Watch The Head For Free

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One can easily tell the plot from the title. A head living without a body, or on another body.In this movie, it is both.This is a "mad scientist" film.The reason this works is because science fiction is "science fiction", so we don't worry about the "unrealistic" premise of a head being attached to a different person's body.That's because it is just "one premise." Only one item to suspend belief over.And good science fiction, in fact, any good Fiction, is "credible characters in incredible circumstances".Here, the "circumstance" is really the one "mad scientist". The "head" is just a "symptom" of the "disease".The difference between the "poor" and "superior" mad scientist movies is the other characters. The poor movie will have the mad scientist simply being a god that no one but a hero and heroine can stand up to.This film is a "superior" mad scientist film, because there are many characters who react to the lunatic in their own way. The film is a great blend of the suspense and horror along with the characters who eventually come to realize the man with them is insane.

Psychotic Dr Ood (crazy-eyed Frank) is a maniacal genius who has the opportunity to perform a miraculous operation with a secret serum Z, when his boss dies on the operating table mid-experiment. Preserving Michel Simon's head for the purposes of its extraordinary brain content, the twisted Dr Ood is soon looking for another victim on whom to perform his gruesome experiments, when the crippled Sister Irene (Kernke) reluctantly agrees to undergo an operation that promises to correct her debilitating condition, stooped like Quasimodo with a shuffling gait to match. But the once unassuming woman, who cannot bear to look upon her hideous deformity, soon discovers that perfection comes at an unaffordable cost.Frank is unhinged as a deranged Doctor who makes serious overtures toward Kernke, even after he's turned her into some perverted Frankenstein's monster. Veteran French actor Simon is given little to do but screw up his face while his head sits atop a water cooler, sans body. Kernke has a likable character and Dieter Eppler makes a reasonable fist of the hero, even if he's something of a cuckold. You might also recognise prolific German-International actor Helmut Schmid as the docile mechanical engineer Bert who becomes concerned with Dr Ood's peculiar activities.Occasionally atmospheric and displaying good use of sets and lighting, the preposterous premise shouldn't necessarily paint itself into a corner, after all, Jason Evers succeeded in "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" and even Steve Martin was able to coax a laugh or two from "The Man With Two Brains" (I won't include "The Thing with Two Heads" in this analogy). Frank is better than the material with which he had to work, yet unfortunately, his credentials don't spare much goodwill on this modest little sci-fi that attempts to double as a psycho-thriller but fails to reach its potential.

A rather interesting b-movie Euro 50s entry from Germany , that relies somewhat successfully on atmosphere and music to create interest .Horst Frank is good as Dr. Ood the mad scientist with bushy eyebrows ,Dieter Eppler is amusing as the rich kid would be sculptor who spends most of his time chasing strippers .I don't know where this was shot , I believe it was some privately owned studio , but the atmosphere is bleak and dark and forbodding , it has a lot to do with any interest this film has , and the music is also dark and a good companion to the Gothic style that director Victor Trivas was apparently going for , if you've got an hour to kill there are worse ways .

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.