October 19, 2005

Bad B-movies great guilty pleasure

By
Herald Editor

      I have been guilty of losing my head over the opposite sex - albeit in the distant past, mind you.
      Earlier this week, however, I came across Virginia Leith in the discount DVD section. She being the disembodied head in a turkey basting pan. Call it a cheap thrill, but for a $1 plus tax I just had to pick her up.
      Oddly enough, up until that chance Saturday afternoon encounter, I didn't even know her name. I only knew her as "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". It's nice to finally put a name to my favorite bodiless face.
      Ever since my first celluloid dip into the "Creature from the Black Lagoon," I've loved campy cinema. Mad scientists carrying out their take-over-the-world plots inside laboratories emitting Nikola Tesla lightning and Rube Goldberg Feng Shui. Of course you can't overlook the "atom bomb made me do it" giant spiders, ants, or pet store iguana monster movie genre. And don't even get me started with mummies covered in two-ply toilet paper.
      These movies transcend mere processed American cheesy. They're so bad, they're Gouda.
      Which is why I couldn't resist purchasing one of the worst science fiction movies ever made - in 1959. Virginia Leith is the leading lady in "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," a B-movie with the standard mad doctor seeks suitable female body to house the head of his fiancé, after she loses hers in a car accident story line. I won't give away anymore of the plot - essentially because that's it. Let's just say "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" makes any Ed Wood movie look like a Merchant-Ivory flick.
      While I relished fright films, as a kid one element of Halloween creeped me out: the haunted house. Throughout elementary school I never set foot in the haunted house built on the gymnasium stage, even though I knew the plate of 'brains' behind the cardboard box was only spaghetti.
      Sadly, even the likes of Don Knotts would have shown up this Mr. Chicken of haunted houses.
      Today it takes a lot to frighten me. After all, I'm home alone with a three-year-old three days a week. Just the same, tonight I might make a movie date with Virginia Leith and scare myself silly. That is if I don't laugh my head off first.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or email gleiva@gtherald.com