Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is a successful surgeon who has just saved a patient pronounced dead in the emergency room — a patient of his father (Bruce Brighton) — with an unorthodox surgical method. After the younger Cortner and his beautiful fiancée Jan Compton (Virginia Leith) are involved in a fiery car accident that decapitates Jan, Cortner collects her severed head and rushes it to his home basement laboratory, where he revives it and manages to keep it alive in a liquid-filled tray. Cortner now decides to commit murder to obtain an attractive Head transplant. As he hunts for a suitable specimen at a burlesque bar that night and on the street the next day, Jan begins to hatch a murderous plan. Filled with hatred for Cortner because he won’t let her die, she communicates telepathy with a hideous mutant in the laboratory cell, telling it to kill the scientist. The mutant monster begins by mortally wounding the doctor’s assistant, Kurt; after feeding the monster and doing some general cleanup around the laboratory, he unwittingly stands before the hatch in the door of the monster’s cell (which he left unlocked), whereupon the monster thrusts his giant arm through and tears the assistant’s arm off. In the meantime, Cortner brings figure model Doris Powell to his residence under the pretense of studying her scarred face for a promised Plastic surgery, and, drugging her drink so that she loses consciousness, carries her down to the laboratory. Jan protests when Cortner explains his plan to transplant her head onto this new body, and he summarily tapes her mouth shut. Dr. Cortner then stands in front of the door to the monster’s cell, with the hatch again left open. This time, the monster grabs the scientist through the door and, securing him in a headlock, applies such force that the door is torn from its hinges. The monster is finally revealed as a seven-foot giant with a horribly deformed head, presumably the result of various failed transplants and/or other surgeries, and, in a scene that is often (if jumpily) edited out of television broadcasts, subsequently bites a chunk of flesh out of Cortner’s neck. In the process, the laboratory is set ablaze; Cortner lies dead on the floor and the monster carries the unconscious Doris away to safety. As the lab goes up in flames, Jan is heard saying “I told you to let me die” followed by a maniacal cackle.<>>