The Brain That Wouldn't Die story
A mad doctor develops a means to keep human body parts alive. He keeps his fiancée's severed head alive for days, and also keeps a lumbering, malformed brute (one of his earlier failed experiments) imprisoned in a closet.
12 total · 9 major · 3 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| coping with being disfigured | major | Jan's severed head hated herself in her bodyless state. Bill's medical assistant was left with a deformed hand stemming from a failed transplant experiment. Otherwise beautiful model Donna Williams was self conscious of her disfiguring facial scars. |
| engaged couple | major | Bill and Jan Compton. |
| head transplant | major | Bill kept his fiancée's severed head alive after she was mortally wounded in an automobile accident, and he plotted to transplant the head onto another body. |
| mad scientist stereotype | major | A mad doctor developed a means to keep alive his fiancée's severed head. |
| obsession | major | Bill was obsessed with transplanting his fiancée's severed head onto a new body. |
| playing God with nature | major | Bill considered his keeping of Jan's head alive to be the work of science, but Dr. Cortner and Bill's assistant were adamant that it was an abomination onto the Lord. |
| romantic love | major | Bill and his fiancée Jan Compton. |
| the desire for vengeance | major | Jan's severed head wanted to die and wished to extract revenge on Bill for him keeping her alive in such an abominable state. |
| unethical human experimentation | major | Dr. Cortner warned Bill several times not to experiment on humans before first running tests on animals. |
| father and son | minor | Father and son physician team Dr. Cortner and Dr. Bill Cortner. |