The Head (1959)

[Scott]

THE HEAD (1959) - Good German Sci-Fi about a mad doctor who is experimenting with transplants and when an operation doesn't go well with his mentor he is able to keep his mentors head alive on a table with tubes and wires who keeps requesting to die, but the mad doctor needs his mentors knowledge to continue the transplant work. Their is a deformed nurse who wants an operation, but the mad doctor transplants a strippers body to the nurses head and wants to keep her for himself. It you like films like THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, BUCKET OF BLOOD, and THE MANSTER then you will enjoy this one.

(6 out of 10 Stars) Can't say it was ahead of its time, but it's definately worth a look.

[peter johnson]

Own it.
Love the stellar camera work, which offsets the less-stellar acting and plotting.
Like the fact that everyone's involved in the "experiment", and that they used old-fashioned stage-magic mirrors to create the "head on a table" illusion.
peter j./denny c.

[Scott]

Yep, it's a keeper for the collection. At first I thought the nurse was a nun because of the cross on the headdress. That would have made the film even stranger with a nun that adapts the habits of a stripper.

[The Burgomaster]

I have this in one of my Mill Creek 50 movie packs.  Watched it a couple of months ago and found it to be bad but reasonably entertaining.

[R-T-C Tim]

I really need to get this, since it stars one of my favourite actors, Horst Frank. Which is the best DVD?

[Andrew]

I've had it here, just waiting for a chance to watch it, so I did so last night.  One thing I can say is that it did a better job with the head being kept alive off the body than "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."  The doctor's head has a lot of tubes running away from it, along with the little artificial lung machine.  He also seems tired all the time, rather than animated like the woman's head in "TBTWD."

I was impressed that the sculptor's cry of, "Go away or I'll call the police." caused the crazy scientist to back off.  As if he'd have enough time to call the police, should the mad scientist just decide to bash down the door with one or two hits.  The evil guy works more deviously than that.  Heck, look at what he did to his ex-wife (or girlfriend - whatever she was).

What I really want to know is how the one assistant missed noticing that the mad scientist was hidden behind that pane of frosted glass.

The assistant finding the murdered doctor's shallow grave and erecting a simple cross at it, because he could not bring himself to report everything that was going on, came across as genuine.  The police chief saying, "Oh, you are judge so-and-so's son?  That is a horse of a different color!" did not.

[peter johnson]

This film just goes so . . . GERMAN! . . . at times.  The camera work is from every Lang/Pabst/Dr. Mabuse thing ever made over there -- the bizarre relationships, and the fear of police, that Andrew notes, are part and parcel of mainstream German cinema -- ditto the bar (Kneiper) scenes, and the unquestioning devotion of the underlings to the overlings.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this film played on German TV much like Plan 9 or The Wolfman did here, on Saturday afternoons or on late-night Horrorspeilenfests.
Any German visitors wish to comment on the film's ethnicity?
peter johnson/denny freunden