#Jacques Lasry

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THE HEAD (1959, DIE NAKTE UND DER SATAN) – Episode 164 – Decades Of Horror: The Classic Era

“The professor is a genius and it’s a pleasure to work with him. But he’s now beginning some experiments that, in my opinion, … exceed certain ethical limits.” Ethics are such a bother, don’t you agree? Join this episode’s Grue-Crew – Chad Hunt, Daphne Monary-Ernsdorff, Doc Rotten, and Jeff Mohr – as they take in Die Nackte und der Satan (1959), also known as The Head, a German film neck-deep in head transplants.

Decades of Horror: The Classic Era Episode 164 – The Head (1959)

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ANNOUNCEMENT Decades of Horror The Classic Era is partnering with THE CLASSIC SCI-FI MOVIE CHANNEL, THE CLASSIC HORROR MOVIE CHANNEL, and WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL Which all now include video episodes of The Classic Era! Available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, Online Website. Across All OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop. https://classicscifichannel.com/; https://classichorrorchannel.com/; https://wickedhorrortv.com/

A scientist invents a serum that keeps a dog’s head alive after its body dies. When the scientist dies of a heart attack, his crazed assistant cuts off his head and, using the serum, keeps the doctor’s head alive and forces it to help him on an experiment to give a hunchbacked nun a new body.

  Writer/Director: Victor Trivas 

Music: Willy Mattes (composer); Erwin Lehn (arranger/conductor)

Weird Lab Music: Lasry-Baschet (Baschet Brothers, Yvonne and Jacques Lasry)

Cinematographer: Georg Krause

Art Director: Hermann Warm 

Makeup Department: Karl Hanoszek, Susi Krause (as Susanne Krause)

Selected Cast:

Horst Frank as Dr. Brandt – alias Dr. Ood

Karin Kernke as Schwester Irene Sander

Helmut Schmid as Bert Jaeger

Paul Dahlke as Police Commissioner Sturm

Dieter Eppler as Paul Lerner

Kurt Müller-Graf as Dr. Walter Burke

Christiane Maybach as Stella – alias Lilly

Michel Simon as Prof. Dr. Abel

Osman Ragheb as Franz – the Bartender (uncredited)

Maria Stadler as Mrs. Schneider (uncredited)

Barbara Valentin as Animierdame und Tänzerin in der ‘Tam Tam’ Bar (uncredited)

This little German sci-fi horror B-movie may have slipped past many a monster kid’s radar. In the film, one crazed scientist gets one-upped by an evil scientist who takes not only the first scientist’s life – reducing his life to a head on a plate – but also uses his discoveries to perform some head-swapping shenanigans. This film is strange, bizarre, weird, silly… yet, oddly entertaining. The Grue-Crew has so many thoughts to share regarding The Head (1959).

At the time of this writing, The Head can be found streaming from the Classic Sci-Fi Movie Channel, the Classic Horror Movie Channel, Tubi, and Dark Matter TV. The film is currently available on disc as The Head (1959) (Die Nackte und der Satan) [Blu-Ray, Reg.A/B/C Import – Germany] from Anolis. 

(NOTE: Currently, all of the streaming options are the American version with roughly five minutes cut from the runtime, music substitutions, and English dubbing as the only language option. The Blu-ray has German and English language and subtitle options, the original music, and a commentary by Tim Lucas. The German language version delivers far more emotional impact to the viewer while the English dubbing comes off as a bit flat with awkward and simplified phrasing. And since the music is one of the attractions for me, the Blu-ray is a far better experience, although a bit pricey. – JLM)

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era records a new episode every two weeks. Up next in their very flexible schedule, as chosen by Doc, is The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), Peter Cushing as the Baron in a Hammer FIlm? And of course, Michael Ripper? Yay!

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: leave them a message or leave a comment on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel, the site, or email the Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com

To each of you from each of them, “Thank you so much for watching and listening!”

Check out this episode!

[ozkar-krapo]

Jacques & Yvonne LASRY - Bernard & Françoise BASCHET

"Structures sonores Lasry-Baschet - vol.1"

(LP. BAM. 1976 / rec. 1966?) [FR]

[chiseler]

The Head -- It Just Won’t Stay Dead

In the early 1960s, the overwhelming majority of European horror films imported to the United States were either British or Italian, the British films being easily understood and the Italian ones frequently pretending to be of British origin. Examples of French horror were rare (odd for a country whose cinema was so rooted in the fantastique), reaching an early apex with Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960), which came to the US in a well-done English dub called The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus during the Halloween season of 1962.

Seldom paid much attention in retrospectives of this fertile period in continental horror cinema is a rare German example, Die Nackte und der Satan (“The Naked and the Devil,” 1959), which came to the US retitled The Head almost exactly one year before the arrival of the Franju masterpiece. Critics like to refer to The Head as “odd” and “atmospheric,” words that seem to disregard deeper consideration, never really coming to terms with it as anything but a sleazy shock trifle. However, it was in fact the product of a remarkable and rarely equaled concentration of accomplished patrimonies.

Consider this: The Head starred the great Swiss actor Michel Simon, renowned for his roles in Jean Renoir’s La Chienne and Boudu Saved From Drowning; it was directed by the Russian-born Victor Trivas, returning to his adopted homeland for the first time since directing Niemandsland (1932, aka No Man’s Land or Hell On Earth), a potent anti-war statement that was all but obliterated off the face of the earth by the Nazis when he fled the country, and who furthermore had written the story upon which Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) was based; it was photographed by Georg Krause, whose numerous international credits include Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957); its sets were designed by Hermann Warm, the genius responsible for such German Expressionist masterpieces as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921), as well as Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), and its score is a wild patchwork of library tracks by Willy Mattes, the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, and a group of avant garde musicians known as Lasry-Baschet, who would subsequently lend their eerie, ethereal music to Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus (1960). If all this were not enough, The Head was also filmed at the Munich studios of Arnold Richter, the co-founder of the Arri Group, innovators of the famous Arriflex cameras and lenses.  

Though made after the 1957 horror breakthroughs made in Britain and Italy (Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein, and I vampiri, co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), The Head represented a virtual revolutionary act in postwar Germany, where horror was then considered a genre to avoid. The project was proposed to Trivas by a young film producer named Wolfgang C. Hartwig, head of Munich’s Rapid-Film, whose claim to fame was initiating a niche of exploitation cinema known as Sittenfilme – literally “moral movies” – which, like many American exploitation films of the 1930s, maintained a higher, judgmental moral tone while telling the stories of people who slipped into lives of vice (prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction), their sordid experiences always leading them to a happy or at least bittersweet outcome. Though it goes quite a bit further than either Britain or Italy had yet gone in terms of sexualizing horror, The Head nevertheless checked all the boxes required for Sittenfilme and was undertaken by Hartwig in early 1959 as Rapid-Film’s most prestigious production to date.

After the main titles are spelled out over an undulating nocturnal fog, the story begins with a lurker’s shadow passing along outside the gated property of Prof. Dr. Abel. With its round head and wide-brimmed hat, it looks like the planet Saturn from the neck up. When this marauder pauses to pay some gentle attention to a passing tortoise, we get our first look at the film’s real star - Horst Frank, just thirty at the time, his clammy asexual aura topped off with prematurely graying hair and large triangular eyebrows that seem carried over from the days of German Expressionism. More bizarre still, he later gives his name as Dr. Ood, whose explanation is still more bizarre: at the age of three months old, he was orphaned, the sole survivor of a cataclysmic shipwreck .

“That was the name of the wrecked ship,” he explains. “S.S. Ood.”

The ambiguous Ood takes cover as another late night visitor comes calling: a hunchbacked woman wearing a nurse’s habit as outsized as an oxygen tent. This is Sister Irene Sanders (the screen debut of Karin Kernke, later seen in the Edgar Wallace krimi The Terrible People, 1960). Though Irene cuts a figure as ambiguous and unusual as any Franju ever filmed, she owes her greatest debt to Jane Adams’ hunchbacked Nina in Erle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula (1945). As with Nina, Irene lives in the hope that her deformity can be eradicated by the skill of a brilliant surgeon.

When Irene leaves after meeting with Dr. Abel, Ood presents himself with the written recommendation of a colleague he previously, supposedly, assisted. A burly old walrus of a man, Abel (Michel Simon) already has two younger associates, Dr. Walter Burke (Kurt Müller-Graf, “a first class surgeon”) and the handsome, muscular Burt Jaeger (Helmut Schmid), who hasn’t been quite the same since an unexplained brain operation. Both associates share a creative streak; Burke is also “an excellent architect, [who] designed this house,” while Jaeger “designed my special operating table; it allows me to work without assistants.” (So why does he have two of them? With names that sound the same, no less!) Given the high caliber of Hermann Warm’s talent as a production designer, Burke and Burt together are every bit as skilled in architecture as was Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). The main floor of Abel’s sprawling house is dominated by a vast spiral stairwell, striking low-backed furniture, a mobile of dancing palette shapes, and an overpowering wall reproducing Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virtuvian Man.” Down in the lab, Burt’s robotic surgical assistant looks as if it might have been conceived by the brain responsible for the Sadean mind control device in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965) - a film that, along with Franco’s earlier The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), seems considerably more indebted to Trivas on renewed acquaintance than to Franju. The film was shot in black-and-white and at no point inside Abel’s abode do the silvery, ivory surfaces admit even the possibility of pigment.

Adding to its effect, the music heard whenever the film cuts back to Abel’s place is anything but homey. It consists of a single, sustained electric keyboard chord played in a nightmarish loop that seems to chill and vibrate, its predictable arc punctuated now and again with icy spikes of cornet. Though I don’t recall reading any extensive discussion of the film’s music, The Head represents what is surely the most important advance in electronic music in the wake of Louis & Bebe Barron’s work on Forbidden Planet (1956). Though the film’s music credits list bandleader Willy Mattes, Jacques Lasry and the Edwin Lehr Orchestra with its music, the most important musical credit is displaced. Further down the screen is the unexplained “Sound Structure, Lasry-Baschet.”

Lasry-Baschet was a musical combination of two partnerships – that of brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet, and the husband-and-wife team of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry. The two brothers were musicians who played astonishing instruments of their own invention, like the Crystal Baschet (played with moistened fingers on glass rods), the Aluminum Piano, the Inflatable Guitar, the Rotating Whistler, and the Polytonal Percussion. The Lasry couple, originally a pianist and organist, began performing with the Baschets on their unique devices in the mid 1950s. Some of the music they produced during this period is collected on the albums Sonata Exotique (credited to Structures for Sound, covering the years 1957-1959) and Structures For Sound (credited to the Baschet Brothers alone, 1963), a vinyl release by the Museum of Modern Art. These and other recorded works can be found on YouTube, as well; they are deeply moving ambient journeys but I cannot say with certainty that they include any of the music from The Head. That said, the music they do collect is very much in its macabre character and would have also fit very well into Last Year At Marienbad (1961) or any of Franju’s remarkable films.

When Ood meets with Abel and expresses his keen interest in experimental research, the good doctor mentions that he has had success copying “the recent Russian surgery” that succeeded in keeping the severed head of a dog alive – however, his moral code prevents him from taking such experimentation still further. After leaving Abel, Ood finds his way to the Tam-Tam Club, a nightspot where a life-sized placard promotes the nightly performances of “Tam-Tam Super Sex Star Lilly.” This visit initiates a parallel storyline involving Lilly (Christiane Maybach), who supplements her striptease work as an artist’s model, and is the particular muse of the brooding Paul Lerner (Dieter Eppler), a man of only artistic ambition, much to the annoyance of his father, a prominent judge who wants him to study law. Maybach reportedly won her role the day before she began filming. According to news reports of the day, the actress originally cast – the voluptuous redhead Kai Fischer – had signed on to play the part, after which producer Hartwig decided she must also appear nude. Fisher sued Hartwig for breach of contract in March 1959 and he was sentenced to pay out a compensatory fee of DM 4,000 – in currency today, the equivalent of about $35,000. As it happens, Christiane Maybach doesn’t appear nude in the film’s final cut either.    

The English version of The Head opens with a credit sequence played out over a shot of the full moon taken from near the climax of the picture. Unusually, the German Die Nackte und der Satan doesn’t present its title onscreen until Lilly is ready to go on. It’s superimposed with inverted commas on pleated velvet curtains that suddenly rise, revealing a stage adorned by a single suit of armor. Lilly dances out, stage right, garbed in a medieval conical hat, scarves, a bikini and a black mask, performing her dance of the seven veils around the impervious man of metal. She only strips down to her bikini but her dance ends with her in the arms of the armor we assumed empty, which tightly embraces her as its visor pops open, revealing a man’s face wearing skull makeup. Lilly screams, the lights go out, and the house goes wild with applause – a veritable blueprint for the striptease of Estella Blain’s Miss Death in Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965).

The music heard during the film’s Tam-Tam Club sequences was recorded by the  Erwin Lehn Orchestra, evidently with Jacques Lasry on piano, though its emphasis on brass is its outstanding characteristic. Erwin Lehn was a German jazz musician and composer who established the first German Big Band Orchestra for South German Radio. Brass was a major component of his sound – indeed, he made pop instrumental recordings credited to The Erwin Lehn Beat-Brass. You can find their album Beat Flames on YouTube, as well.

Backstage, the beautiful Lilly is a nagging brat, drinking and flirting with patrons while berating Paul’s lax ambitions on the side. Dieter Eppler, a frequent player in the Edgar Wallace krimis and also the lead bloodsucker in Roberto Mauri’s Italian Slaughter of the Vampires (1964), makes for inspired casting; he looks like a beefier, if less dynamic Kirk Douglas at a time when Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life (1956) would have still been in the minds of audiences.

Once Ood joins the payroll, Dr. Abel confesses that his heart is failing rapidly. The only means of saving himself and perpetuating his brilliant research is by doing the impossible – that is, transplanting the heart from a donor’s body into his own, which he insists is possible given his innovation of “Serum X.” What Abel could not foresee was that his own body would die during the procedure. Ood tells Burke that the only way to save Abel’s genius is to keep his head artificially alive, which his associate rejects uncatagorically, pushing Ood over the edge into murder. Then Ood proceeds with the operation,  working solo with Jaeger’s robo-assistant passing along surgical tools as he needs them. When Abel revives, Ood breaks his news of the procedure gently by holding up a mirror and exclaiming that he’d had “one last chance – to perform the dog operation on your head!” Abel screams in revulsion of what he has become. The conciliatory Ood gently cautions him, “Too much emotion can be extremely dangerous now.”

The severed head apparatus is a simple yet ingenious effect, shot entirely in-camera and credited to Theo Nischwitz. It utilizes what is generally known as a Schufftan shot, a technique made famous by spfx shots achieved by Eugen Schufftan for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Essentially, Michel Simon was seated behind a pane of mirrored glass with all the apparatus seen from his neck up. The silvering on the reverse portion of the mirror was scraped away, allowing the camera to see through to Simon and the apparatus while reflecting the apparatus arrayed below his neck, in position for the camera to capture its reflection simultaneously. In at least one promotional photo issued for the film, Simon’s shoulders can be transparently glimpsed where they should not be.

Irene returns to meet with Dr. Abel and is surprised to find new employee Ood now alone and ruling the roost. When he offers to perform her operation himself, she instinctively distrusts and fears him – but is reassured after hearing Abel’s disembodied voice on the house’s sophisticated intercom.

After the killing and burial of Burke, whose body Bert Jaeger later finds thanks to the barking of Dr. Abel’s kenneled hounds (a detail that one imagines inspired Franju’s use of a kennel in Eyes Without a Face), the film introduces the dull but nevertheless compulsory police investigation, headed by Paul Dahlke as Police Commissioner Sturm. Sagging interest is buoyed by a surprise twist: when Dr. Ood returns to the Tam-Tam Club and asks the perpetually pissy Lilly to dance, he refers to her in passing as “Stella,” prompting her to recognize him as “Dr. Brandt” (the scorecard now reads Burke, Bert and Brandt), who has inside knowledge pertaining to her poisoning of her husband! Given that his  earlier writing projects include Orson Welles’ The Stranger and the bizarre Mexican-made Buster Keaton item Boom In the Moon (also 1946), in which an innocent shipwrecked sailor is rescued from his castaway existence only to find himself confused with a serial killer, Victor Trivas would seem partial to characters who live double lives.

Though Ood/Brandt’s aura is basically asexual through the first half of the film, the second half requires him to take an earthier interest in the female bodies finding their way into his hands. He takes the already tipsy Lilly/Stella home for a drink and some mischief.

“What’s in the glass?”

“Drink it and find out.”

“I hope it’s not poisoned.”

“That’s not my specialty, is it?”

Lilly/Stella becomes the necessary auto parts for Irene’s pending operation. In a nicely done montage, the film dissolves from Lilly’s unconscious body to a glint of light off the edge of Ood’s poised scalpel. It cuts to a curt zoom into Abel’s scream at being forced to watch a procedure he abhors, then a dissolve from his mouth to the spinning dials of a wall clock, followed by some time-lapse photography of cumulous clouds unfurling from an open sky, before Irene awakens in her recovery room with a decorative choker around her throat. She is able to gain her feet and covers her nude body in a sheet. She finds Ood lounging in Abel’s old office. He walks toward her as the sheet tumbles off her bare shoulders.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Well, I… I’ve a strange kind of feeling, as if my whole body were changed, as if my body didn’t want to do what I wished.”

Therefore, Ood has not only taken away her deformity but her responsibility for her actions, as well. Though she has never smoked before, she craves a cigarette. As Ood lights one for her,  her wrap falls further, undraping her entire bare back and thus exposing a birthmark on her left shoulder blade that becomes an important plot point. Ood confesses she’s been unconscious for 117 days, during which time he has passed the time by performing numerous enhancing procedures on her inert body. When he compliments her superb figure, she self-consciously covers her legs and recoils from him.

“Why run from everything you desire?” he asks. “You can’t run from yourself.”

He draws Irene into a surprising deep kiss, which – to her own apparent horror - she returns. Ood then tries to take things further but she refuses. After a brief (and surprisingly curtailed) attempt at abduction, he releases Irene, who dresses in a black cocktail dress and heels left behind by Lilly and returns to the humble apartment she kept in her previous life, where a full-length mirror stands covered. In a scene considerably shortened by the US version, she rips the cover away in a movement evocative of a symbolic self-rape, and glories in her new reflection.  The score turns torrid, brassy, and trashy as she admires her shapely terrain, fondling the curves of her breasts and hips in a prelude to a gratifying personal striptease. She then goes to her bed, where she tries on an old pair of slippers; she laughs and kicks them away, delighted at how small her feet now are. When she wakes the next morning, she finds a pamphlet for the Tam-Tam Club in Lilly’s old purse, which leads her body back to its former place of employ. When she arrives, another striptease artist is working onstage with a bed. This performance appears to burlesque Irene’s own motions from the night before; she kicks off one of her shoes as Irene had done.  

From the moment she walks into the club, still wearing Lilly’s clinging black dress, Irene evokes a black widow, a kind of Alraune – the femme fatale of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ novel, filmed in 1930 with Brigitte Helm and in 1952 by Hildegarde Knef. Like Alraune, she’s the beautiful creation of a mad scientist’s laboratory, but unnatural. In this case, she’s not really a soulless artificial being out to destroy men; on the contrary, she is soulful, starving for some insight into who she is, what she is. In this way, she particularly foreshadows Christina, the schizophrenic subject of Baron Frankenstein’s “soul transplant” played by Susan Denberg in Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1966).

She quickly attracts Paul’s artist’s eye, just as the now-topless dancer onstage swirls into a swoon on a prop bed – unconsciously mimicking Lilly at the only time she ever saw her, when Ood gave her a sneak peek at the unconscious woman on his living room couch. She asks about Lilly, whom Paul mentions has been dead now for three months, her body (in fact, Irene’s former body) found maimed beyond recognition on some railroad tracks. He asks her to dance, but Irene refuses, as she has never danced, never been asked to dance before. But he insists and they both discover that she can: “You must be a born dancer!”

Beautiful and irresponsible, she allows herself to follow Paul back to his studio, where drawings of Lilly are displayed. Paul asks to draw her, and when she turns her back to bare her shoulders, he recognizes Lilly’s beauty mark. She flees from the apartment and confronts the unflappable Ood.

“You must have grafted her skin on my body!”

In the movie’s most hilarious line, he fires back, “You have a poor imagination!”

She rejects his true account of the procedure and demands to see Dr. Abel, so Ood takes her down to the lab for a personal confirmation from the man himself. Ashamed to be seen this way, Abel pleads with Irene to disconnect him from the apparatus. She is driven away before she can accomplish this, and tries to shut away the horror of the truth that’s been revealed by losing herself in her new relationship with Paul – but the old question arises: Does he love her for her body or her mind? There seems to be one answer when he first kisses her, and another and his lips venture further down her front.  

I should leave some things to be discovered by your own viewing of the film, but it demands to be mentioned that Irene – the triumphant climax of Ood’s genius, so to speak – actually survives at the end of the film to live happily ever after. Think about this. This is something that would have been considered unacceptable in any of Hammer’s Frankenstein films at the time – indeed, through the following decade. So, although Ood is ultimately destroyed (you’ll need to see it to find out how), the mad science he propounds is actually borne out. It’s left up to Paul and Irene, as they walk off together toward a new tomorrow, how they will manage to live with the fact that the two of them are in fact a ménage à trois. Will they keep the details of her existence a secret? Will medical science remain ignorant? Should they ever have any, what will they tell their kids?  

The Head was hardly the first word on severed heads in horror entertainment. In his own admiring coverage of the film, Euro Gothic author Jonathan Rigby likens the film to the story of Rene Berton’s 1928 Grand Guignol play L’Homme qui à tue la mort (“The Man Who Killed Death”): “There, Professor Fargus revived the guillotined head of a supposed murderer and the prosecutor lost his mind when the head continued to plead his innocence.” Earlier such films would include Universal’s Inner Sanctum thriller Strange Confession (1945, in which a never-seen severed head is a main plot point), The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), the latter two proving that the concept was actually trending at the time The Head was made. Also parenthetically relevant would be She Demons (1958), which involves the nasty experiments of a renegade Nazi scientist living on an uncharted tropical island, who removes the “beauty glands” of native girls to periodically restore his wife’s good looks. Though The Head wasn’t the first of its kind, many of the traits it introduced would surface in similar films that followed – not only in Franju’s Eyes Without A Face or Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and The Diabolical Dr. Z, but also in Anton Giulio Majano’s Italian Atom Age Vampire (1960), Chano Urueta’s The Living Head (1963), and most conspicuously in Joseph Green’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, not released until 1962 though filmed in 1959, some six months after The Head.

It must be mentioned that the film’s unusual quality did not go unrecognized by its American distributor. Trans-Lux Distributing Corporation advertised the film that took a most unusual approach to selling a horror picture. The ads did not promise blood, or that your companion would jump into your lap, or shock after shock after shock. Instead, Trans-Lux promised that “At The Head of All Masterpieces of Horror [my italics] That You’ve Ever Seen… You Must Place… The Head.”

Of course it was an overstatement, but the size of its overstatement would seem to have narrowed appreciably with time.

So why has The Head, with its rich pooling of so much European talent, been so neglected?

A key reason may be that horror fans like their actors and directors to maintain a certain consistency, a certain fidelity to the genre. Horst Frank (who died in 1999) would appear in other horror films, but never again played a lead; he pursued his career as a character actor and singer, maintaining a career on the stage and keeping close to home, never making films off the continent or appearing in productions originating from England or America. After The Head, Victor Trivas made no more horror films. The other four features he made had been produced a quarter century earlier and the majority are impossible to see in English countries. Those who remembered him for Niemandsland would have considered The Head an embarrassment, an unfortunate last act. It wasn’t quite a last act, however. The following year, he returned to America, where he sold his final script to the Warner Bros. television series The Roaring 20s, starring Dorothy Provine. Though the show avoided fantasy subjects, it was a voodoo-themed episode entitled “The Fifth Pin,” directed by Robert Spaar and televised during the series’ first season on April 8, 1961. The guest stars included John Dehner, Rex Reason, Patricia O’Neal and, surprisingly, beloved Roger Corman repertory player Dick Miller. Trivas died in New York City in 1970, at the age of 73.

The English version of The Head is considered to be a public domain title and has been available from Alpha Video, Sinister Cinema and other PD sources. This version was modestly recut to create a new main title sequence and to remove certain erotic elements unwelcome to its target audience in 1961. Happily, a hybrid edition – which, in a fitting fate, grafts the English dub onto the original uncut version from Germany – was recently made available for viewing on YouTube.

In the immediate wake of The Head, producer Wolf C. Hartwig pushed another erotic horror film into production, Ein Töter hing in Netz (“A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” 1960). Scripted and directed by Fritz Böttger, the film (Böttger’s last as a director) was first released in America as It’s Hot In Paradise (1962), sold as a girlie picture with absolutely no indication of its horror content. It was later reissued in 1965 as Horrors of Spider Island (1965). Under any of its titles, the film is notably lacking all of the artistic and aesthetic pedigree that made its predecessor so special and, indeed, influential.

Sixty years further on, The Head warrants fuller recognition as a spearhead of that magic moment on the threshold of the 1960s when so-called “art cinema” began to be fused with so-called “trash cinema,” leading to a broader, wilder, more adult fantastique.  

by Tim Lucas

[1] Victor Trivas’ Niemandsland may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4XhNMWoyw

[2] Rapid-Film’s later successes would include the German film that was subsequently converted into Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial debut (The Bellboy and the Playgirls, 1962), Ernst Hofbauer’s Schoolgirl Report film series (1970-80), and Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron (1977).

[3] You can see Lasry-Baschet perform and be interviewed in a French newsreel from January 1961 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awaFd6gArLg&t=46s.

[4] Well, as “recent” as 1940, when footage of a supposedly successful Soviet resuscitation of a dog’s severed head was included in the grisly 20m documentary Experiments In the Revival of Organisms. The operation was performed (and repeated) by Doctors Sergei Brukhonenko and Boris Levinskovsky, making use of their “autojektor,” an artificial heart/lung machine not unlike the contraption seen in The Head. A close look at Experiments reveals that it really shows nothing that could not have been faked through means of special effects. (When George Bernard Shaw learned of the Soviet experiment, he’s said to have remarked, “"I am tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature.") Experiments In The Revival of Organisms has been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap1co5ZZHYE.

[5] Rigby, Jonathan. Euro Horror: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema (London: Signum Books, 2017), p. 79.

[6] Joseph Green also worked in motion picture distribution and later formed Joseph Green Pictures, which specialized in spicy imported pictures, some from Germany. It’s possible that he saw the Trivas picture when it was still seeking distribution in the States. When Ostalgica Film released The Head on DVD in Germany under its Belgian reissue title Des Satans nackte Sklavin (“The Devil’s Naked Slave”), the disc included The Brain That Wouldn’t Die as a bonus co-feature.

[7] A fine quality homemade experiment, it runs 91 minutes 47 seconds and can be found at: The Head (Die Nackte und der Satan) 1959 Sci-Fi / Horror HQ version!.

[abelkia]

La playlist de l'émission de ce jeudi matin sur Radio Campus Bruxelles entre 6h30 et 9h : John Fahey "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" (Guitar Vol. 4: The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party and Other Excursions/Takoma Records/1966) Joseph Spence "The Glory of Love" (Good Morning Mr. Walker/Arhoolie Records-Mississippi Records/1972-2009) ~Joanna Newsom~ "Divers" (Divers/Drag City Records/2015) Ramsey Lewis "Black Bird" (Mother Nature's Son/Cadet/1968) Emmanuelle Parrenin, Jean-Loup Baly, Jean-François Dutertre & Dominique Regef "Sur le pont de Nantes" (Le galant noyé : Ballades et chansons traditionnelles françaises/Le Chant du Monde/1975) Syndrome 81 & Coline Vialle "La ville" (Prisons imaginaires/Destructure-Sabotage/2022) Noël Akchoté & Stefania A. Verità "Le mépris" (Au Bordel - Souvenirs de Paris/Winter & Winter/1999) gnac "Une chanson du crépuscule" (An Evening in the Company of the Vespertine/Vespertine/1997) Arlt "Désennuyons-nous" (La Langue/Almost Musique/2009) Olivier Bloch-Lainé "Des Mots (Les Dromadaires)" (Des Mots/CBS/1976) The Soundcarriers "All These Things" (Wilds/Phosphonic/2022) The Rolling Stones "In Another Land" (Their Satanic Majesties Request/Decca/1967) Source "Nuit d'enfer" (7"/Sonor/196?) Hans Edler "Säg Vad Är Det ?" (Elektron Kukéso/Wah Wah Records/1971-2014) Liaisons Dangereuses "Mystère dans le brouillard" (7"/Mute Records/1981) The New Age Steppers "Love Forever" (The New Age Steppers/On-U Sound Records/1981) Céline Lory, "Écriture automatique - 10/9/2022" Serge Gainsbourg, Michel Colombier & William Klein "No no yes yes" (Mister Freedom OST (EP)/Barclay-Vadim Music/1968-2008) Gloria Barnes "Old Before My Time" (Uptown/Maple Records/1971) Bed "An Itch" (The Newton Plum/Ici d'ailleurs/2001) Scott Walker "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti" (The Moviegoer/Philips/1972) Jacques Doyen, Jacques Lasry & Arlette Thomas "La mort des amants" (Poésie à Mi-Voix/Barclay/1967) Jacques Duvall "Je te hais" (Comme la romaine/Ariola/1983) LCD Soundsystem "Losing my Edge" (12"/Output - DFA Records/2002) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cih_M2eNyQ6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bandsilike]

the taxpayers

the sleeping

a closing skyline

yesterdays rising

rebounder

three headed snake

molina

the start (the disorganized hours)

as cities burn

the showdown

haste the day

celldweller

not half bad

sledding with tigers

lorene drive

pigeon pit

calico system

farewell

five minute ride

the homeless gospel choir

he is legend

the sleeping bag

apes of the state

falling up

hawk nelson

blindside

todaychaser

thee headcoatees

burning season

the goodwill

ryoji ikeda

the tammys

EDDIE

across five aprils

kero kero bonito

SOPHIE

rina sawayama

the art of safecracking

advent (respec)

akissforjersey

shadow show

blur

the belles

the shangri-las

the liverbirds

the cake

cub ghost

38th parallel

the fair sect

dear me

the raindrops

the debutantes (girl band)

courtship.

alove for enemies

the hillbilly moon explosion

will joseph cook

barnes blvd.

'68

EĐĐIE

iamdoechii

advent (pain and suffering)

overthoughts

yg

empire down

starry nights

brasian

ace augustine

ADVENT

poison idea

stacked like pancakes

black pool

billie joe armstrong

advent (the surgeon)

the burning season

billie eilish

starry cat

3rd root

true sounds of nothing

cause for alarm

eagles

bag raiders

liberty and justice

tealeef

jacques greene

deadguy

bob ross effect

dr dre

little richard

7 angels 7 plagues

baby gopal

daft punk

the path of resistance

doughnuts

modest mouse

murder city devils

by the grace of god

cast iron hike

maribou state

Kenny loggins

motion city soundtrack

hi fi and the roadburners

DEf leppard

guilt

deep purple

wallows

a-ha

the black keys

the bleachers

Joshua radin

mark 'sparky' philips

Darren criss

Macintosh plus

fun.

rancid

tony bennett

scarypoolparty

fork in socket

love fame tragedy

job for a cowboy

vic mensa

INXS

yikes

i don't know how but they found me

locket

thirty seconds to mars

elton john

passion pit

breathe carolina

redbone

young the giant

earl sweatshirt

ski mask the slump god

barry white

vic staples

RAT!hammock

younger hunger

cream

whitewoods

the pickle mafia

elvis presley

vanna

wilburn burchette

pye corner audio

full tac

the focus group

katy perry

achiever

jake racina

queensrÿche

catch 22

depeche mode

Elton John

Katy Hudson

boards of Canada

artful dodger

Craig David

Robbie Craig

Swedish house mafia

beck

Phil Collins

king nun

just banco

benjamin francis leftwich

no rome

mom rock

rod Stewart

hole

survivor

Simon & garfunkel

Adele

the bee gees

50 cent

milli vanilli

milmine

future

the moth and the flame

Roy purdy

Madonna

killing joke

don mclean

dead vibrations

kaiser chiefs

r o m e s

shed seven

happy mondays

feeder

public image ltd

echo & the bunnymen

ash

vintage trouble

buddy holly

margot and the nuclear so and so's

friendly fires

the doors

muddy waters

lil mariko

the cloaks

link wray

lil pump

ozzy Osborne

mastodon

lil texas

kyle dixon & michael stein

lemay

poko

Sammy Hagar

manowar

helloween

preoccupations

exodus

saxon

quiet riot

venom

prophets of rage

audioslave

alter bridge

dir en grey

wojciech golczewski

keith seatman

Weston allen

all poets & heroes

GRAVEDGR

danny l harle

howard shore

hologram teen

tadashi

hello harry

jerome jennings

takotsubo

melissa weikart

jacques lasry

kid froopy

grouper

mr. mitch

kitchen cynics

POKO COX

melissa weinstein

happier places

mood killer

will on cloud nine

luca yupanqui

alpha wolf

aphex twin

jeris johnson

mahrah

cavern of anti-matter

the holy knives

ataraxia

ben romans-hopcraft

social state

salvia palth

beautify junkyards

ayesha erotica

the debutantes

pom poko

thenewno2

Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum

mgmt

alexis ffrench

belbury poly

dylan brady

king shelter

thomas garcia

tadataka unno

children of alice

toitoitoi

his name is alive

broadcast

public theatre

dr. horsedoctor

MOSFET

kristina tsakos

the night monitor

king of woolworths

made violent

the mob

my morning jacket

papooz

baby animals

trey benji

custard

dyre

8bit wizard

haircut 100

rush

stevie wright

forever oeuvre

the jaded hearts club

silverchair

awfultune

the delmonas

sparks

spice girls

visionist

soft swells

Lizz Robinett

television blonde

wheatus

john carpenter

mikky ekko

okkervil river

elyotto

old crow medicine show

andrew weatherfall

the montreals

the maine

we were promised jetpacks

andrew mcmahon in the wilderness

jake luttrell

penelope scott

dave mars

princess nokia

electric century

project nevada

gang starr

inspectah deck

ashnikko

hootie and the blowfish

dr dre

fetty potter

boards of canada

skrillex

night riots

guinea pigs (80's band)

cut worms

varsovia

bexey

the empire shall fall

the cure

thornley

radiohead

tears for fears

Yung Baby Tate

the strokes

franz Ferdinand

galen tipton

wilco

Metallica

snoop dog

fear

sex pistols

the 1975

rage against the machine

smashmouth

lily allen

superet

albert hammond jr

alvarez kings

pig destroyer

white chapel

billy joel

bolt thrower

deicide

death cab for cutie

rammestein

slayer

suicide silence

chelsea grin

destroy boys

carnifex

i declare war

sun o)))

bowling for soup

brain drill

benny blanco

beck

bastille

barns courtney

banks

emarosa

issues

portal

revenge

bowling shoes

mayhem

kero kero bonito

the pantones (topic)

it's butter

morbid angel

NILE

cannibal corpse

dying fetus

t. rex

scorpions

daniel johnston

soundgarden

the undertones

beach bunny

dir en grey

sitting on stacy

teenage wrist

ashton irwin

hampi

the groans

fashion jackson

cheridomingo

lefty

ignant benches

wolf woodcock

quiet girl

la fille

the no. 44

levitation room

ybn cordae

capital cities

whitest boy alive

vhs glitch

kontravoid

timecrawler 82

lebrock

foxtide

men i trust

ho99o9

waifle

role model

wilco

the hollies

javanese gamelan ensemble

superet

hunny

jack stauber's micropop

jack stauber

cuco

drumaq

andy the core

slint

wrabel

the fall

caroline rose

the marías

starcrawler

field medic

plague vendor

eric beeny

the statuettes

[swintronix-blog]

Sunday on Chronophage No. 24: Jacques Lasry's "Chronophagie", whence this show derives its name. Also John Cage, Dick Hyman, Philip Glass, Milton Babbitt's "Philomel", and, well, more. 8 AM on @freeformpdx / Freeform Portland.

[cynaram]

The theme to the Cabal books

From (the put-upon and heroic) Jonathan L. Howard’s 121 Likes, 121 Facts:

“In my mind's ear, the theme for the Johannes Cabal tales as a whole and for the first novel in particular is actually mentioned in that book, in the scene where Cabal applies brute mechanical logic to getting the steam calliope working. The piece of music the calliope plays is "Manège" by Jacques Lasry.” 

Perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihiOqMw6-KI

[herbouquetsweets-blog]

Bora Bora by sara-cdth featuring a colorful crochet bikini ❤ liked on Polyvore

Cool Change beige top, $350 / Missoni Mare colorful crochet bikini / K. Jacques genuine leather shoes / K. Jacques genuine leather shoes / Cult Gaia bamboo purse / Thierry Lasry rounded sunglasses

[driyartikahafizhah-blog]

Bora Bora by sara-cdth featuring acetate glasses ❤ liked on Polyvore

Cool Change beige top, 4.718.255 IDR / Missoni Mare crochet swimwear, 6.419.560 IDR / K. Jacques sandals, 2.667.000 IDR / K. Jacques sandals, 2.667.000 IDR / Cult Gaia beige purse, 1.715.455 IDR / Thierry Lasry acetate glasses, 6.499.975 IDR

[ozkar-krapo]

[mus. Jacques LASRY]

"La Belle au Bois dormant / Le Cheval électronique"

(2LP. Arion. 1976) [FR]

[jomashop]

Spring has Sprung by dominosfalldown featuring Bobbi Brown Cosmetics ❤ liked on Polyvore

Anna October asymmetrical top, 36270 RSD / J W Anderson green skirt, 117395 RSD / K. Jacques green shoes, 42290 RSD / Valentino shoulder handbag, 375225 RSD / Annette Ferdinandsen gold earrings, 261070 RSD / Thierry Lasry vintage sunglasses, 58770 RSD / Gold hair accessory, 460 RSD / Bobbi Brown Cosmetics lip makeup, 3050 RSD / Illamasqua nail polish

[darrenlock]

RT @aflashbak: Jacques and Yvonne Lasry play a crystal baschet (1961) http://bit.ly/2GboL93

Jacques and Yvonne Lasry play a crystal baschet (1961) pic.twitter.com/svt8HDcChr

— Flashbak.com (@aflashbak) January 30, 2019

from Twitter https://twitter.com/darren_lock January 30, 2019 at 02:34PM via IFTTT

[lefruitvert]

Marie-Douce’s mix

1/ Jacques Lasry : Sokoto (197 ?) 2/ Laurence Rosenthal - Main Theme, The Comedians (1967) 3/ Alain Péters - Ti-cabart (1978) 4/ Eric Gingras – Sans titre (demo) *inédit (2017) 5/ Hikaru Hayashi – L’île nue (1962) 6/ Pierre Schaeffer - L’oiseau R A I (1971) 7/ (>>>mixed with) M. Delporte, E. Thibor, H. Okari, M. Chantereau – Oiseaux (198 ?) 8/ Marie-Douce St-Jacques – Hymne au sol (demo) *inédit (2017) 9/ Laurence Vanay – Morning Quiet Song (1975) 10/ Jane et Julie - Notre homme à moi (1972) 11/ Paul Mauriat – Midnight Cowboy (197 ?) 12/ Gmackrr – Moon - Earth - Moon I (2017) 13/ Marie-Laforêt – Celui qui viendra (1967) 14/ Ennio Morricone – Image du passé (1977 ) 15/ The Wild Ones – Blue fruit (1968) 16/ Bernard Parmegiani – danse (1969) 17/ Unknown – Indicatif 4 (198 ?) 18/ Nina (In Cold Blood) – Quincy Jones (Vocal by Gil Bernal) (1967)

[stegzy]

Chronophagie - Lasry-Baschett (#271)

Chronophagie – Lasry-Baschett (#271)

Chronophagie – Lasry-Baschet

British people over the age of 35 might recall a daytime television programme of their youth known as Picture Box.

The theme is Manecheby Jacques Lasry. Jacques Lasry was the  composer for an instrument known as the Cristal Baschet, a peculiar instrument resembling a sculpture designed and invented by…

[djrimbaud]

GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE •• LE PONT MIRABEAU Douze interprétations (1952-2014)

  1- Yvette Giraud (1952) – Le pont Mirabeau (musique : Léo Ferré) 2- Léo Ferré (1953) – Le pont Mirabeau (musique : Léo Ferré) 3- Michèle Arnaud (1955) – Sous le pont Mirabeau (musique : Jacques Lasry) 4- Serge Reggiani (1972) – Le pont Mirabeau (musique : Raymond Bernard) 5- Serge Reggiani (1973) – Sous le pont Mirabeau (Musique : Louis Bessières) 6- Pow woW (1995) – Le pont Mirabeau (musique : Bertrand Pierre) 7- Marc Lavoine (2001) – Le pont Mirabeau (musique : Marc Lavoine) 8- Sophie Auster (2005) – Le pont Mirabeau (Musique : Michael Hearst et Joshua Camp) 9- Demain les chiens (2008) – Sous le pont Mirabeau (Musique : Yann Larzul) 10- Nick Garrie (2009) – Le pont Mirabeau (Musique : Nick Garrie) 11- William Pigache (2011) – Le pont Mirabeau (Musique : William Pigache) 12- Louisa Bey (2014) – Le pont Mirabeau (Musique : Louisa Bey) Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine               Et nos amours        Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne La joie venait toujours après la peine        Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure        Les jours s’en vont je demeure Les mains dans les mains restons face à face               Tandis que sous        Le pont de nos bras passe Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse        Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure        Les jours s’en vont je demeure L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante               L’amour s’en va        Comme la vie est lente Et comme l’Espérance est violente        Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure        Les jours s’en vont je demeure Passent les jours et passent les semaines               Ni temps passé        Ni les amours reviennent Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine        Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure        Les jours s’en vont je demeure — Alcools

[ozkar-krapo]

Jacques & Yvonne LASRY - Bernard & Françoise BASCHET

"Structures sonores Lasry-Baschet - vol.1"

(LP. BAM. 1976 / rec. 1966?) [FR]