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

Before Re-animator (1985), before The Thing With Two Heads (1972) and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971), and even before The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), there was The Head, a tawdry low-budget German sci-fi/horror in which mad scientist Dr.Ood (Horst Frank) keeps the decapitated head of his mentor Professor Dr. Abel (Michel Simon) alive on a trolley and stitches the beautiful noggin of hunchbacked nun Irene Sander (Karin Kernke) onto the body of skeezy stripper Lilly (Christiane Maybach).It's delightfully lurid nonsense, packed with scenes of cheap titillation (although my print seemed to have been clumsily shorn of some possible nudity) and macabre madness, none of which will seem in the slightest bit shocking these days, but which do possess an endearing charm that fans of schlock horror will positively lap up. Ood, in particular, is a wonderfully memorable character, the deviant doctor not averse to making moves on his patchwork patient as soon as she comes round from her op—mind you, with the head (and brain) of a beautiful yet innocent nun and the body of a hot bimbo, who can blame him?6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

No, this isn't the psychedelic Monkees movie from 1968; that one's just called "Head." Rather, "The Head" is a West German horror production from 1959--and a very good one, as it turns out--that tells a freaky story of a wholly different kind. As "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" so astutely reminds us, the film was released in the same year as the similarly themed American film "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," and is just as way-out an experience. In it, Michel Simon--French star of such classic '30s films as "La Chienne," "Boudu Saved From Drowning" and "L'Atalante"--plays a scientist, Dr. Abel, who has devised something called Serum Z, which will allow human and animal tissue to survive independently of their donors' bodies, thus making possible organ transplants and other innovations (this, eight years before the first actual successful heart transplant on Louis Washkansky in 1967). When his new assistant, Dr. Ood, attempts to transplant the healthy heart of a recently deceased hobo into Abel's failing body, the operation goes badly. Good thing that Ood can then decapitate Abel's titular noggin and keep it alive and healthy with the new wonder serum! And as if that weren't enough for one film, Ood--wonderfully played by Horst Frank--soon decides to operate on his pretty hunchbacked nurse, and attach her head onto the hottie body of a local stripper! Holy mix and match!Anyway, "The Head" is a surprisingly interesting and involving film. It features better than adequate acting (Karen Kernke as Irene the hunchback and Christiane Maybach as the obnoxious stripper are both memorable), especially by Frank as the insane, ultimately pathetic and moon-raving Ood (Dr. Odd would be more like it!). Writer/director Victor Trivas brings in his film with a good deal of seedy style, and the look of the picture, with its Expressionistic sets, is often startling. Indeed, I was not surprised to learn that the set decorator here was Hermann Warm, who had earlier worked on such classic films as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and "Vampyr." Although my "Psychotronic" bible maintains that the FX are "pathetic" here, I must respectfully disagree. Actually, the sight of Simon's homely noggin, resting in a dish and connected to wires and bubbling chemical tanks, is most impressive. Throw in some moody B&W photography and a musical score by Willy Mattes and Jacque Lasry that sounds like the "Space" segment of a Grateful Dead concert and you've got quite a striking little film indeed. Even this typically crummy-looking DVD from those indolent underachievers at Alpha Video cannot ruin this experience.

It was fun to read other commentators concerning the actors in this film. Otherwise, the whole thing would have been a pretty disappointing effort. As it is, the premise is kind of dumb. We must suspend our disbelief and accept the fact that a head can be kept alive. I suppose I'm not supposed to ask why the guy can talk without lungs and other respiratory apparatus. The scientist is mad (why are they always so crazy?). A kindly hunchbacked nurse gets a new body from a stripper and has trouble dealing with it (as most of use would). There is this kind of German Aryan thing going on. I can't quite put my finger on it. The movie has an interesting atmosphere but it is pretty bleak and painful. Of course, the talking head thing has been done again, including by prime time news commentators. Still, once you buy into it, it's an OK presentation.