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.

Professor Abel (a sturdy portrayal by Michel Simon) creates a serum that enables human heads to stay alive after the body dies. After Abel suffers a heart attack, his crazed assistant Dr. Brandt (expertly essayed with sinister aplomb by Horst Frank) uses the serum to keep Abel's head alive and plans to transplant the head of beautiful, but hunchbacked nurse Irene Sander (a sound and sympathetic performance by the lovely Karin Kernke) onto the sumptuous body of exotic dancer Stella (sexy blonde Christiane Maybach). Writer/director Victor Travis relates the compelling story at a steady pace and treats the potentially lurid subject matter with admirable taste and restraint. Moreover, this film is acted with praiseworthy conviction and sincerity by the able cast, with Kernke a touching stand-out throughout. While there isn't much in the way of action, this picture is nonetheless still worth seeing for several nifty visual flourishes, the brooding somber mood, and the complex relationships between the unusually well-etched characters.

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.

The Swiss-born star of many great French films (such as "L'Atalante", "Drole de Drame" and "Boudu Saved From Drowning") is inexplicably in this low-budget German horror film. Apparently he was really desperate for work (see the note on IMDb's trivia for this film) and so he was willing to be THE head mentioned in the film's title! What a sad thing to see such a highly esteemed actor in such an odd vehicle! As for the film, it's available from Alpha Video--a company that only gives you the barest material on the DVD. There are never captions or alternate audio tracks, so this film is only available in the English-dubbed version. I have no idea if there is even a German language version available anywhere--though at least the dubbing is pretty good. Also, being an Alpha product the video quality is poor--quite grainy and appearing as if it was transferred from an old videotape. But, considering that many of their films are available no where else, you'll just have to bear with it.An aging scientist, Simon, has done some amazing but nasty experiments in which he was able to keep a dog's head alive! When he is dying, his assistants plan on giving him a heart transplant to keep him alive. However, things don't go as they should and his ultra-creepy assistant (Horst Frank) decides to do the dog operation on his mentor--keeping his disembodied head alive. Oddly, the old doctor is able to speak (despite not having lungs) but apart from that the head effect is actually pretty impressive to see in a low-budget film.The crazy and highly unethical doctor turns out to be an incredibly sick dirt-bag. His next experiment is to transplant the head of a disfigured woman on the body of a stripper! Apparently the stripper was an evil woman (having murdered someone) and the crazy Frank felt justified to take her body in the name of science--even though she was quite alive at the time! The newly transformed lady is happy with her new body but oddly she has some of the memories of the dead lady (how?!). When she poses for an artist, however, the origin of her body seems clear--she has the same birth marks as a dead woman...and the doctor did NOT transform your old twisted body but gave her a new one!! Ewww! Despite there being lots of cheesy disembodied head films (such as "Donovan's Brain", "The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant", "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" and many others), this one actually is a bit better and more watchable than most. Now I am NOT saying it's a candidate for The Criterion Collection or will be featured in a retrospective of the great horror films of all time. But, for what it is, it's well done and the somber tone of the film works well. While not a great film, it's very effective and worth seeing if you like such films.