kurt warning him that this is wholly unnatural and could lead to something horrific, as well as Jan begging him to let her die, Bill is determined to go through with it and spends the rest of the movie searching for a potential victim. This proves to be more difficult than he thought, though, as his first two tries are foiled when a potential eyewitness gets involved each time. In the end, he opts to lure in an old girlfriend, who also happens to be a model.

While the notion that he plans to murder an innocent person for their body, including an old acquaintance he comes across on the street, is bad enough, the way Bill tricks and lures in his former girlfriend, Doris Powell, is really despicable, given that she has issues with men after one assaulted her and badly scarred the side of her face. He uses that to entice her, saying that he and his father can use new advances in plastic surgery to remove the scar. He also tells her not to lose her trust in people as a whole in order to lure her into a false sense of security, and then invites her over

to the country house under the pretense that his father will then decide whether or not the surgery would be effective. With her hopes now up, she goes with him, and comes very close to literally losing her head. And though he claims he's doing all of this because he loves Jan, it's clear that Bill also sees this as the best opportunity to prove that his experimental transplants can work. Shortly after managing to revive her head, he tells Kurt that he feels he was fated to save her in this manner, that all of the skills in surgery and science he's learned over the years were meant for

this task. At the end of the movie, when he's finally got Doris down in the lab, Jan makes it clear that this isn't what she wants but Bill dismisses her, saying, "Is it a crime to want to keep you alive? Is it a crime for science to jump ahead by years? This kind of thing must be done." And when he's just about to begin the procedure, Jan exclaims, "You must be stopped! You must!", only for Bill to arrogantly respond, "And who's going to do it?", then put tape over her mouth to keep her from talking. Also, not only is this about Bill's ego, but when Jan first protests about this, he

tells her, "I want you as a complete woman, not part of one." Not exactly the most pure kind of love on his part now, is it? It doesn't matter, though, as Jan, despite her voice being silenced, uses her newfound telepathic connection with the creature in the room to have him kill Bill, while the laboratory goes up in flames.

Even though she's the most well-known piece of iconography from this film, Jan (Virginia Leith) is a potentially interesting character who, in the end, doesn't get to do much of anything. At the beginning, she absolutely adores Bill, is extremely proud of him when he manages to save the patient's life, and is eager to get married as soon as possible. She seems to be completely unaware of what her fiance has been experimenting on, and when he decides to take her up to the family country house, she's on the verge of learning. But, she ends up learning in the worst way possible, when Bill crashes the car and she's decapitated, only for her head to be revived in the house's basement laboratory. In terrible pain and having horrible memories of the crash, Jan begs for death, while Bill is out trying to find her a new body. Unbeknownst to him, the special serum that he used to revive her has also given her telepathic powers that allow her to sense what he's up to, as well as communicate with the creature he keeps locked up behind the door in the lab. She begins plotting with the creature to exact revenge on Bill, whom she now completely despises for what he's done to both of them, as well as for how horrendous his work is in general. She also begins to match wits with Kurt, learning from him that the creature is a mass of grafted limbs and tissues that Bill brought to life with an earlier form of the serum, as well as that Kurt himself had an arm grafted onto him after his natural one was amputated following an accident. And when she learns that Bill plans to put her head on another body, she exclaims that the foreign tissues would be rejected in the same manner that Kurt's body rejected his new arm. More than anything else, Jan begins to revel in the power she feels coursing through her brain, and demonstrates her influence over the creature in order to show Kurt that she's not as helpless as he thinks she is. As the movie goes on, Jan tries to get the creature to burst out of his cell, and goads him into killing Kurt when the chance arises. And during the climax, she gets the creature to burst out of the cell, and kill Bill, while Jan herself finally gets the death she's been hoping for.

I know you can't do much when you're just a head in a dish of liquid, but Jan, despite her claims of power and control, as well as her desire for revenge, doesn't get to do anything other than sit around and talk and talk and talk in various scenes, usually with either Kurt or the monster behind the door. It is interesting to see her match wits with Kurt, exploiting his obvious fear of what's behind the door, and she is, in the end, able to use the monster to her advantage, but she isn't nearly as entertaining of a character as I expected her to be. Also, numerous sources say that

Virginia Leith herself wasn't at all enthralled with her role or the movie, to put it mildly (can't really blame her, as that couldn't have been a comfortable position to stay in for God knows how long). In fact, she refused to return for any post-production work, forcing the filmmakers to use someone else whenever they had to do ADR, even for the driving scene leading up to the accident (it's very obvious, as the voice doesn't match Leith's at all, and is actually that of someone who appeared earlier as another nurse).

Though he initially believes that Bill's transplant plan for Jan is too unnatural, and is also himself an experiment that hasn't turn out so well, Kurt (Leslie Daniel) feels he has no choice but to stay with Bill and assist him. The reason for this is because he believes there's no place for him in the outside world with his deformed hand, and because he can't continue his own surgical practice until Bill is able to repair it. Even though he's gone through numerous failed transplants, when Kurt first speaks with Jan, he insists that Bill has learned from his mistakes and is confident that his new serum may be the key to a successful one, since it's been able to restore her to life. His relationship with Jan, however, becomes increasingly antagonistic when she begins boasting about the power the serum has given her, as well as how she and the monster are plotting to get revenge on Bill. Even though he sees this power for himself when she manages to communicate with the monster while he's down in the lab with her, he doesn't try to warn Bill of it, save for a vague allusion to something being "beyond control in that room!" And when Kurt later comes down to feed the monster, he and Jan get into a heated argument, with Jan accusing him of being afraid of the monster, despite his claims to the contrary (I got to say, even though their first conversation got kind of tense near the end, especially when Kurt saw what she was capable of, he comes across as overly antagonistic here from the beginning). Ultimately, when he least expects it, Jan has the monster grab Kurt and rip his right arm off, from which he slowly bleeds to death.

Bill's father (Bruce Brighton) appears only in the very first scene and is very much the classic authority figure who advises against his son's radical experiments and theories, even when they prove beneficial. While Dr. Cortner is proud that his son was able to save the life of the man he himself couldn't, he still doesn't approve of his methods, saying that he shouldn't experiment on people right there in the operating room. He especially doesn't agree with his theory about organ and limb transplants, and while he's aware that Bill is using the severed limbs from amputations in his experiments, he warns him that the hospital superintendent is beginning to suspect him. Ultimately, he heads off to a medical convention in Denver for the weekend, completely unaware of the horrible mess his son causes and the steps he takes to try to correct it.

Of the many women whom Bill considers for Jan's new body, the one he ultimately chooses is Doris Powell (Adele Lamont), who happens to be an old girlfriend of his from school (they never make it clear whether they're talking about high school or college), as well as a model. Having been attacked and badly scarred on her left cheek by a man years ago, she now has hatred for men in general and doesn't trust anybody. Thus, when Bill first shows up at her home following a photo session, she has no intention of going anywhere with him or anyone else. But when she shows him the scar, which she keeps hidden behind a lock of her hair, Bill slowly begins to reel her in by promising her that he and his father can fix it with new advances in plastic surgery. He manages to convince her to come over to his country house for a "consultation," and also ensures that nobody will come looking for her. When they arrive there, Bill gives Doris a drink laced with a drug that very quickly knocks her unconscious (she does realize what he did right before she collapses). But, before he can perform the operation, Jan uses her influence over the monster to have him break out of his containment and, after killing Bill, he carries Doris off to safety.

When Bill first goes looking for a body, he heads to this small strip club and catches the eye of a blonde stripper (Bonnie Sharie), whom he follows back into her dressing room. Talking in a voice that's kind of similar to Mae West, she makes her intentions very clear, and also considers herself the queen of the place. He's about to seal the deal, but just when they start kissing, a brunette stripper (Paula Maurice), one who made eyes at Bill out on the show floor, comes into the room. Though she claims she's only back there to change her clothes, she begins hitting on Bill, much to the blonde's irritation. The blonde tries to throw her out, the two of them get into an argument, and Bill, realizing that this isn't going to work out due to there being an eyewitness, opts to leave. The blonde tries to make him stay, promising to make it up to him later, but when the brunette says she'll remember him if he comes back, that reinforces his decision to leave. This leads to a fight between the two women, who'd already been trading barbs, with the brunette earlier telling the blonde to, "Keep your G-string on," and the blonde saying, "It kills her to see me make time," to which the brunette retorts, "You're the only thing that's going to be made around here tonight, honey." After Bill leaves, the two women have this heated exchange: "You lousy tramp. Once in a blue moon, I latch onto a guy with class and you mess it up!" "Eh! What makes you think you had him? He wouldn't have you on a bet." "Says who?" "Says me. What's a guy like that want with leftovers for?" "Leftovers?!" That leads to the brunette getting a slap to the face, to which she retorts by calling the blonde a, "Cheap, third grade stripper!", and they really start fighting, with the brunette yelling, "I'll mash you on the butt!" It's cheap and sleazy, but it's one of the more entertaining parts of the movie.

Up until the climax, the monster (Eddie Carmel) behind the door in the laboratory is only alluded to, as he can be heard growling and grunting in there when Bill first looks through the latch, and according to Kurt, he almost managed to smash his way out of the room the night before. Throughout the movie, Jan begins communicating with the creature with her newfound telepathic powers, getting him to respond to her by pounding and knocking against the door. He proves intelligent enough to tell her through his knocking that she's far from the first hideous result of Bill's experimenting, and that he knows what it's like to be such a failure. The two of them begin conspiring to get their revenge on him for what he's done, with Jan egging the monster on, trying to get him to break down the door, and also getting him to kill Kurt at one point. During the climax, he finally breaks out and we see that he's a hideously mutated, humanoid mass of grafted tissue and organs, brought to life by an early version of the serum Bill used to revive Jan. After killing Bill by biting a bloody chunk out of his cheek (which is so grisly that even Jan screams at that), the monster picks up the still unconscious Doris and carries her off to safety of his own volition, while the laboratory burns behind him.

If you can find a high-definition print of it (namely my source, which is Scream Factory's Blu-Ray release), The Brain That Wouldn't Die can come off as a fairly good-looking, mostly competently-made flick, with Joseph Green appearing to have a fair grasp of how to shoot things. I especially like how, during the opening surgery scene, they nicely suggest all you need to see of Dr. Cortner opening the man's chest and massaging his heart, while Bill works on the brain's motor area. Also, when Bill runs back to his car following the crash, the shot of Jan's hand extending out from below the frame, with fire all

around it, manages to be subtly gruesome when you realize she's been decapitated and what you're seeing is reflexive motor functions. And I won't lie, the way they hide the monster behind the door, only alluding to his presence with sounds, his banging against the inside, Bill's expression when he looks through the latch early on, and the monster's hand reaching out and killing Kurt, did make me curious as to what he actually looked like. However, there are other moments where the direction and editing come off as awkward. For instance, during the fateful drive up to the country house, they use some very overbearing

music, the sound of screeching tires, and a montage of random images, like close-ups of Bill's foot on the gas pedal, signs warning of curves up ahead, and traveling shots of the environment, both from inside the car and along its sides, to get across that he's driving really fast, even though it doesn't really look like he's going much faster than he was just seconds before. The actual crash is only alluded to, with a series of shots of the word "STOP" on the road, a sign that says "CURVE," a shaky POV from the car's front, a close-up of Bill with a frightened expression

on his face (it looks like he's yawning in that screenshot, doesn't it?), the aforementioned POV going into the guardrail, and various angles of Bill tumbling down a hillside. That's followed by a prolonged shot of Bill as he grabs at his side, before he sees the wreck and rushes to Jan's aid, with our only glimpse of the burning car being that shot where he takes away Jan's head. Obviously, they had to skirt around limitations in budget and equipment, but this comes off as more than a little amateurish.

The film also has a tendency to cut to awkwardly brief reaction shots of Bill's face, like when the brunette stripper comes in and ruins his chance to get the blonde, or when he's sitting in on Doris' photo shoot. Going back to that scene at the strip club, when Bill is first flirting with the blonde out front, it cuts back to the lab, for a shot that starts on Jan's head, then pans up the apparatus and over to a machine that's measuring her brainwaves, only to then cut back to the strip club. It does it again when he's in the dressing room with her, this time with Jan saying her often repeated line of, "Let me die." I think the movie

is trying to give you the first hints of Jan's newfound telepathy and that she's able to sense what Bill is doing, but it doesn't quite come across. Also, when the blonde slaps the brunette and the latter yells at her, the dubbing of her line doesn't match the actor's lip movements or action at all. But the weirdest bit of editing in the movie, by far, happens at the end of this scene, during their fight: it suddenly cuts to a piece of tapestry on the wall that has cats on it, and you hear a random voice go, "Meow." It's meant to signify that they're having a cat fight, but that was so unexpected and random that I didn't get the joke until someone

else mentioned it, as my brain was just dumbfounded. And there are some scenes that just feel like overly long padding, like the extended sequence of Kurt watching as Bill first revives Jan's head, the blonde stripper doing her thing when Bill first walks in, and, near the end of the movie, when Kurt, after getting his arm ripped off, staggers upstairs, tries to go out the front door but can't, then stumbles over to a chair, collapses into it for a few seconds, and finally stumbles back down into the lab, succumbs to the massive blood loss, and slumps down against the wall

(I might add that he does all of this action very melodramatically), with interspersed cutaways to Jan laughing and then watching him. Bill bringing Doris home, then going down into the lab and finding Kurt dead, covering up his body, then making Doris a drugged drink and taking it up to her, is also maybe a tad drawn out. And finally, when the movie ends, some prints have a final card where the title reads The Head That Wouldn't Die, one of several alternate shooting titles before they settled on the final one. Apparently, they either didn't think or just didn't care to try to change that little detail.

The movie was shot for a very small budget of around $62,000, and it looks it when it comes to the sets, which I've read were all built in the basement of a hotel in New York. While the operating room in the opening serves its purpose well enough, it's a prelude to just how bare the sets are going to be, especially Bill's laboratory at his country house, which is a fairly small room, with a table in the middle housing the apparatus and the liquid used to keep Jan's head alive, another table with chemistry equipment up against a wall to the left that has anatomy drawings on it, shelves full of chemicals next to that, along with an

operating table and a door in the back corner where the monster is kept. Speaking of the country house, the lavish exterior of which is Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York, the only other part of it that we see is the immediate interior beyond the front door, which just has a table with a plaster head atop it and, in the back, a stairway leading to the second floor. The strip club's exterior is a little spot next to some stairs that has a door and some cardboard cutouts of the women, while the interiors are a small bar and booth area where the blonde does her dance, and the

dressing room with that wall tapestry decorated with cats, a covered couch, and a vanity mirror. The swimsuit model contest that Bill goes to after the strip club doesn't work out takes place in is this very threadbare auditorium with just a small stage, fake stone columns on either side of it, and a black drape in the background, while the spot where we see Bill sitting with the two women accompanying him, after they enter in the wide establishing shot, doesn't even look like it's in the same building, given the wallpaper behind it (it might not have been, for all we know). And like the operating room, Doris' home studio, while serviceable, is nothing to write home about. That said, the woods that Bill and Jan drive through before the crash, which were likely in New Jersey, do look quite lovely.

Like I said in the introduction, the biggest reason why I'm not into this film is that it's just not that fun to watch, despite the premise, as well as what the clips and images you've likely seen from it may have you think. Again, once everything has been set up, the rest of the film consists of little more than a lot of extended scenes of Jan's head talking to either the monster in the closet or Kurt, as well as Bill repeatedly trying and failing to get a new body for her. Granted, there is some humor in how Bill's efforts are continually thwarted, first thanks to the cat fight between the strippers, and then when he manages to

convince an old friend of his to get in the car with him, only for a friend of hers to join them at the very last second and again create the problem of a potential eyewitness. But the scenes of him in the strip club, watching the swimsuit model contest, and his conversation with Doris, not to mention Kurt's prolonged death after his arm is torn out and Bill finding his body shortly afterward, are, like I said, so drawn out that it feels like they were compensating for what they knew was a very bare bones script. And yet, the climax, on the other hand, is too rushed and

anticlimactic: Bill prepares to perform the procedure with Doris, Jan has the monster burst through the door and attack him, a fire suddenly starts (I think it's due to the monster swiping a beaker of volatile chemicals off a table and onto the floor, but him doing so is shot and cut in a manner that makes it hard to tell, and it suddenly cuts to the chemicals combusting into flames), the monster kills Bill, and randomly picks up and carries away the unconscious Doris, while Jan relishes finally getting the death that she's wanted from the beginning.

While it was shot and completed in 1959, the film wasn't released until three years later and, according to Ben Mankiewicz during a showing of it on Turner Classic Movies, the reasons for that were both legal and censorship problems. Sure enough, there are two different versions: a 71-minute version that some sources say was the theatrical one, and an uncut 82-minute version, which is the one you get on the Blu-Ray. What's shocking is how violent and gruesome this longer version is, especially when you know when it was actually filmed, with a shot of the patient's exposed brain during the opening surgery

scene (that's in the shorter cut as well); Kurt getting his arm ripped off and running about the house, bleeding all over the place, before finally dying back down in the lab (that shocked me when I saw that clip on Whose Line); and the monster taking a huge bite out of Bill and spitting that chunk of flesh onto the floor. There are also some unsettling instances of makeup work, like Kurt's twisted, shriveled hand, the scar on Doris' cheek that she keeps hidden behind her hair, and the truly grotesque look of the monster, whose face is a nasty mass of tissue, with the right

eye much higher up than is normal, and a pointed, cone-like head, as well as his own gnarled hands. I'm sure that the movie's overt sleaziness may have caused problems as well, as the scene with the strippers in the dressing room is completely removed from the shorter version (it makes it come off like the blonde stripper's performance out front simply didn't impress Bill and he just gave up and went home), although the entire beauty pageant and Doris' posing session are left intact. And speaking of the latter, one of the extras on the Blu-Ray is an alternate version for the foreign markets where she's completely topless.

A lot of times when I talk about these sort of low-rent B-movies, and it's certainly been true of the lineup we've had for this month so far, I often find the music score to, at best, serve its purpose and fit the scenes, but be very bland or generic overall; that's something I definitely can't say about The Brain That Wouldn't Die. For better or worse, you're not likely to forget this music, which, because of the low budget, is all licensed stock music. Only the opening credits theme, titled "The Web," is given any authorship, as it's a piece by Abe Baker and Tony Restaino that was released by Laurel Records. Regardless, it's an effective note to start on, made up of creeping, unsettling strings, with a big flourish near the beginning. The opening operating scene is also scored in a similarly subtle, unsettling manner, a theme that's repeated during Jan's first time communicating with the monster in the closet. But Bill and Jan's drive to the country house is scored with this very loud, fast-paced, jazzy theme, which, as I said, also does most of the heavy-lifting in getting across that Bill is going faster than he should be. The music that plays following the accident, when Bill sees the wreckage and runs back to grab Jan's severed head, is scored in a sort of wistful manner that doesn't fit the scene, while his flight to the country house with the head is done with a very rhythmic theme that's... "better," but not by much. There are more low-key themes, like what you hear when Bill first connects Jan's head to the apparatus, only to end on a blaring horn when her head is first revealed, and the climax, naturally, is scored with some very bombastic music. But the parts of the score that stick in my mind the most are these very sultry themes that you first hear when Bill goes to the strip club. When he first arrives and watches the blonde do her dance, you hear this music that's accompanied by occasional vocalizing and male voices continually saying something like, "Chicky,"; you hear this during other sultry scenes throughout the movie (as well as when Bill stalks some women on the street and drugs Doris near the end, which makes thing even more skin-crawling), albeit without the voices. Another, similar theme is heard immediately afterward, when Bill hangs around in the bar area and then follows the blonde into the dressing room, and it's also heard in other scenes like the beauty pageant. That's the one that really tends to get stuck in my head.

Like with some of the other films I've talked about so far this month, I know there are number of people who have an affinity for The Brain That Wouldn't Die because, due to its public domain status, they saw it a lot when they were younger. But, because I'm not one of them, I have to be honest and admit that it didn't do much for me. While its premise and images will ensure that people will always at least know of it, and it is shockingly violent and sultry for its time, with some well-done makeup and a memorable music score, on the whole, it's a rather standard mad scientist movie with some uninspired characters, a central figure who doesn't get to live up to her full potential, very low production values, moments of awkward direction and editing, and, once Jan is in the pan, it's mostly very talky, drawn out, and not all that entertaining to me. There are some moments that did make me laugh, particularly that stripper cat fight, and there are instances of direction that I did like, but regardless, this is another one that I don't see myself watching ever again.

Gila! (2012)

As I said at the start of my review of Return of the Killer Shrews, that Film Masters Blu-Ray of The Giant Gila Monster and the original Killer Shrews proved to have both its up- and downsides, the latter being how the special features made me aware of some obscure, modern day follow-ups/remakes that I now had no excuse not to cover along with the originals. In the case of Gila!, it may have been mentioned on The Giant Gila Monster's commentary track, but I really remember first hearing of it during that disc's two-hour audio interview with Don Sullivan. There, Sullivan specified how it was a TV movie remake and he had a brief role in it as a Gila monster expert. And that was about all I knew of Gila! when I first decided to track it down online. Looking up more info on it (which was somewhat scarce, as it doesn't have a Wikipedia page), I learned it was directed by Jim Wynorski, which definitely gave me more of an idea of what kind of movie it was. And when I first found a stream and saw a little bit of it, and got a look at the awful, CGI Gila monster, it seemed as though my suspicions were verified. Watching the entire movie, however, I will say that, unlike the Killer Shrews follow-ups, Gila! isn't the kind of movie that mocks the original. It's not a full-on parody like Attack of the Killer Shrews! (no Lloyd Kaufman here, thankfully) and, for the most part, it plays itself a bit straighter than Return of the Killer Shrews. It does definitely have fun with the original, as it plays up the 50's setting and style, specifically in the rock and roll and hot-rods, keeps many of the character names and archetypes, and its tone is most definitely tongue-in-cheek, but it's also not a smarmy put-down, which, as someone who genuinely loves the original, I do appreciate. That said, it's nothing great, either. While some are entertaining, most of the characters are one-dimensional, the digital effects are horrendous, and the pacing feels slow, with the story focusing on plot-points that ultimately go nowhere. But since I was expecting a lot worse, I can deal with those flaws.

It's the 1950's, and a small town in the Midwest is bustling with young people who love rock n' roll and hot-rod racing. It's also close to Christmastime, but this holiday is shaping up to be anything but merry. While making out in a wash outside of town, Betty Wheeler and her boyfriend, Don Fielding, are attacked by a giant, mutant Gila monster. They try to escape, but the car stalls and the monster devours Don, before going after Betty. Meanwhile, Chase Winstead, a popular young mechanic and skilled drag-racer, is confronted by Waco Bob, an old nemesis of his from high school. He challenges Chase to a race, which he loses, and then declares that Chase cheated and that it's not over. Unbeknownst to anyone else, the monster, created by illegal dumping of chemicals in a cave in a quarry, continually wanders out in search of prey. The local sheriff, Matt Parker, is tasked by the town's overbearing mayor, Norbert Wheeler, who happens to be Betty's father, with finding her. He enlists Chase and his girlfriend, Lisa, in helping him track down the missing couple, and while searching the wash, they find Don's abandoned car and Betty's purse, splattered with blood. Parker radios his deputy, Wilma Powers, and when she arrives, she tells him that she's been getting reports of missing livestock and smashed fences, as well as one about shots fired at the Swenson farm. While Parker goes there to investigate, and Wilma takes photographs of the crime scene, Chase goes to get the wrecker to impound Don's car. On the way back, he gets a glimpse of the monster when it crosses the road behind him. At the Swenson farm, Parker finds Karl Swenson lying on the ground, mumbling about something big that wouldn't die, and also takes a sample of a green substance he finds on the ground. He calls an ambulance and tells Wilma to come there as well, but on the way, a car slams into a telephone pole in front of her. She attempts to radio for help, only to be faced with the monster, which promptly devours her. Chase, meanwhile, finds Betty near the wash, bloody and unconscious, and races her to the doctor. After Chase tells Parker about his seeing the enormous creature that crossed the road, and Parker learns that the substance he found is saliva from a Gila monster, the two of them realize they need to kill the beast before more people fall prey to it.

It's amazing that it's taken me this long to do a movie by Jim Wynorski, considering how the guy has literally over 200 writing, producing, and directing credits on his filmography (but I'm going to make up for it, as we'll be talking about him a couple of more times this month). I guess that shows that I do have some actual taste and don't go looking for out and out trash (unlike some people who shall remain nameless), especially porn, which he's specialized in since the Millennium. In fact, Gila! (which somehow had four people attached to it in the writing department) was made in the midst of his doing a swath of those soft-core parodies and porn movies in the 2010's, like The Hills Have Thighs, Sexy Wives Sindrome, Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders, Sexy Wives Sinsations, Pleasure Spa, and Sexipede!, to name just a few. Of course, he was also doing some Roger Corman-produced Sci-Fi Channel originals around this time, like Dinocroc vs. Supergator and Piranhaconda, so it wasn't that much of a departure. I don't think Gila! was made for Sci-Fi, but I'm not sure what channel it did premiere on.

As in the original movie, Chase Winstead (Brian Gross) is portrayed as a really likable, earnest young man who's quite popular about the town, not just with his friends and family, but also with Sheriff Parker. Like in the original, he works as a mechanic at a local garage owned by a Mr. Compton, and does whatever he can for his family, including getting his young sister, Missy, some walking braces and gifting them to her as an early Christmas present. He has a bit more of a Steve McQueen vibe to him here, as he loves drag-racing with his friends (in the original, he himself never does it, but some of his friends seem to have a reputation for it). He also has a lifelong nemesis in the form of Waco Bob, who's always trying to get even with Chase for supposedly wronging him back when they were in high school, which Chase denies doing. While he calls Waco out on how crazy he acts, and is more than willing to race him when he first confronts him, Chase refuses to race him again later on, as he knows doing so at night is unsafe. Moreover, even though he beats Waco during their first race, and defends his methods when Waco accuses him of cheating, Chase offers to give his car a tune-up, saying his engine is why he lost. Then, when Waco shows up at his garage and tries to pick a fight with him, Chase tries to make him leave without having to resort to violence, which doesn't work. And yet, after Parker breaks up the fight and asks Chase if he wants to press charges, he opts not to.  Chase is such a pure soul that, when Waco's girlfriend, Carla, tries to hit on him, he makes it clear that he's not interested and remains loyal to Lisa. Both he and Parker come to realize there's a monster roaming the area at about the same time, with Chase getting a glimpse of the Gila monster when it crosses the road. The two of them work together to try to kill it but, like in the original, Chase is the one who ends up putting it down.

As in the original, Chase's girlfriend, Lisa (Madeline Voges), doesn't have much to do other than be loving and supportive towards him. Significantly, though, when Sheriff Parker asks her and Chase if they know anything about Betty Wheeler and Don Fielding, Lisa suggests that the two of them may have eloped, as she's close enough with Betty to know of her feelings for Don, as well as how she doesn't care for her father and stepmother. Thus, when she goes with Chase and Parker to the wash, and they find evidence that Don and Betty may have met a bad end, Lisa is brought close to tears over it. She's also not at all happy whenever Carla, whom she already thought was slutty, tries to put the moves on Chase. And when Carla goes as far as to sing a sensual song at a dance to try to seduce him, she and Lisa get into a fight (this prompts the band to start playing a song called Cat Fight), and Chase and Waco have to pull the two of them apart. Like in the original, Lisa aids Chase in getting what he needs to kill the Gila monster and saving his family, saying that she considers them to be her family as well. But in a major departure, she joins the others in firing on it using Compton's weapons. 

The most pointless addition to the remake's story is the character of Waco Bob (Jesse Janzen), a punk from Chase's past who's hated him ever since junior high. The reason is because he accuses Chase of getting him sent to juvie hall for three years, saying he ratted him out for stealing some milk that he meant for his little sister. Chase denies doing this, but Waco, of course, doesn't believe him. He also seems to think that Chase loves how Carla is flirting with him, even though he makes it clear that he finds it annoying (Waco himself flirts with Elsa, a waitress at a fast food place, early on, and while Carla is in the car with him, no less). It's obvious he's just an insecure bully who's stuck in high school mentally and jealous of Chase's popularity. He also blames Parker and the entire town for the way his life went, saying they never gave him a chance and hated both him and his father. Parker does admit that Waco has gone through some tough times, but when he acts like such a hateful prick, it's hard to feel bad for him. He spends the entire movie trying to get even with Chase in some way, be it by beating him at drag-racing or just plain beating him, like when he shows up at Compton's garage, looking for a fight. He's even clearly willing to murder Chase, as during their fight, he grabs a bottle, and seems to be ready to break it and slash Chase, when Parker intervenes. And after Lisa and Carla's fight at the dance, Waco talks about heading out to Chase's home with a gun. Both Chase and Carla call Waco out on his obsession, with the latter growing especially sick of it. By the end of the movie, Waco finds himself alone, as Carla leaves him. He then randomly shows up at Chase's house during the climax but, instead of trying to fight or kill him, he offers to help get his loved ones to safety while Chase takes care of the Gila monster. He even tells him, "Hey, Winstead: don't die." After the monster is destroyed, Waco is the only one who opts not to attend the party at Chase's house, instead leaving town for good... which I couldn't care less about.

Carla (Christina DeRosa) is a big part of Waco's problem, as she often makes him feel like even more of a loser whenever Chase beats him, as she acts ashamed. She also openly flirts with Chase, seemingly thinking he's more of a man, and resulting in a growing conflict between her and Lisa. That comes to a head during the dance late in the film, when she sings a sultry song called Fever to try to get Chase's attention, and then gets into a fight with Lisa over it. Her and Waco's relationship is pretty toxic in general, as he's often manhandling her when he's frustrated, and physically forces her to come with him after the fight at the dance. By the end of the movie, Carla decides she's had enough of Waco's obsession with Chase, with the final straw being when he intends to go over to his house with a gun. At the Christmas party at the end of the movie, Carla and Lisa are now inexplicably friendly with each other, and the former opts to stay in town, while Bob drives off.

As with Sheriff Jeff in the original, Sheriff Matt Parker (Terence Knox) is a really decent guy who's well-liked by the townspeople and has a good relationship with the kids, especially Chase and Lisa. Early on, he steps in and stops Waco from attacking Chase at the garage, and then asks Chase if he wants to press charges. Though he's disappointed when he  opts to only charge Waco with "reckless littering," Parker does let him off with a warning. He also admits that he has some sympathy for Waco, saying he's had a lot of bad luck in his life. And when Mayor Wheeler is talking about how he doesn't approve of his daughter dating Don Fielding, whom he refers to as a "miscreant," Parker defends Don, saying he's a good kid. Like in the original, Wheeler is often on Parker to find out what's happened to his daughter, and Parker has to deal with his condescending criticism after he's been running himself ragged, trying to do just that. Thus, it's satisfying when, as he starts to suspect that there's a monster, and that Deputy Wilma Powers might be dead, Parker tells Wheeler to shut up when he starts badmouthing her. Once Parker learns there's a giant Gila monster prowling around, he enlists Chase's help in finding its lair and killing it. The two make use of the massive stockpile of weapons that Compton has in his garage and seal the monster up in its cave at the quarry, but that only proves to be a very temporary solution. When the monster reemerges, Parker deputizes Chase (whom he earlier told would make a good deputy), Lisa, and their friends, as well as Compton, and they head out to face the monster, which is heading right for town.

While Sheriff Jeff was literally on his own, Parker does have at least one deputy: Wilma Powers (Kelli Maroney). She's a rather feisty and sultry old gal, as Parker catches her reading a dirty magazine at her desk, and when she meets up with Chase while photographing the spot where they found Don's car and Betty's purse, she tells him, in a fairly sensual manner, "I like action. Action photography, that is. I love movement, bodies in motion, checkin' the action. You know what I mean?" She even comes on to him a little bit, putting her hand on his shoulder and asking if he needs her help in towing the vehicle. And when she leaves to go meet up with Parker at the Swenson farm, she asks Chase if he's going to be okay by himself. He answers, "I got it, Deputy," and Wilma says to herself, "And how." Speaking of Parker, there's a genuine mutual respect between, and Wilma isn't shy about voicing her disdain for Mayor Wheeler. After Wheeler demands that Parker come out to his house over the phone, she says, "Just wait till I catch him speeding one of these days. I'll whip the cuffs on him so fast..." Parker then says, "Yeah, you will. Won't you?", and she just smiles. Unfortunately, Wilma doesn't make it to the halfway point. While on her way to the Swenson farm, a man being chased by the Gila monster crashes into a telephone pole in front of her. She tries to call for an ambulance, as well as Parker, when the monster shows up at the scene. Surprisingly calm, she remarks, "You're a big fella, aren't ya?", and fires her revolver, but it doesn't do any good and she's quickly devoured.

Instead of just being the wealthiest man in town, in this film, Wheeler (Gerard Pauwels) is the mayor. But that doesn't make him any less of an asshole. He's not only constantly on Sheriff Parker, accusing him of being lazy and not getting results in his investigation of what happened to his daughter (in his first scene, he threatens to fire him if he doesn't find anything soon), but has it out for all of the kids in the town, rather than just Chase. He despises them for their love of hot-rods and rock and roll, which is why he doesn't like Betty dating Don Fielding. When Chase's friend Pike pulls up in front of him to tell him that Chase found Betty, Wheeler is initially looking for a reason to take his license away, just because. But, fortunately, when Pike tells him what's going on, he not only gets in the car with him but gives him permission to give it the gas. Later, after walking into the empty sheriff's office and answering the phone calls while Parker is out, Wheeler is about ready to talk crap about Wilma when Parker says he doesn't know where she is, but Parker tells him to shut it. Wheeler then quickly runs out of the building, knowing it's best not to press the issue with him. During the third act, when the Gila monster reappears and is rampaging across the countryside, Parker personally takes Wheeler to a spot where he can see the monster. From then on, he backs off of criticizing Parker, and even joins in on the attempt to destroy the monster, before Chase has to take care of it. During the Christmas party at the end, Wheeler is now decent enough to offer to pay for the repairs to Chase's car, which got blown up along with the monster.

In her one scene at their home, Wheeler's wife, Vera (Julie McCullough), proves to be a drunken floozy who immediately comes on to Parker, offering him a Bloody Mary. It's also clear that her and Wheeler's relationship is anything but steady, with Vera constantly putting him down. When he describes the town's hot-rodders as, "Obsessed with speed, loud music, and living lives with no direction or purpose," Vera comments, "And Norbert thinks that's a bad thing. Tsk, tsk, and tsk." Furthermore, when Wheeler suggests that Betty may have been kidnapped because, "People know I have money," Vera retorts, "He's got it. He don't spend it, but he's got it." Wheeler repeatedly tells her to be quiet, and is especially aggravated with her flirting with Parker, not that she cares.

While Chase's employer, Mr. Compton, didn't have much of a role or character in the original, that's not the case here. Sherwood Compton (Rich Komenich) is portrayed as a gruff and hard-drinking, but likable, old guy. In fact, he's sort of this film's Old Man Harris equivalent. Before he first appears onscreen, you learn he's at the sheriff's office, having been found in a drunken stupor on top of his car, and is now sobering up. He's also a veteran of three wars and, as such, is prepared for any kind of threat that comes his way, be they Communists, aliens, or even giant Gila monsters. He shows Chase that he has a massive stockpile of weapons hidden in his garage, telling him, "Three wars I've been in, Chase: WWI, WWII, and Korea. I seen stuff nobody should see. Preparation, Chase. That's what saves lives... I don't care if it's Martians or Commies. I'm gonna be ready." Said stockpile proves valuable when Chase, Sheriff Parker, and everyone else take on the Gila monster, although Compton is initially unwilling to let them use it. Parker, however, tells him that he could get fifty years in prison for said stockpile, despite Compton trying to use the Constitution as an excuse. During the third act, when the Gila monster breaks its way out of its sealed up lair and heads towards town, Compton, who's very accepting of the idea of it (as well as aliens, as he even told Lisa earlier that Chase and Parker were going off to battle Martians), allows them to take everything they can and even joins in on the action, wielding a big, ammo-fed gun like he's Rambo. When he first sees the monster, he comments, "Next time somebody tells me pigs can fly... damn, I'm gonna believe 'em!", and laughs and yells like a maniac while firing on it, screaming for it to get out of there. When it turns and goes in a different direction, Compton then growls, "And don't you think about comin' back!"

While he hadn't acted since the early 60's by this point, and he does nothing but spew exposition, it's still cool to see Don Sullivan in his brief cameo as Linden Dawes, the expert whom Parker brings in to examine the substance he finds at the Swenson farm. Dawes tells Parker that it's Gila monster saliva, and while he doesn't really believe him when he suggests said Gila monster is the size of a car or bigger, Dawes does say that such a creature would be cause for concern. He also tells him what kind of environment Gila monsters can be found in, as well as that, at this particular time of year, they're searching for food before they return to their nests to hibernate. He adds that said nests are often something akin to a cave, where they'll be safe from the cold, which gives Parker the idea of investigating the one in the quarry. Dawes then asks Parker why he's suddenly so interested in lizards, and he answers, "Oh, I'm thinkin' about gettin' some house pets." This would prove to be Sullivan's last film appearance, as he died six years later.

Like the original, Chase's friends aren't all that memorable, save for maybe Pike (Chase Adams), whom he beats during a drag-race at the beginning, and who takes Mayor Wheeler to the hospital after Betty has been found. He also acts like a gentleman after Waco Bob is really awful towards Elsa (Callie-Nycole Burk), a Danish exchange student who works at a fast food place. Speaking of Elsa, she's the closest the movie comes to how Lisa was portrayed as an exchange student in the original. She doesn't care for 

Waco acting sleazy towards her, and when he mistakes her accent for French (another allusion to the original), she says, in Danish, "Oh, look... your thing must be the size of a herring's." Betty Wheeler (Adrienne Atkins) and Don Fielding (Brian Patrick McCulley), the Gila monster's first victims, have a bit more to them than Pat Wheeler and Liz Humphries in the original. For one, they actually get some dialogue, and there's a switch around, as Betty is the one with the overbearing father. Moreover, as was merely 

suggested in the original, she does want to elope with Don, eager to get away from her crappy life in town. And while Don gets eaten, Betty, after seemingly suffering the same fate, is found alive by Chase during the second act. However, this proves dramatically pointless, as she never regains consciousness onscreen, even though it seems like she's going to pull through. Chase's mother, Dorothy (Ellen Kingston), and Missy (Jenna Ruiz), don't have much more to them than they did in the original. In fact, aside from coming off like a really kind mother, 

Dorothy has no standout moment whatsoever here. And save for when she tries to show Chase that she can walk in her leg braces and Chase, at the end, sings The Mushroom Song to her, the same goes for Missy. This time, however, Dorothy does get caught up in the Gila monster's climactic rampage, rather than disappearing before the third act, and they do specify that Missy's leg problems are a result of polio. On the flip side, though, the reason for Chase's father not being in the picture is never mentioned like before.

There are a few random townspeople who are memorable for one reason or another. After the scene at the fast food joint, Waco plays Chicken with Lars (Robert Hay Smith) and Clete (Micheal Price), two old guys who are driving around in an old pickup truck, drinking whiskey. After Waco nearly causes them to crash, Clete (who's an Irishman), grumbles, "Damn drunk drivers. They should keep 'em off the road." They're then confronted by the Gila monster, and it chases them down the road, as Clete drives in

reverse. Rather than eat them, it ends up killing them by crushing and destroying their truck. Karl (James Wolford Hardin) and Maybelle Swenson (Judy Joseph Crippin) also have an encounter with the monster when it wanders onto their farm. Karl, who's about as stereotypical country as you can be in those overalls, is nearly killed when it attacks him while he's in the barn, but he actually survives falling out of an open window up in the loft to the ground below. Maybelle (who randomly calls her own husband "Mr.

Swenson"), however, isn't so lucky, as it gobbles her up when she goes outside to investigate. And like in the original, the monster destroys a train, but here, we get a little bit with the engineer (John Bender) and fireman (Ron Mackay). The engineer tells the fireman about how he recently came home to find his wife nearly being talked into shilling out $800 for some aluminum siding, and that he immediately nipped it in the bud. When they then see the monster on the tracks ahead of them, he initially thinks it's a local man's

escaped bull, but they soon get close enough to see what it is and try to dive off the train. However, the very fat fireman literally gets stuck in the open doorway, causing the two of them to die when the train hits the monster and explodes.

I shouldn't be surprised, given that we're talking about a very low budget (according to IMDB, it was only like $900,000), made-for-TV monster movie by Jim Wynorski, but, holy hell, does Gila! have "cheap" written all over it. As with Return of the Killer Shrews, it has that shot on digital aesthetic that I always hate, though thankfully it doesn't come off as amateurish as Attack. However, I will say that I think Return is more visually appealing, as the color-grading there was fairly rich and bright, while this has a more desaturated look (in some shots, it looks as 

though the color has been drained out of the image), probably to enhance the feeling of it being set in the Midwest in the winter. Also like Return, while it was filmed on location, there are shots where it seems as though the actors are standing in front of a green screen, even when there's no special effects work around them. An example is one shot of Chase and Parker running out of the cave and into the quarry, which looks like there's a really bad, traveling green screen behind them. However, where it's plan as day 

is in the many driving scenes, especially when there's a close-up on a character's face up against a window. And the cheap digital aesthetic makes the already crappy visual effects come off all the worse. Moreover, there are some glaring continuity errors regarding the environments in some scenes, which I'll get to, and when Parker, Wilma, or anyone else pull their guns, they look like plastic toys! And while fair for the most part, the cinematography can get a little

too handheld and shaky in certain scenes, with things sometimes being off-center. Direction-wise, Wynorski does have a few standout moments, such as a memorable shot between Lisa's legs when Chase and Waco are about to race at the beginning, and a shot of the approaching Gila monster reflected in a hubcap. Also, the race scenes, well nothing amazing, are edited fairly well, as is the movie as a whole, making it watchable, if nothing else.

While the original movie took place in more of a little rural community than an actual town, this one is set in and around a small city, which was Franklin, Indiana in reality (since the patrol cars are marked as Johnson County, where Franklin is located, and the movie itself never says otherwise, let's just assume that it is actually set there). While it still has the air of a fairly quiet place where not much happens for the most part, this place might as well be Metropolis compared to the original, as we get shots of the town square, the movie theater, and most notably, the distinctive 

Johnson County Courthouse, which serves as the sheriff's office exterior and is definitely more impressive than that tiny little shack Sheriff Jeff had. However, a lot of the movie still takes place in the rural areas around the city, like isolated county roads, including one where the kids drag-race at the beginning; the little fast food place they visit shortly afterward; the farms, railroad tracks, and wide open countryside where the Gila monster does a lot of its rampaging; the eerie, desolate area of Wilson's Wash,

where Betty and Don encounter the monster; and the large quarry with the cave that serves as both the illegal chemical dumping ground and the monster's lair. We get to see a little bit of the cave's interior, and because it's so big, empty, and barren, it feels more like an abandoned mine than a natural cave. Like in the original, Chase lives with his family in a small farmhouse, although they're clearly more well off here, as it's where they hold the Christmas party at the

end, and they're even able to afford a horse, which Missy rides in one scene. Mayor Wheeler, again, lives in a very large, fancy home outside of town, and while Compton's garage isn't that much different than the original, it's still slightly bigger, feels a bit more like an actual garage, and, notably, has his weapons stockpile in the back. And finally, though it acts as little more than a window dressing for the story, the movie's being set during the winter and at Christmastime does make it stand out somewhat.

What's interesting is how, even though the movie is set in the 50's, it doesn't shove it in your face as much as you might expect. We're never told the exact year, but since Compton mentions having served in the Korean War, it's obviously in the mid-to-late 50's, and even possibly 1959, when the original was released. Regardless, we do have classic hot-rods and cars, clothes and hairstyles of the period, an old-fashioned fast food restaurant akin to a Sonic, and some occasional slang from the era, but it's all employed in a fairly natural manner, rather than feeling like the 

film is constantly reminding you that it's the 50's. What's more, the young people, especially Chase and Lisa, are much more amorous in their kissing and flirting than you would ever see in a movie from the era, but which we know is the case in reality, and that's to say nothing of the scene where Carla sings a sensual song to try to seduce Chase. In fact, other than a newscast that Chase hears on the radio about how, according to the government, there's no danger of fallout from the latest Soviet tests, the most 

overtly 50's element is the music, both the score, which has some unmistakable old-fashioned sci-fi sounds to it, and the plethora of rock and roll songs on both the soundtrack and in the film itself. Given that it's Wynorski, it's really amazing that this didn't turn into a full-on parody of the time period and the types of monster flicks that proliferated it. It seems like it is going to be that at first, given the exclamation mark in the title, and how the opening credits are done in a very colorful, tongue-in-cheek 

manner, with the title itself coming out of a freeze-frame of Betty's screaming face (specifically, it comes out of her mouth), the credits colored in a mixture of radioactive green and yellow, and up against a background pattern akin to the Gila monster's scales, all while Little Bitty Pretty One by Bobby Day and the Satellites plays on the soundtrack. But then, the movie starts and it's not nearly that pronounced.

Indeed, the film's overall tone is not as jokey, smarmy, or low-brow as in the two Killer Shrews follow-ups. It's not dead serious, that's for sure, and has a tongue-in-cheek, campy air about it, but the portrayals and personalities of the main characters, as heightened as they can be, don't quite tip over into feeling like caricatures. It's a different story with some of the side and peripheral characters, as I mentioned earlier, like Wilma, but the actors playing Chase, Lisa, Waco Bob, Carla, Sheriff Parker, and Mayor Wheeler feel sincere in their 

performances. Even Compton, for the most part, doesn't come off as over-the-top as you would expect someone like him to be, even when he's talking about Martians and his right to stockpile weapons. Now, that said, there are moments that do come feel off-kilter and akin to a spoof, like the scene with the two guys who dump the chemicals in the quarry's cave, particularly in how they lay out exactly what they're doing in their dialogue, and Elsa insulting the ignorant Waco's family jewels to his face in Danish. There are plenty others during the second half, like 

the scene where Chase and Parker first consider the idea of the culprit being a giant mutant monster, with completely straight faces and not considering how ludicrous the idea is (I also find the angle of that close-up on Chase to be kind of odd). When they later discuss finding and killing the monster, Chase asks Parker if he has a plan and he admits, in a deadpan manner, that he doesn't. After they drive out to the cave, Chase learns that Parker isn't sure if it really is the monster's lair, leading to this exchange between 

them: "So, in effect, we're guessing." "We're investigating." Chase also expects them to stake out and wait for the monster to emerge, and isn't too happy when Parker says that they're going in after it. But, he reluctantly goes to get the nitro, per his orders, and they walk in, while Parker admits he'd rather be anywhere else. As I said, when many of the townspeople confront the monster during the climax, Compton is wielding his belt-fed weapon as if he's

Rambo. Moreover, when we first see him with it at the garage beforehand, he's framed in front of a picture of the American flag, remarking, "Let's go lizard huntin'!", not to mention what he yells when they fire at the monster (that's about the closest it comes to becoming a parody). And when everyone's loading up, you hear When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again playing on the soundtrack. But those are just individual moments in a movie that manages to avoid being a send-up but isn't totally straight-laced, either.

If there's a downside to the tone and approach that Wynorski goes for with Gila!, it's that it doesn't allow for the original's instances of surprisingly creepy atmosphere. Not that you would expect either this or The Giant Gila Monster to actually be scary, but as I said in my review of it, I've always liked how it had that eerie feeling it derived from the idea of something lurking in the woods, enhanced by some of the spooky nighttime scenes and the music score. Here, you do have moments where Chase is spooked while scanning the woods, and after he and Parker

find the spot where Wilma was gobbled up, they look around the surrounding countryside, but it's not as spooky as the original. Granted, you shouldn't expect someone like Wynorski to attempt such a thing anyway, but I really wish we could get a modern version of The Giant Gila Monster that could expand on that, likely, accidental aspect.

Given that he grew up in this very era, and began his career working for Roger Corman, it doesn't surprise me at all that Wynorski seems to have an affection for 50's B-movies like The Giant Gila Monster. In fact, this is a very faithful remake. Besides the identical plot, time period, and a number of the same character names, it also hits many of the same beats. It opens with two teens getting attacked by the monster while they're parked by themselves, listening to music; one of them is Wheeler's child, and after they disappear, 

he's constantly on the sheriff's back about learning what happened; the sheriff enlists Chase Winstead and his friends to help him look for the missing couple; Chase lives with his mother and younger sister, and scrapes together enough money to buy some leg braces for the latter; Missy, at one point, tries to walk across a room towards Chase but isn't successful; the monster is briefly glimpsed crossing the road; it destroys a train; and it's defeated when Chase drives a car filled with canisters of nitro 

glycerine at it. And besides the original movie's star having a cameo, at the end, Chase sings The Mushroom Song and, not only is everyone else into it but, they start singing along with him. There's even a slight nod to a cliche that was seen a lot in the 50's: somebody coming up behind someone else and startling them by putting their hand on their shoulder, which Wilma does to Chase at one point. And Pike, at one point, flat-out asks if the monster was created by the traditional radiation. Like I said in the intro, as somebody who does genuinely like the original, I appreciate that this remake has fun with it, the time period, and its old-fashioned conventions, rather than just mocking it.

Unfortunately, something else that Gila! has in common with the original is that the Gila monster itself is one of its least successful elements. To be fair, it is portrayed as more vicious and actively dangerous, often running after its prey, as opposed to the sluggish and indifferent-looking original. It also has more of a natural motive: instead of just randomly killing people, you learn that it's eating as much food as it can because it's going to hibernate soon, and that it may be intending to lay eggs as well (which turns 

out to be true, as a much smaller but still big Gila monster appears outside the Winstead home at the very end). That said, there are moments where it ends up killing people but doesn't eat them, seemingly because it killed them in a way that either left them unappetizing or hard to get to: spraying them with the chemicals, crushing them in a vehicle, etc. And, if nothing, it does look like an actual Gila monster, at least in terms of the color patterns, whereas the original used a beaded lizard. But that doesn't change the fact that, in the end, it's just a generic movie 

monster. Unlike the vague explanation that was only posited as a suggestion for its origin in the original, you get a definitive one here, with the illegal dumping of toxic chemicals in a cave in the quarry near town. But, while I do think it could've been better handled in the original, I prefer how there was no real answer before, whereas this is so typical. There are also some abnormally big crickets in that cave, another byproduct of the dumping and which, it's suggested, the monster feeds on when it's not foraging for food

outside, further contributing to its mutation.  Okay addition, but it's still really generic. And finally, there's the horrendous CGI used to create the monster, which is something that hurts the movie overall. Like Return of the Killer Shrews, it's that really bad, floaty, Sci-Fi Channel original movie kind of CGI that makes the monster feel like it's not even in the same plane of existence as the actors, let alone the same scene or setting. That's why I don't watch Sci-Fi

originals if I can help it, as bad digital work like this immediately turns me off and takes me out of it. Yeah, the special effects in the original film certainly weren't great either, and you never buy that the Gila monster is as big as it's made out to be, but those effects have a charm to them that this crap certainly doesn't. I know it was a tiny budget, and that this kind of stuff is par for the course when Wynorski is at the helm, especially in the later parts of his career, but there's only so much leeway I can give it.

The monster itself is far from the only example of bad digital effect here. There are several egregious CG explosions, such as the monster destroying the train and Chase's nitro-filled car hitting it, and the same goes for the effects of the monster eating people. Probably the worst effect of all is early on, when the two guys dumping the chemicals in the cave get sprayed in the face with it, and the stuff proceeds to melt and dissolve them. What could've been a cool-looking makeup effect, with the one guy ripping his melting flesh off to reveal his skull, is instead ruined 

by the crappy digital work. (And by the way, don't go into this expecting a lot of gore, because you're not getting it.) And there's a lot of really bad digital smoke and gas effects, and fake gun muzzle flashes, throughout the movie as well. Ironically, as awful as the digital giant crickets could've been, they're kept almost entirely offscreen, so we don't have to endure looking at them like we do the monster.

The original film is hardly the most exciting, action-packed thing you're likely to ever see, but another major problem with Gila! is that it's a pretty slow movie, despite being only 91 minutes long, and has long sections where not much happens. And even when something does happen, the shitty CGI often makes it hard to enjoy. Like the original, we get our first scene with the Gila monster immediately, when it comes upon Don Fielding and Betty Wheeler while they're making out at Wilson's Wash. They hear it 

snarling and rustling through the forest nearby, then see it coming towards them. Don starts the car and attempts to drive away, flying down the gravel road, with the monster in hot pursuit. They manage to get pretty far, when the car suddenly dies and Don is unable to start it back up. He tells Betty that they need to make a run for it and gets out of the car, when the monster catches up to them. Don has enough time to say, "Shit," before the monster grabs him in its jaws and swallows him whole. Betty then gets out of the 

car and tries to make a run for it, when she gets cornered and screams, leading into the opening credits. After that, we get a pair of rather unimpressive drag-racing scenes, first between Chase and Pike, then between him and Waco Bill, both of which he wins. Following that is the scene where the two guys arrive at the cave in the quarry and roll in a drum of toxic chemicals, before carrying it over to the pile in the back (on the way, you get a glimpse of one of the large crickets crawling up the wall in an overhead shot looking down on the guys). Just as 

they mention what would happen if someone learned what they're doing, the monster stomps towards them. Rather than eating them, it turns around and smashes the drum between them with its tail, spraying them with the corrosive chemicals and leading into that awful-looking melting effect. It then wanders out of the cave and towards a nearby country road, where it comes upon Lars and Clete after Waco has played Chicken with them. It stomps towards their pickup truck, which Clete throws in reverse, and chases them down the road for a few miles. It proves fast enough 

to keep up with them, to the point where it's almost on top of them, and ends up smashing the truck's roof in with its head, then puts its weight on the hood and causes the engine to explode, killing them both. And that night, there's a shot of the monster heading back inside its cave (it has a day-for-night look to it, I might add).

You do later see the monster emerging from the cave in the middle of the daytime, but the next significant scene is the fight between Chase and Waco at Compton's garage. It's not much of a fight, just the two of them trading punches for a little bit, when Waco grabs a nearby, discarded liquor bottle. Before he can use it as a weapon, Sheriff Parker shows up and shoots it out of his hand. Following that, the monster next appears at the Swenson farm. Karl and Maybelle are having breakfast, when they hear the

sound of their cow mooing right outside, seemingly indicating that she got loose. Looking out the window but not seeing anything, Karl decides to go investigate, thinking it may be some pesky coyotes. Walking outside with his double-barrel shotgun, he heads towards the very large barn in the back and opens the door. Scanning the interior, he climbs up to the loft, and seems to think the "coyotes" are up there, as he yells for them. Outside, the monster approaches the barn, the inside of which begins to shake from it.

Karl points at the wall across from him, when the monster's big head smashes through it. Karl fires his gun, but not only does it not injure the monster, but its flailing around in the hole causes Karl to lose his balance and fall out a window behind him. Out on the house's front doorstep, Maybelle, hearing the commotion, grabs a nearby pitchfork and walks down the steps, calling for Karl. She then comes face-to-face with the monster, which gobbles her up before she can make a move, then spits out the blood-covered pitchfork. Following that, we got a long 

section where Chase, Lisa, and Parker find Don's car and Betty's purse at the wash; Parker goes out to the Swenson farm, where he finds and takes a sample of the green substance that later turns out to be the monster's saliva, as well as Karl lying on the ground; Chase drives the wrecker out to the wash and glimpses the monster crossing the road behind him on the way; and Wilma heads out to the farm, when a car goes across the road in front of her and crashes into a pole. After checking on the driver, who's badly injured and mumbling about something coming after 

him, she goes to call for help, while, back at the wash, Chase hears something in the bushes nearby. He goes to investigate and finds Betty lying on the ground, bloody and unconscious, but alive. He then races her to the doctor ("Doc Loomis," by the way), using the wrecker's two-way radio to inform Compton of this.

At the scene of the accident, Wilma continues trying to contact Parker, but can't get through to him. That's when we see the monster's reflection in one of her patrol car's hubcaps, as it stalks towards her. She then hears it stomping and growling, and turns around to see it. Drawing her gun, she empties her entire payload into the monster, but it does nothing but cause it to slightly recoil each time. Dropping the gun, Wilma runs for it, but the monster grabs her with its tongue (at least, I think that's what's supposed to have 

happened; the CGI is so bad that it kind of looks like the monster just inhales her), then chews her up, and swallows her. It lets out a satisfied roar once it's done. Back at the Swenson farm, where the ambulance that he called for Karl has arrived, Parker gets a call from Chase about finding Betty and having taken her to the doctor. Chase also informs him of Wilma's attempts to inform him about the crash, as he got some of her message, and that he's on his way to the site. (Not only do we not see him get the message, but why he got it and not Parker is never made clear. They  also 

seem to suggest that the monster is somehow messing with the radio, as Parker says he's been trying to contact Wilma for half an hour, just as she was trying to contact him, but that's not explained either.) Not long afterward, he arrives there, only to find no sign of Wilma, and learns that the man inside the crash car is dead. Parker then shows up and, after Chase tells him what he's found, he discovers Wilma's gun and sees that all six rounds have been fired (she fired like eight or nine, I counted). That's when Chase tells him about his glimpsing the Gila monster, and suggests that a giant, mutant creature of some sort could be to blame for what's happening.

The next scene with the monster comes when it destroys the train that rolls into town. As I alluded to earlier, there's a massive continuity error here, as when they first see it on the tracks ahead of them, they're going through a heavily-wooded area, but in the wide shots where it starts down the track towards them, stands in their path, and they hit it, they're in a wide open piece of countryside where the only trees are in the background. After the train crashes into it and explodes, sending a big plume of smoke up into the sky, the monster continues on down the track (and

again, the environment changes in-between shots). Following Parker's scene with Linden Dawes, he and Chase meet up at Compton's to discuss what to do. Parker figures where the monster is probably nesting and, taking a bunch of Compton's weapons stockpile, including some canisters of nitro glycerine, they head out to the quarry. Parking in front of the cave, they arm up and head inside, with Parker telling Chase to leave the nitro right by the entrance. (He says it's so they don't blow themselves up by running with it, but they could've easily left it in the car.) It doesn't take

them long to find the barrels of chemicals in the back of the cave, which have a number of the large crickets crawling over them (again, it's so dimly lit that you can barely see them). Chase inspects the barrel that melted the two guys earlier, when they hear and then see the monster, as it's snoozing away nearby. Chase shushes Parker, only for him to then make a noise that wakes the monster up! There's a close-up of its angry eye, and it then gets up and starts after them. They run outside and, when they're far enough away from the

entrance, they stand there, with their guns pointed at it. When the monster emerges, they fire at the nitro, hitting it and sparking a big explosion, sealing up the entrance. As the dust clears and settles, they breathe a sigh of relief over their apparent victory. But then, no sooner do they head out, with Chase heading back to the garage, then the monster smashes its way through the rubble and stomps off into the countryside.

Following a detour back into the ongoing drama between Chase and Waco, with Carla and Lisa getting caught up in it as well, we get back to the monster. An old woman named Shirley goes to take her dog for a walk, when she sees the monster making its way through a nearby field. She calls and tells Parker about it, and on his way out, he runs into Mayor Wheeler. Deciding to get him off his back once and for all, Parker has him come with him. Once they find it, along with the remains of some cattle it apparently devoured, Parker next takes Wheeler to Compton's to

load up. Chase happens to be there, along with Lisa, Pike, Elsa, and a couple of other of their friends. Parker and Wheeler tell them what's up, with Parker proceeding to deputize all of them. Compton goes to fetch the weapons, grabbing his own rifle, and everybody else grabs a weapon as well. Next, they're in a convoy of cars, heading to intercept the monster, which is barreling down the road leading into town. They all park atop a hill overlooking part of the wash, and it isn't long before they see it coming (even though it was traveling down a paved road in the 

previous shots of it). When it gets close enough, attempting to go through a barbwire fence, they all open fire on it at the same time. Rather than hurt it, the onslaught just annoys it, but they do manage to turn it away from its current direction. Though most of them initially celebrate this victory, Lisa realizes it's heading towards the Winstead farm. Knowing his mother and sister are in danger, Chase jumps into his car, accompanied by Lisa, and they head to go get 

more of the nitro, while Parker tries to get word to the farm. Unfortunately, Dorothy and Missy happen to be outside, with Dorothy helping Missy walk in her braces, when the phone call comes through. Chase and Lisa stop at the garage, grab the rest of the nitro, and speed off towards the farm.

There, Dorothy and Missy see the monster approaching from off in the distance. They're about to run back into the house, when Chase and Lisa arrive. The two of them hop out and Chase says they need to get out of there using the family car, which is parked nearby. But, after everyone piles into it, Lisa tries to start it but the engine won't turn over. In the distance, the monster knocks over a wind-vane, when Waco suddenly pulls up in the driveway and offers to help. Chase has the girls get into his car and he drives them to safety, while Chase stays behind to face the

monster. As it quickly approaches, Chase puts the nitro on the front of his car, then gets in and races right at the monster. When he gets close, he tumbles out of the car at the last minute, as the vehicle heads on towards the monster. It stops and hisses at the car, when it rams into its front left foot. The nitro instantly combusts, blowing the monster to smithereens and sending burning chunks of meat raining down around Chase. As he watches the fire, he comments, "Well,

there go my insurance rates." The movie then ends with the Christmas party at the Winstead farm, with everyone singing along to Chase playing The Mushroom Song, but the last shot shows another, smaller mutant Gila monster roaming through the front yard, as it starts to snow.

The music score was done by Al and Jon Kaplan, who'd worked with Jim Wynorski before on Dinocroc vs. Supergator and Piranhaconda (as well as The Hills Have Thighs), and have since go on to contribute some songs to the Terrifier films. For Gila!, they leaned into the 50's B-movie tradition, creating a number of pieces that incorporate a theremin-like sound, as well as classic bombastic-sounding, monster music, and also coming up with some era-appropriate rock and roll music for scenes like during the climax. It's not the most memorable score by a long shot, and like me, you'll probably forget it as soon as the movie's over, but it's not an irritating or obnoxious one, either. Far more memorable is the soundtrack and all of its classic songs, like the aforementioned Little Bitty Pretty One, Rock-A-Beatin Boogie by Bill Haley and the Comets, Little Black Book by Jimmy Dean, and Rockin Robin by Bobby Day (which plays out the opening credits), just to name but a few. There are also some songs that are played at the dance, the most memorable of which is Fever, a smooth jazz tune which Carla provocatively sings and performs to try to seduce Chase. It's as if this was the closest Wynorski could get to putting in some sort of sex appeal. Still, it's actually not a bad song, and Christina DeRosa sings it quite well. There's also Cat Fight, which the band, MG and The Gas City There, start playing when Carla and Lisa get into a fight over it. And, like I said, during the final scene, Chase sings The Mushroom Song from the original movie, which is guaranteed to make any fan smile.

It's not surprising that Gila! is a really obscure movie, as it was kind of fated to become one, given who made it, and for television, no less. And there are a number of reasons why it's unlikely to become a cult classic: a bunch of one-dimensional characters, an overwhelming feeling of cheapness about it, right down to how it looks, really bad CGI and digital effects, a slew of continuity problems, and a story that moves rather slowly and tends to focus on plot-points that ultimately prove pointless. But, at the same time, it does have fun with, as well as affection for, its source material, with many of the character names being retained, the 50's setting, the incorporation of vehicles, clothing, hairstyles, and music from the period, and it is quite faithful to the original. What's more, there are some likable and memorable people amid the cast, it manages to come off as a bit off-kilter without becoming a full-on parody, and above all else, it doesn't flat-out mock the original. It could've been done a lot better, but given that I was expecting much, much worse, I can't say that I'm coming away from this angry. If you're like me and have a soft spot for The Giant Gila Monster, or if you just love Jim Wynorski, you should check out Gila! at least once. That'll probably be the only time you will watch it, though.