Donovan's Brain (1953)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Excellent, smart action film.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Overrated Movie, mostly because it is so seriously handled that it seems intelligent. Only seems. It is rather routine in all respects and is for the most part bland and boring. It does move along quickly and the best Scenes are outside the lab. Not a good thing for a Sci-Fi Film. In fact, it is the money manipulations and Government Investigations that come off as the most interesting.Another thing. There just isn't too much Horror or intrigue in watching a floating disembodied Brain in a fish tank. Some of the mumbo-jumbo is also quite elementary and stilted. Given all this, there must be something inherently haunting about "Brain" Movies because they do make quite a number of them. But nobody seems to know why. Everyone talks about how this is the best of this type of thing. But that isn't saying much. They most always are Kitsch or just Bad. But there are a lot of them out there when you get that uncontrollable urge and succumb to that particular brand of Mind Control or Brainwashing, you won't have much choice but to watch one of them. Actually you can take your pick without missing too much.

A neat example of what you can do on a small budget. Dr. Cory starts out a regular, married scientist who just happens upon a body crushed in a car wreck but with the brain still functioning and normal. The brain is removed from the mangled body and kept alive in a fish tank. It isn't long before the brain starts sending telepathic messages to the good doctor. Soon he's doing the bidding of Donovan's living brain, like gaining access to the Donovan fortune and using it to intimidate just about anybody who stands in the late millionaire's path to gain control of most of the country's economic resources. Cory's change of manner is noted by his wife and best friend, and it isn't long before they are both targeted for removal.Lew Ayres is in top form as the good Dr. Cory evolves into misanthrope Donovan. Amusing if one realizes Ayres began his career playing the gentle, heroic Dr. Kildare. Creative casting! Along for the ride is Nancy Davis - - the future Mrs. Reagan - - and Gene Evans, as Cory's loyal but confused assistant. Steve Brodie plays a blackmailing reporter who gets just what he deserves.All in all, "Donovan's Brain" is well worth watching if you're in the mood for something different. It has been selected to premiere on TCM later this month.

This is a film for sci-fi fans who are able to put up with some outdated effects and technology, not for people who like "so bad it's good" films. The film is not campy at all, and is handled very straight and serious. Good thing too, because it does have a lot of disturbing elements.Dr. Cory (Lew Ayres) and his wife (Nancy Davis, later Reagan) are engaged in an experiment in preserving living animal brains when fortune puts an irresistible opportunity in his path -- a private plane crashes and he is able to harvest one passenger's brain after his body expires and before the brain dies. Unfortunately for him the brain happens to belong to Donovan, a Hearst-esquire multi-millionaire with a really bad attitude and a lot of mental prowess. The brain soon learns to communicate telepathically with the doctor and eventually begins to control him, even inspiring Cory to begin wearing the dark suits and smoking the cigars that were trademarks of Donovan's extravagant lifestyle. The brain also begins to take control back of his financial empire and to scheme for a permanent house for itself, seeking to control the international financial world with his new mental powers and his old financial cunning.It's a bizarre but very interesting and effective premise, from Curt Siodmak's (The Wolf Man) novel. The directing is only average as far as actors are concerned but it is well enough handled in the terror sequences, such as when the brain sets out to kill one investigative journalist who gets too close to the truth by "driving" him to suicide, literally. Ayres is good as well as Davis, and all the actors treat the material with respect and add a level of dignity to the film that other "living brain" films lack. There's also a very interesting parallel between Dr. Cory's tendency to enable the alcohol addiction of his assistant (Gene Evans) and his wife and the assistant's enabling of his increasingly strange behavior with regards to Donovan's brain. Good solid 50s sci-fi without the laughs, for those who are interested.

Lew Ayres had a long and distinguished career in motion pictures from the 1930s until his death in 1996. It takes in plenty of territory, such as his lead in the original ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT to his alcoholic younger brother in HOLIDAY to his psychiatrist sleuth in THE DARK MIRROR to his doctor in JOHNNY BELINDA to his ignored Vice President in ADVISE AND CONSENT to his later television work on a Columbo episode and even in L.A. LAW (as a super-annuated but likable attorney). There was also some interesting (but acceptable) political controversy: he took his exposure to war's horrors in ALL QUIET quite seriously, and was a conscientious objector in World War II. But he actually still served in that war as an ambulance driver, so nobody accused him of shirking his duty or of cowardice. He never did achieve Oscar status, but then neither did his contemporaries Edward Arnold nor Greta Garbo.One of the few times Ayres played a less than likable person was in this marvelous little science fiction film from the 1950s. Actually Ayres is portraying two personalities: First he is playing a typically good character, Dr. Patrick Cory. Doc Cory is working with his wife/nurse Janice (Nancy Reagan - here Nancy Davis) and Dr. Frank Schratt (Gene Evans) on research into brain waves and keeping brain tissue alive. He's making great progress with monkeys and animal brains. But he realizes that he has yet to have any experience with human brain tissue. So he is fascinated when an accident occurs near his desert laboratory/home. A private plane crashes killing the people on board. One is Warren H. Donavan, a multi-millionaire of questionable attitudes and business ethics. Because of his work with the local police department, Ayres is called in to the wreck site as a coroner. He writes up the death reports, but he notices that Donavan's brain case is in a good physical state despite the crash. He waits until the police leave, and (with Schratt's questioning assistance) he cuts out Donavan's brain and puts it into one of his specially designed tanks to be kept alive and measured for brain waves.Gradually Ayres picks up his second role and personality. You see, he does not realize that Warren H. Donavan was a very forceful personality - indeed a very hateful one. Early on Ayres (as Dr. Cory) meets Donavan's son and daughter, neither of whom are totally sorry to see their tyrannical and evil father dead (he'd been threatening to disinherit both for not listening to his "advice" to them). This should have tipped him off. Gradually, as day follows day, Cory and Schratt see that the brain of Donavan is getting healthier under their care, and seems able to function in the apparatus. But Schratt and Janice Cory notice that the Doctor is not himself - he is rather sharp with them both, and he does not seem to notice he has acquired some negative characteristics of Donavan's. Actually, of course, the powerful brain of Donavan is slowly taking over the softer, gentler Cory's brain. So the second personality emerges, and for long stretches of this neat thriller Ayres is actually playing Warren Donavan, complete with Donavan's diet (he likes milk and steak three times a day), wardrobe (a specially designed pinstripe suit), and limp.Donavan was having problems with the Federal Government at the time of his death: he was against paying any income taxes. I don't mean he lied and paid a minimum by playing fast and loose with the rules - he loathes the idea of income taxes. He has bribed a Washington IRS man (Tom Powers) to find legal roadblocks regarding a full scale investigation into his wealth. Donavan has also hidden a huge proportion of it (about $600,000 in 1950 dollars) in bank accounts under assumed names around California. Using the imprisoned Cory as his body, he takes this money out and starts assaulting the stock markets. His goal: to basically take over the American economy. How to do this: by having Cory and Schratt build better equipment to keep that mighty brain of his alive as long as possible. He does not plan to be stopped.And he won't be. He is blackmailed by one clever reporter Herbie Yokum (Steve Brodie) who has half the story correct: Yokum saw (when taking photos of the autopsied bodies of the plane victims) that Dr. Cory had done something with the brain of Donavan, although he never reported it to the police. He does not realize, as he gloatingly shows the autopsy photos to an angry Cory, that he is not talking to Cory but to Donavan at that point (who is not pleased to see photos of his body cut up). So Donavan makes fast work of Yokum in a subsequent accident.Eventually the brain also demonstrates it's willingness to injure anyone - Dr. Cory himself, Schratt, and even Janice. It is just by a sheer piece of luck or divine intervention at the end that the brain is finally stopped.Science fiction films in the 1950s tended to confront the Cold War issues of American threatened by "alien" cultures or beings. But only in DONAVAN'S BRAIN was it the threat of uninhibited capitalism boosted by science that took central stage. A very thoughtful little film indeed.