The Head (a.k.a "The Naked Woman and Satan")
1959, West Germany
I suppose I should write about The Head before the whole thing slips from my memory--as so much does these days.
It's a West German film and one of the first post-war German schauerfilmen from the same producer who gave us a masterpiece called The Horrors of Spider Island, which Sandra Bernhard was quite taken with in the old "Reel Wild Cinema" days. (Horrors features a distinctive looking monster beast that has a vaguely, I feel, satyr-like appearance, and a predictable bevy of scantily clad Nineteen-Sixties German go-go girls, and you can't go far wrong with that combo.)
(The director of The Head, by the way, was one Victor Trivas, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1946 for best Story for Orson Welles' classic noir The Stranger.)
The Head is a mind-numbingly slow-paced German entry into the world of freaky head-and-body transplant flicks, joining the Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, The Thing with Two Heads, Two-Headed Lamb, and The Brain That Wouldn't Die; the latter of which featured a woman, and one of the former featuring Ray Milland and Rosy Grier in a compromising situation where Rosie wore Ray Milland's head on his own shoulders--which might be enough to drive any sane man to self-immolating like a Buddhist monk at dawn.
Getting back to it, THIS head transplanty flickeroo is about a hunchbacked Sister Irene who is rather fetching in her cowl and cloak combo thing she sort of hobbles around in, looking pathetic and cozying up to a mad scientist, Dr. Ood--who, by the way, managed to keep a dog's head alive just like in that creepy Soviet newsreel film where the KGB used Russian psychics to operate weird, crypto-Frankensteinian machinery so Metallica could make a video of it decades later. (You've seen it most likely. I mean Metallica's video, not the original newsreel, although I'm sure you could hunt it up on Internet Archive.)
Dr. Ood then suffers a fatal heart attack--which is sad, because he could have used a shave, and a script for Mounjaro, first. Dr. Abel, a twitchy, sub-par, third-rung German stand-in for Boris Karloff, keep's Ood's head alive.
It was hard for me to ascertain all of this with just viewing this, as I was streaming on YouTube and, every fifty-seven seconds or so there were two commercials for various products, including sweet potato sticks that are guaranteed to help with constipation, and, also, a product, I suppose a pill, that the bearded, silvery, and awesomely annoying phony in a doctor's coat, assured me will cure me of "poop paralysis." It must have been some stuff, because, just hearing about it, I felt the urge to let forth with a feculent fecal blast of pure, righteous, fed-up, and pissed off viewer of YouTube indignation. or some such.
Anyhoo, Dr. Abel lops off Dr. Ood's head, keeping it alive full of tubes and sort of dragging with slow, deliberate, German fat man speech, though into English dubbed, you know. Everyone here hangs out with striptease girls and drinks martinis, although I would have assumed they would knock back lager and knockwurst all things considered.
The thrust of the plot (no pun) involves Dancer Lily, Chistiana Maybach, known as "Berlin's Marilyn Monroe," a statuesque blonde of a winsome and playful countenance, who becomes the fixation of Dr. Abel, whose other fixation, unfortunately for her, is transplanting the head of the hunchbacked Sister Irene onto the gorgeous and perfect body of Lily. He does this, and then Sister Irene begins to become somewhat unhinged, realizing what has occurred.
Lily's head, I don't reckon, is ever found. As Irene is now wearing her body, Irene's body must have been the one substituted for Lily's that the detective finds on a railroad track--described as "very beautiful," which on the whole, makes zero sense as it is supposed to actually be Lily's body. (You remember that Lily was a hunchback, right? Obvious plot hole.)
I could give away the ending like a sadistic, horror-loving, spoilsport creep, but I won't because I've already reached six hundred plus words and this film doesn't deserve much more. There is a scene where Dr. Abel is about to jump from a balcony height, and he holds his arms out, but not at shoulder-heigth, and sort of flaps them badly in circles. I think I'm describing that correctly. The whole thing is as curious as a fat, West German mad scientist with a voice like dragging rubber floating in a scuba tank while his assistant transplants the head of a hunchbacked nun onto the body of a Berlin striptease artist.
The world spun on and still spins. If anyone needs me while they're watching The Head, I'll be in the head.
My poop paralysis has vanished into that good night.
THE HEAD (1959) Sci-fi full movie
My book: Cult Films and Midnight Movies: From High Art to Low Trash Volume 1
About the Creator
Tom Baker
Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com
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