There are many ways to get ahead in life – know the right people, have a little power (and a few bucks) to grease the right wheels, and have access to steal the brain of the infamous Nostradamus to replace yours! Ever since Charles Gurthrie tried to transplant the head of a dog onto the body of another, the idea has been a mindblower to not only the medical field but the cinematic as well. The notion of brain transplanting has been the subject of many pop culture movements, from novels with Mary Shelly’s seminal Frankenstein to the comedic with Carl Reiner’s The Man With Two Brains to the super-serious horrors of Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Yet none has ever given more of a headache than the mind-melding 1957 British B-movie membrane The Man Without a Body.
According to scientific facts (and in this day and age take it for what you will), the brain will rot away to dust within ten years of death, so within a movie made in 1957 and Nostradamus dying in 1566, you don’t need a ticket to ride the suspension of disbelieve train, you need a spacecraft like the U.S.S. Enterprise going Warp ten to think real hard on the believability of the movie. However, if you do have a brain fart (phew!) while watching and concentrating (and believe in that ridiculous fake bearded head), the idea could make sense. If you were faced with the terrible reality of dealing with an incurable brain tumor and had the chance to replace your brain with any in the world, why would you settle on some puny normal person’s brain and go for one of the greatest minds of all time? I would go for Kant (Kant do nothing till you’ve tried) or Socrates (mainly to be able to understand why I torture my brain on these celluloid wrinkles) and with the number of films and books written about the subject, clearly there is a desire to ponder the possibilities of being someone else. Made on the Eady Levy, a tax break at the box office for British-infused productions, the director’s chair was held by W. Lee Wilder and Englishman Charles Saunders, with reports of Saunders just there for the tax break and doing nothing but eating biscuits and drinking tea (hopefully it was green tea).
Truth is in the eye of the beholder, or on the laboratory desk of Dr. Merritt, the (mad) doctor behind the idea he can place a new brain in the head of terminally ill patient Brussard (played deliciously maddening by George Coulouris), who suffers from a massive brain tumor (“It’s not a tumor!”). Naturally, when one must escape the difficult realities of life, one must visit Madame Tiussaud’s famous wax museum, where the patient sees a realistic (yeah, okay) statue of Nostradamus, a historical seer made famous for his predictions of the future. As he stares into the fake wax eyes, a lightbulb goes of,f and Brussard hires gravediggers to retrieve the brain of Nostradamus. If by this point you’re still into the story, then it makes sense for them to arrive at a 400-year-old grave to find a perfectly preserved head and brain of Nostradamus. Bussard gives the head to the doctor and throws money, hopes, and dreams to make the transplant a reality. Everyone wants to know the future, and when the head of comes alive (ripping off the classic line from Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein) Brussard (K)an’t help himself by asking for advice on his stocks, leading to his financial ruin! Brussard takes out his vengeance by blowing a hole-in-one on good ol’ Notty. Before it dies, the doctor successfully goes where no man has gone before by transplanting the head onto a body, creating a monster hell-bent on taking over the world (although if he were a real psychic, wouldn’t he know he already lost?). Can Brussard and Company stop the bedlamite before it’s too late, or will you be scratching your head trying to figure out how this little thriller ends before blowing your mind?
Telepathically streaming to you at eighty minutes, Wilder went on to give us classics like The Snow Creature and Manfish, while Saunders directed classics such as Jungle Street and Womaneater (hopefully actually directing this time and not just eating). It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to find this film on most streaming services, but the quality is pretty low, and you might have to squeeze your eyes tight to make out some scenes. If you were able to make it to the very end of this movie, please check your insurance policy, as moving forward in your life might take a good head shrink to bring you back to the forefront of the mind again!
