The Head

1959 "The Body is Gone... But The Head Lives On!"
5.3| 1h31m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 11 October 1961 Released
Producted By: Rapid Film
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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A scientist invents a serum that keeps a dog's head alive after its body dies. When the scientist dies of a heart attack, his crazed assistant cuts off his head and, using the serum, keeps the doctor's head alive and forces it to help him on an experiment to give his hunchbacked nurse assistant a new body.

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Director

Victor Trivas

Production Companies

Rapid Film

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The Head Audience Reviews

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
Konterr Brilliant and touching
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Rainey Dawn This movie is not all that bad. It's a lot like watching an old TV show or episode rather than something from off the big screen but a pretty good show it is. The atmosphere of this film is very nice if you Gothic Sci-Fi (from fog to weird looking medical instruments).Russia has created device that keeps a dog's head alive even though the body is gone. That technology has reached other scientists but one scientist wants to use this idea on humans and he does. He goes further than just a living head on a table, because he puts the head of his female hunchback assistant on the body of a stripper, she can now stand and walk as the rest of us but she does want it this way (from the body of another woman).I've read that The Head is a spin on Donovan's Brain and it seems both films have influenced or spawned The Brain That Wouldn't Die.7/10
Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Die Nackte und der Satan" (and there are a lot of other German and English-language titles for this one) is a West German black-and-white sound film from the year 1959, so this one is already over 55 years old. It was written and directed by Russian filmmaker Victor Trivas very much at the end of his career already and it runs for slightly over 90 minutes. If you like horror films, then you may have understood the "Human Centipede" reference in the title of my review as this film is about all kinds of creepy things concerning body parts. We see a human head severed from his body and the head lives on and keeps talking obviously suffering a lot. And we find out how a crippled woman loses her torso and gets another torso attached to her head, so she could move and act effortlessly without her disabilities. But are things really as good as they seem? Far from that actually. It is all the work by an insane scientist Dr. Brandt alias Dr. Ood and he is played by Horst Frank, who is also the most known cast member (alongside Paul Dahlke and Michel Simon, who plays the severed head). As a whole, there is not only "Human Centipede" in here, but certainly also more than a touch of Frankenstein's monster. It is a very bizarre movie I must say. It lacks realism completely, but the absurdity sometimes makes it worth a watch I will have to admit. However, I still believe that this aspect alone is not enough to carry this film against all the weak and mediocre aspects. I personally felt that the bad outweighs the good and that's why I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Bezenby 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.
Red-Barracuda The Head is a sort of Euro variant on the cult schlockfest The Brain that Wouldn't Die. Similar to that one, it's a little salacious for its time and it prominently features disembodied heads held captive in laboratories by mad doctors. This one isn't as good as its American counterpart to be fair but it's still pretty decent all things considered. It was made in West Germany and it's a sci-fi horror about head transferral experiments. The odd Doctor Ood keeps his recently deceased dead colleague Doctor Able's head alive, much to the powerless Able's annoyance! Meanwhile, a hunchback nurse who Ood is infatuated with is given a stripper's body by our mad scientist.Horst Frank plays Ood. He played a flamboyantly homosexual scientist in Dario Argento's giallo The Cat o' Nine Tails. He's a pretty decent actor and he is good value for money here, although it's not really a film that relies on acting performances in all honesty. The soundtrack was also quite notable also for being much better than most from the time. It really added a lot to the atmosphere. Overall, though, The Head possibly peters out a bit towards the end and loses a bit of its earlier impetus which is unfortunate but there was enough entertaining schlock earlier to keep me happy for the most part.