THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (1957)
Tagline: a diabolical dream come true! Who is his Next Victim?
(Sci-Fi, Horror, Serious Beard) [PG]
Note – This movie did not originally have an MPAA rating, but I am pretty sure it would have been a PG.
In this one, a rich jerk named Karl Brussard finds out he has a brain tumor and decides to visit a scientist who is moving various heads of things to bodies of other things and reanimated body parts. Feeling himself slipping away after a visit to a museum Brussard gets the idea to steal the body of Nostradamus and transfer that head onto his own body. Yes, you read that correctly.
Regarding sci-fi especially in the ’50s, you get all kinds of crazy fun ideas. This thing however is probably one of the craziest ideas of the decade for a movie. In fact, this script is so blindly nonsensical that it’s near mind-fracturing that it ever got produced, much less that they found a cast for it.
Speaking of the cast, Robert Hutton who plays Dr. Phil R. Merritt actually takes this movie seriously and is good in it. Hutton is also no stranger to sci-fi. He was also in THE SLIME PEOPLE and THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE. We also get Julia Arnall as Jean Cramer who is also good in this. What is going on here? How? How did this movie end up with some solid performances? Heck, we even have George Coulouris killing it as Karl Brussard taking his performance from just being a jerk, to being a madman. Coulouris is most famous for playing the doctor in 1974’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Finally, to round out the cast that stood out, we get Nadja Regin who plays Odette. Nadja Regin had a pretty good career that included 2 Bond movies FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER.
If you read my reviews you know I love absolute nonsense, but this movie almost plays it too seriously. The reason I say that is because the plot doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see why Karl wanted to put the head of Nostradamus on his body, it still wouldn’t be him? The whole premise is just as bonkers as common core or carrot-flavored cotton candy. The ending has a taste of tragedy even though it ends as it should, but it doesn’t fix my main issue with this thing as great as everyone involved surprisingly did for this type of film.
I know I gave a lot away here regarding the ideas in the plot, but I will also say that as gruesome as the premise might sound, the crux of the movie is quite tame if you take out one of two quick shots of the lab where the experiments are going on.
Overall this is a 4 out of 7 for me. If you can get past the massive plot holes there is some pretty interesting dialog and a lesson here. Don’t try to play God. None of us are good at it and the position is taken.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF FILMPLAYS LTD. AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
Please check out the link below by clicking on the picture. Because no one should die buttonless.
Comments
Post a Comment