Better than most people think

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Horst Frank of Dario Argento's Cat of Nine Tails and other Italian movies appears here on his native soil, and lo and behold it's another film about a head being kept alive by a mad scientist (how many of these films are there?).In The Head, Horst is a mad scientist going off to work with a slightly less mad scientist who successfully managed to keep a dog's head alive for four hours after detaching it, for some reason. Horst is all like "Say- why don't we try that on a human" which gets him some stares from the other mad scientists he's working with (it's a rather overcrowded market in this film). Horst, with his creepy stares and menacing eyebrows, is not to be deterred and don't you know finally gets his wish after the less mad scientist has a heart attack (he also has to kill another mad scientist for getting in his way). Now Horst is ambitious fella to say the least, and set his sights on fixing this nun with a bad back. All he needs is a body donor, and wouldn't you know there's an exotic dancer working round the corner who draws his attention… The Head is an okay film but if you seen The Brain that Wouldn't Die then you've seen a much better (and gorier) film. I know this one was made back in the fifties but what annoys me is that it's just telling the same story without adding any panache. Horst's okay but he's not given much to go on here.

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.

No, this isn't the psychedelic Monkees movie from 1968; that one's just called "Head." Rather, "The Head" is a West German horror production from 1959--and a very good one, as it turns out--that tells a freaky story of a wholly different kind. As "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" so astutely reminds us, the film was released in the same year as the similarly themed American film "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," and is just as way-out an experience. In it, Michel Simon--French star of such classic '30s films as "La Chienne," "Boudu Saved From Drowning" and "L'Atalante"--plays a scientist, Dr. Abel, who has devised something called Serum Z, which will allow human and animal tissue to survive independently of their donors' bodies, thus making possible organ transplants and other innovations (this, eight years before the first actual successful heart transplant on Louis Washkansky in 1967). When his new assistant, Dr. Ood, attempts to transplant the healthy heart of a recently deceased hobo into Abel's failing body, the operation goes badly. Good thing that Ood can then decapitate Abel's titular noggin and keep it alive and healthy with the new wonder serum! And as if that weren't enough for one film, Ood--wonderfully played by Horst Frank--soon decides to operate on his pretty hunchbacked nurse, and attach her head onto the hottie body of a local stripper! Holy mix and match!Anyway, "The Head" is a surprisingly interesting and involving film. It features better than adequate acting (Karen Kernke as Irene the hunchback and Christiane Maybach as the obnoxious stripper are both memorable), especially by Frank as the insane, ultimately pathetic and moon-raving Ood (Dr. Odd would be more like it!). Writer/director Victor Trivas brings in his film with a good deal of seedy style, and the look of the picture, with its Expressionistic sets, is often startling. Indeed, I was not surprised to learn that the set decorator here was Hermann Warm, who had earlier worked on such classic films as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and "Vampyr." Although my "Psychotronic" bible maintains that the FX are "pathetic" here, I must respectfully disagree. Actually, the sight of Simon's homely noggin, resting in a dish and connected to wires and bubbling chemical tanks, is most impressive. Throw in some moody B&W photography and a musical score by Willy Mattes and Jacque Lasry that sounds like the "Space" segment of a Grateful Dead concert and you've got quite a striking little film indeed. Even this typically crummy-looking DVD from those indolent underachievers at Alpha Video cannot ruin this experience.

The Head was a much more enjoyable movie than I would have thought, given the other user comments I have seen. I found it to be a very entertaining film, with some atmospheric photography and a fairly engaging storyline.It kind of reminded me of a cross between The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Atom Age Vampire ... though just an idea from the former, coupled with the stylishness of the other film.The film is a little disjointed in the beginning, as it takes a bit to decide whether its a Gothic horror film or a modern sci-fi mystery, but once things get going, the movie is fairly engrossing until the end.