Al di là dell'orrore

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.