The Head (1959)

The greatest movie ever!

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

From the very start this was much better than I had expected and despite an obvious low budget and some wooden acting, a very spirited piece with decent sets, spooky exterior shooting and very good soundtrack. Indeed there is much to enjoy here and it is just such a shame that all comes undone in the final reel. Oh how slowly this grinds to an end after so much has gone so right. A really strange film with some lovely ideas, indeed someone enterprising might consider a remake. We are talking mad scientists, of course, and the Germanic flavour here adds another dimension. Severed heads and transplants adds another, not to mention a hunchback nurse and a striptease club! So a little more of the 'lovely body', more focus on the central story and a decent finale would mean a film to shout about. Even in this state I enjoyed it, but for those interminable last fifteen/twenty minutes. Great shame but always worth a look.

Professor Abel (a sturdy portrayal by Michel Simon) creates a serum that enables human heads to stay alive after the body dies. After Abel suffers a heart attack, his crazed assistant Dr. Brandt (expertly essayed with sinister aplomb by Horst Frank) uses the serum to keep Abel's head alive and plans to transplant the head of beautiful, but hunchbacked nurse Irene Sander (a sound and sympathetic performance by the lovely Karin Kernke) onto the sumptuous body of exotic dancer Stella (sexy blonde Christiane Maybach). Writer/director Victor Travis relates the compelling story at a steady pace and treats the potentially lurid subject matter with admirable taste and restraint. Moreover, this film is acted with praiseworthy conviction and sincerity by the able cast, with Kernke a touching stand-out throughout. While there isn't much in the way of action, this picture is nonetheless still worth seeing for several nifty visual flourishes, the brooding somber mood, and the complex relationships between the unusually well-etched characters.

One of the oddest German horror flicks of the 1950s, The Head has not one but two mad scientists. One of them has found a way to remove the head from a dog and keep it alive. The second nut job removes the first scientist's head after he dies and keeps it alive on a table. Then he murders a stripper and grafts the head of a crippled nurse onto the stripper's body. Understandably, the woman becomes confused about her identity. Expressionistic sets remind us we're watching a German film. The acting is all bug eyes and wide-open mouths. One intriguing element for us guys: The nurse with the stripper's body goes to bed with her artist friend and then beds down with the second mad scientist (it's a Svengali kind of thing). The film is dubbed, and it is ripe for MST3K type coverage, if in fact it wasn't already. Noting special here, but certainly gruesome enough without being outright gory.

Here's a perfectly creepy little bump in the night flick that should appeal to most fans of the decapitated head genre. One's first thought if you've been around the block with these films is "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", and the plot of both appear remarkably similar. "The Head" is certainly more atmospheric and brooding, no doubt owing to it's German origins, while 'Brain' has a much more camp flavor. Which leads me to consider that if the star of 'Brain' was Jan in the Pan, this one features what you might call Abel on the Table.Here's something a bit odd, the opening scene has the picture's protagonist Dr. Ood (Horst Frank) slinking around in the shadows of Dr. Abel's laboratory home, and he stops to pick up a turtle walking on the pavement! Where in the world did that come from? Very strange, and I kept looking for that turtle the rest of the way, but he never showed up.I wonder why the film makers decided the story needed a one hundred seventeen day interlude before Irene Sanders (Karin Kernke) came out of her coma with a new body. On screen, it played out like she awoke the very next day after the operation. Ood's explanation had to do with reshaping her organs and a lot of other such nonsense, when all he did was take stripper Lilly's body for the experiment. At least they came up with some kind of explanation for the missing stripper, but gee, throwing her under a train was kind of gruesome, don't you think?Anyway with all that said, you should have some fun with this one, even if it's played much more seriously than it needs to be. It's just the ticket for the proverbial dark and stormy night, huddled up on the couch with all the lights off. The picture provides all the remaining atmosphere you'll need.