Sure, it looks like just another severed head movie with a bit of salaciousness thrown in, but there's more here than meets the eye. Under the guise of a standard issue mad scientist SF flick, there's a clear undertone of horror at what the members of a supposedly noble profession are capable of given the right inducement. In 1959, Germany was still coming to grips with one of the most shocking aspects of the Nazi regime: the ease and depth to which the medical profession was subverted and enlisted in the state's insane agenda of racial purification. To that end, doctors were given free rein to perform experiments on Jews, the mentally ill, Roma, Soviet POWs, and others that were universally condemned for their total disregard for life and ethics. Any of a number of lines in this film echo the justifications the doctors attempted to use when they were put on trial. There's also the use of the full moon-which I made fun of through the first half of the film, until I realized that there was a purpose for showing it to us. The association with madness (or lycanthropy!), as well as the revelation that Ood was experimented on himself, and was now both a legitimate doctor AND a raving madman, neatly parallels the way the world, and most Germans after the trials, saw the doctors who so willingly went along with and enabled Nazi savagery.
Forget The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a piece of Hollywood shock schlock that deserved the MST3K treatment. While hardly high art, The Head is a movie that had something significant to say to its intended audience. Just as Godzilla is not just a monster movie, this is not just a mad scientist film.
Forget The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a piece of Hollywood shock schlock that deserved the MST3K treatment. While hardly high art, The Head is a movie that had something significant to say to its intended audience. Just as Godzilla is not just a monster movie, this is not just a mad scientist film.