The Brain That Wouldn't Die DVD Review

Rating

Conclusion

A horror film among horror films. It features everything a horror film needs to be great: from the paranoid and panicking violins to the sans-serif fonts. It even features buckets of blood, blonde strippers, brunette strippers, animated corpses and a few gratuitous boob shots. Well, as gratuitous as they came in the sixties. It even features suitable metaphors which provide social critique of the "chains we can believe in" society. The film is in black and white - like most of life, if you just do your homework and check your premises properly.

Plot

• Jan Compton (Virginia Leith, who makes a delectable corpse) is decapitated in a car accident. Her husband to be, surgeon Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) was playing his Decapitated albums too loud and didn't pay attention to the road.


• Dr Cortner is a mad scientist ala Lady Frankenstein who manages to keep Jan's head alive. I promise, no more Jan gave head in the car jokes.


• Jan (or Jan in the pan, as she is affectionately known by fans of this film) goes through an existential crisis. I mean the poor girl thought she was going shopping and here she ends up without a body. I'm sure living without breasts she could cope with, but no nails to manicure? No wonder she starts hating Dr Cortner.


• Dr Cortner decides to look for the body of the girl of his dreams for the girl of his dreams in the cat house. I'm sure it must've been a real catharsis for the poor guy, deciding to buy a body when he needed a body for Jan in the pan's sparkling personality. Besides, how is Jan in the pan going to stop him from having a night out with the boys? Well, Jan has her mysterious waves. Make that mysterious ways.

Review

It is alarming how, for its time, this film capitalised on the fears of the general public for the medical profession. Remember that this film was produced before the first heart transplant was even performed, yet it deals with swapping bodies - or swapping heads, depending on which way you look at it. I guess your perspective depends on whose head it is.

Regardless, with the expected technological singularity, there are a few groups who are beginning to ponder the impact of such a radical change on our concepts of what it means to be human. They fall under the blanket term transhumanists. One of the transhumanist movements is the Extropy movement. Jan in the pan would do well to pay mind to some of their ideas.

The principles of Extropy

• Perpetual Progress: seeking more intelligence, more efficiency, more wisdom, more than being content with a shoddy pad, a big screen TV and free basic health care. Growth in healthy directions as opposed to the decline of civilisation from nations paranoid of communism into nations paranoid of capitalism.


• Self-Transformation: improving oneself, through technology if necessary. Being experimental and proactive in your evolution as a person.


• Practical Optimism: sticking to rational approaches means you can be optimistic about the results.


• Intelligent Technology: because ultimately the industrial revolution was about improving life. To transcend our reliance on nature is divine and technology enables us to do so. Intelligent technology more so. Imagine never having a car accident because cars are intelligent enough to drive you home safely.


• Open Society: meaning supporting social orders which facilitate freedom. This means deregulation, decentralisation of power and free information flow. Hackers like Gary McKinnon will no longer be deported to stand trial in foreign countries for taking his constitutional right of access to information seriously.


• Self-Direction: meaning you determine your own happiness and you do what makes you happy without being coerced into any dubious overseas wars.


• Rational Thinking: meaning you approach any ism with the necessary questions, an ability to work with probabilities and that you focus on innovation of new ideas instead of on the implementation of old dogma.

Of course, this all seems like ponies and rainbows, and in fact it is. I do think for Jan's sake, she should have considered these options before buying into the ideology that she is the ultimate horror. Everyone agrees with Bobby from pointlessbanter that Glitter is the ultimate horror. However, I'm also thankful that Jan did not follow the road less travelled to this fountain of knowledge, because that would make a far more boring film.

One of my favourite horror films of all time and fortunately also one you can download free of charge! Yes, it is legal.

Director
Joseph Green

Cast
Bruce Brighton, Jason Evers, Virginia Leith, Bonnie Sharie, Paula Maurice

Stop violence against women in South Africa

It is no secret that I have a pet hate for feminists. A bunch of women could have no equals in mastering hysteria. Some sources of my amusement for feminists are rooted in their irrational actions.

Learning your As, Bs and Cs

Feminists trashed bras to protest against beauty pageants. They saw brassieres as symbols of oppression. These 'instruments of torture' were interpreted as symbols of enforced femininity. This is irrational because the modern brassiere was invented, developed and patented by a woman. Mary Phelps Jacob, the mother of the melons, registered a patent for the first open back brassiere in 1910.


The first brassiere as we know it. You did this to yourselves, ladies!

Ida Rosenthal (with the reluctant help of her husband – yeah right, about as reluctant as Hugh Heffner to find a new Playmate) noticed that not all lumps of love where equal. Funny that no man is an island yet each person is as deep as the ocean and just as unequal. Ida devised a way for this instrument of torture to hug and cuddle each breast with the endearment it deserved by inventing a standard for different cup sizes.

Before Ida, men and women had a largely androgynous look. Strange how androgyny always comes about when we are about to embark on one of Toffler's ages. Ida is responsible for turning women from Boyishform Flappers into Maidenhood stunners who caused as many cases of blindness by poking as they did horse cart accidents.

Even the name bra was coined by women, for women. Mary registered the name, although the word brassiere is a French word which refers to military armour designed to protect the arms. I can fathom how a set of double Ds can protect your arms in combat – not just a fancy double barrel slingshot. I can also understand how waging a full scale carpet bombing invasion could be equated with the brave deed of motherhood. I wonder if you would then be permitted to call a French soldier without a bra unarmed? No wonder they couldn't take Russia.

Burning bras to rebel against enforced femininity is as rational as burning stav churches to protest against enforced Christianity. Besides, what would a male who had been circumcised right after birth burn or trash to protest against enforced masculinity? I have news for you, bra burning tomboys: you can trash a brassiere but foreskin does NOT grow back and no amount of calamari rings is going to replace that skullcap.

But I digress, as I often do when I start thinking about voluptuous breasts. This post is actually serious. I have no problem with admitting that I am a male chauvinist pig, but I also happen to have a streak of justice in me, so I had to get this off my chest.

Getting abreast of the topic

In a recent thoughtleader entry, Charlene Smith did a post entitled I've had it with men in this country. My reaction was: "Oh, here we go. Another day, another bra burnt". After reading the article – coupled with some forum discussions on the Zapiro cartoon and how serious portrayals of rape are – I was shocked.

The way I was raised implied that a real man was a tough guy who could battle the crocodiles on the muddy banks of the Limpopo river in order to procure leather for home made undies. Sure, this is a very traditional view of masculinity, but it is not only conquering. It is also very nurturing, because bravery and valour imply honour.

An honourable Rambo or Chuck Norris would never in his life even think about forcing a women into the position of Lady Justice as depicted in the recent Zapiro cartoon. Even if she does have a mullet. This is precisely why I was shocked to learn about the dishonourable attitudes and actions of the majority of South African men.

You should read Charlene's post for her take on things, but I did some research and found some more shocking statistics on the People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) site:

• Every 26 seconds, a woman is raped in South Africa. Guys who treat women like masturbation aids should be kicked in the nuts, by guys bigger and tougher than them.


• 85% of South African rapes are gang rapes. Dude, not even animals do that. This is beyond bloody disgusting. That is someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's sister! It could be YOURS!


• For every 4 women, 1 is in an abusive relationship. We're not talking emotional abuse here, we're talking wearing shades and telling your friends you fell over the dog kind of abuse. That's a quarter of our ladies. This has to stop.


• Less than 2% of reported rapes are false alarms, yet out of the reported 400 rapes in 2007, only 17 (?!?!?!?!?!?!) even made it to court. Of that 17, only 1 perpetrator was convicted.
  
  That means, of the 400 reported rapes, if 98% were legitimate, 1 out of 392 perpetrators was convicted. That's only 0,25%. And we wonder why most rapes don't get reported! Percentage wise, girls get more calories in rice cakes than the proportion of rape perpetrators getting convicted.


• In 1998, only 7% of the reported rapists were prosecuted. This, coupled with the recent rape case in which Jacob Zuma was acquitted, has seriously damaged the faith our ladies have in the system.

Not having faith in the system is alarming enough when you consider that the government is systematically disarming our citizenry and that political big shots are conveniently unlikely to get a fair trial. It is a much more grave scenario when women are left without the ability to defend themselves and the system which is in place in lieu of weapons is also inadequate.

Most rapes occur thanks to the aid of a knife. Now, to use a rock, paper, scissors analogy, knives are like paper and guns are like scissors. Knives are like rocks and guns are like paper. You could take out an 8 armed rock, paper, scissors champion and rapist with a gun.

While I know some girls who could drink me under the table and who could knock out Mike Tyson (I'd actually like to introduce Mike to them), let's face it: as far as averages go, women are the weaker sex. It is our responsibility as knuckle-dragging, beer guzzling, farting, sniffing, rugby watching Neanderthals to take care of women.

Chivalry does not get old. Don't let it die.

External links of shame

• Act against abuse, one of our government's better ideas.


• One in nine, showing solidarity with women who speak out.


• Women's Net, using technology to empower women.