Plot

A brain surgeon marries a femme fatale whose life he saved, causing his life to turn upside down. Things go even more awry when he falls in love with a telepathic brain.

Recently widowed Doctor Michael Hfuhruhurr, the world's greatest neurosurgeon, injures Dolores Benedict in a car accident. He operates on her and saves her life using a technique of his own invention: cranial screw-top brain entry. As Benedict recovers, Hfuhruhurr falls in love with her and they are soon married. However, Benedict is only interested in Hfuhruhurr's money and Hfuhruhurr still yearns for his previous wife. They travel to Vienna to attend a medical conference where Hfuhruhurr finally divorces Dolores, meets a mysterious Doctor Alfred Necessiter and becomes entangled in a series of murders committed by The Elevator Killer.—Bruce Janson <bruce@cs.su.oz.au>

The narcissist Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr is one of the greatest neurosurgeons of the world that has developed a cranial screw-top brain entry technique for his successful surgeries. He grieves and has not recovered from the loss of his beloved wife Rebecca. Dr. Hfuhruhurr gives an interview about his career to a reporter while driving home in his car. Meanwhile the vixen gold-digger Dolores Benedict has an argument with her husband and untimely leaves the real estate. Dr. Hfuhruhurr accidentally hits Dolores and operates her saving her life. While recovering in the hospital, Dolores seduces Dr. Hfuhruhurr and they get married. However, the hot Dolores always refuses to have sex with her husband, claiming that she is not feeling well while shags with several men. Dr. Hfuhruhurr decides to travel in honeymoon with Dolores to Vienna and attend a medical conference. Howeve, after an incident, Dr. Hfuhruhurr decides to divorce Dolores. Out of the blue, Dolores receives a phone call from his lawyer telling that Dr. Hfuhruhurr has inherited 50 million dollars and she changes her behavior toward him. Meanwhile Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets his colleague Dr. Alfred Necessiter that collects brains alive for his experiments, most of them victims of the notorious The Elevator Killer. Soon Dr. Hfuhruhurr has a telepathic connection with one of the brains that belonged to Anne Uumellmahaye (Sissy Spacek voice) and they fall in love with each other. When Dr. Hfuhruhurr learns the reason why Dolores changed he behavior, she revenges putting Anne's brain in the oven. Now Dr. Hfuhruhurr needs to find a body to save the life of his beloved Anne.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A scheming woman only marries for money and her latest catch is a revered brain surgeon. He is driven to distraction as she endlessly pleads a headache whenever he gets amorous - though this doesn't seem to stop her with other men. On a trip to Vienna, city of the elevator serial killer, the doctor visits a laboratory and strikes up an odd friendship with something - or someone - he finds there. The result is that as he grows increasingly suspicious of his stunning wife, he develops a meaningful - but of necessity platonic - relationship with a bottled brain.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin) is a widowed brain surgeon renowned for inventing a method of 'Cranial Screwtop' brain surgery. He saves the life of Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner), a gold-digging Femme Fatale who is accidentally run over by Hfuhruhurr when fleeing the scene of her latest husband's fatal coronary (which her malicious mind-games and scheming caused). As she recovers, Hfuhruhurr falls in love with her, and they marry.

However, trouble seems to begin right after he carries her over the threshold; Dolores torments Michael by pretending to be too ill to consummate the marriage, driving him into a frenzy of frustration. On a honeymoon/business trip to a medical conference in Vienna, a city living in fear of the serial "Elevator Killer", Hfuhruhurr meets mad scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter (David Warner), who has created a radical new technique enabling him to store living brains in liquid-filled jars.

After learning that his adored new wife is really "a cheap, vulgar s**t," Hfuhruhurr discovers he can communicate telepathically with one of Necessiter's brains, that of Anne Uumellmahaye (Sissy Spacek). Hfuhruhurr and the disembodied brain immediately fall in love. Dolores-having learned that Michael has received a large inheritance from his step-grandmother-attempts to reignite their relationship. Eventually Dolores catches on to Michael's affair with Anne when she spots him in a rowboat with Anne's brain in a jar. She attempts to kill Anne first by leaving her out in the sun, then by putting her brain in an oven, causing Michael to literally toss Dolores out of his house and into the mud, yelling that Dolores is out of his life and will never get a penny of his hard-earned millions.

The convergence of a sudden rush of random murders and the possibility of brain transplantation causes Hfuhruhurr to speculate about how he might improve his lot in life. At first, he consults with Dr. Necessiter on the basis his brain ought to be transplanted into a tank, but Necessiter informs him that brains in tanks do not actually survive for long, with Anne being his longest-lived brain to date. Necessiter recommends transplanting Anne's brain into a body of a recently-deceased woman, revealing that he has perfected a process that could allow him to do so.

Michael sees a crowd gathering around an attractive woman hit by a car. Michael is hoping she will expire (causing the crowd to think him odd) only to see her regain consciousness. As Hfuhruhurr searches for a female to kill so he can have the beloved brain implanted into a human body, he realizes that he is unable to kill. He professes this to the surgeon, who tells Hfuhruhurr that as a last resort he can implant the brain into a gorilla that he keeps in his laboratory. After giving this idea serious consideration for several seconds, Hfuhruhurr replies "I couldn't have sex with a gorilla!"

Determined to find a body for Anne, Hfuhruhurr drives to the city center with a syringe filled with window cleaner, the substance used by the Elevator Killer to kill his victims and selects a prostitute with a squeaky voice named Fran (Randi Brooks) to kill and take her body. However, after taking the hooker to her room, he realizes that if he were to do this, Anne would have a very high voice (same as the hooker's), thus Hfuhruhurr concludes that it is not worth the risk to murder her and leaves.

Stepping into the elevator, he finds that Dolores has just been murdered by the Elevator Killer, who turns out to be Merv Griffin. Michael takes Dolores' corpse, and Griffin promises to turn himself in to the police. Hfuhruhurr hurriedly takes Dolores's body to Necessiter's lab, but is stopped by the Austrian Police, who thinks that Michael was drunk driving.

Michael explains to the police that he was driving sober, but Dolores is passed out from being drunk. After Hfuhruhurr passes a sobriety test (which consists of wacky moves), the police are convinced Michael was driving sober and send him on his way. However, as he drives away Dolores' lifeless body flails, causing the police to correctly see that Dolores is not drunk, but dead, and promptly pursue Hfuhruhurr for murder. Hfuhruhurr makes it to the lab and Necessiter transfers Anne's consciousness to Dolores's body, which is viewed by the stunned policemen. However, in the process, Hfuhruhurr is electrically shocked by the equipment (part of which consists of an arcade cabinet powered by quarters) and falls into a coma.

Waking up six weeks later, back in his hometown, Hfuhruhurr finally meets up with Anne in Dolores's body. Anne reveals that her former body was that of a fat woman, and that she has gained considerable weight in her new body. However, Hfuhrhurr loves Anne for who she is, and takes no notice of her girth. They are married shortly thereafter and reenact the previous over-the-threshold scene. The film ends with a request for the audience to report the whereabouts of Merv Griffin if they see him at large.