Another classic-era Eurohorror title has surfaced on Blu-ray. Straight from the exploitation trenches of postwar Germany, this elusive opus jangles plenty of nerves with its tale of mad surgery and crazy transplants. Partly a girlie show — most every scene involves some form of disrobing — it’s nevertheless an intriguing horror cocktail with top production values. The capable cast is really into the melodramatic shocks — it may not be Georges Franju but it’s several cuts above other ‘severed head’ epics — an insane carnival of flesh confusion that’s technically tame but truly adults-only by 1959 standards.

Die Nackte und Der Satan (The Head)
Blu-ray
Anolis Entertainment
1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen; 1:33 flat full frame / 97 min. / Standard Edition Street Date September 9, 2022 / Available from Diabolik DVD / 26.99
Starring: Horst Frank, Karin Kernke, Michel Simon, Christiane Maybach, Dieter Eppler, Helmut Schmid, Barbara Valentin, Kurt Müller-Graf, Paul Dahlke, Maria Stadler.
Cinematography: Georg Krause
Production Designers: Bruno Monden, Hermann Warm
Film Editor: Friedl Buckow-Schier
Original Music: Willy Mattes, Jacques Lasry
Produced by Wolfgang Hartwig
Written and Directed by Victor Trivas

This over-imaginative pre-teen’s first exposure to the great French actor Michel Simon wasn’t through  some Jean Renoir classic, but via a glimpse of a decapitated head in a TV spot from around 1962. Everything about The Head said, ‘don’t bother to ask your parents if you can see that one.’ The tag line on the poster read, “It just won’t lay down and stay dead!”

Teased with intriguing stills in Famous Monsters, the film’s original German cut has been an elusive item ever since, spurred by an entry in The Hardy Encyclopedia of Horror that gave its original, perplexing title, Die Nackte und Der Satan. What did the Devil have to do with a movie we knew was about mix & match body-head grafting?  CineSavant reviewed a fairly funky, unsatisfying German DVD a few seasons back. The respected German outfit Anolis has come to the rescue, releasing two mediabook special editions in September that quickly sold out. Fortunately for us, they followed up with a perfectly pleasing Standard Edition.

This fan’s preference is for EuroHorror from the 1950s and 1960s, a time when even tame ‘extreme’ content was big news. Long ago we formed a hunger for films that couldn’t be seen at all, or existed only in censored copies of poor quality.

All that has since changed. The last few years alone have spoiled us with spectacular new editions of exotic Eurohorror from across the quality spectrum: The Curse of Frankenstein,  (Horror of) Dracula,  Night of the Demon,  Blood of the Vampire,  Circus of Horrors,  The Stranglers of Bombay,  The Vampire and the Ballerina,  City of the Dead,  Mill of the Stone Women,  Horrors of Spider Island,  Hercules in the Haunted World,  Lycanthropus, Bloody Pit of Horror.

This new release gets off to a fine start. The saxophone-heavy title theme signals ‘late ’50s German thriller’ with a lurid sound akin to that heard in Lang’s Mabuse revival, the politically daring Black Gravel, and the emerging ‘Krimi’ genre. We’re told that Die Nackte’s producers had previously made crime – sex pictures with titles like Schwarze Nylons – Heiße Nächte. The impetus here is of course the international boom in horror filmmaking. Mad surgery in Gothic settings was big business, so might the same sell even better in a contemporary context?

The first visual mirrors the opening of Fritz Lang’s “M” — a mystery shadow falls over the nameplate of the clinic of Dr. Abel (French star Michel Simon), a surgical genius whose ‘Serum X’ has allowed him to successfully keep a dog’s severed head alive, indefinitely. Aware that his heart will soon fail, Abel has his assistant Walter Burke (Kurt Müller-Graf) prep a transplant operation in which he’ll receive the heart of a man dying from a broken spinal cord. Helping will be the newly-arrived surgeon Dr. Ood (Horst Frank). Burke discusses his moral misgivings about Abel’s experiments with his cousin, Sister Irene Sander (Karin Kernke), who happens to have a severely misshapen backbone. Abel’s other helper is Bert Jaeger (Helmut Schmid), an unusual fellow: he’s constructed an ingenious automated surgical assist machine, yet is unaccountably passive and slow-witted.

Several surgical miracles/atrocities later, the ooky Dr. Ood is the last M.D. standing, and is running the clinic solo. Dr. Abel has been reduced to a decapitated head kept alive in an elaborate table-top apparatus. Abel protests (the head can speak, somehow) but Ood refuses to let him die.

Although the mad lab on view is one of the best in horror memory, don’t expect any gory surgery scenes. There are no images of severed limbs, or even a drop of blood. The German filmmakers are not imitating contemporary horrors like I Was a Teenage Frankenstein  with their hints of gore.  Eyes without a Face would become the big icebreaker in that department.

Ood proceeds with an even more ambitious ‘personal’ project — he talks Sister Irene into submitting to an operation that will cure her deformities. When she wakes up several months later, Irene can’t believe her perfect new body, which has different-looking hands. It’s quite a while before she realizes that from the neck down she’s really Lilly (Christiane Maybach), an exotic dancer from the Tam-Tam Bar. Lilly’s earlier performance, gyrating around a suit of armor with a ‘demon’ inside, gives the movie its title: The Nude and The Devil.

The body count scorecard for Die Nackte is sheer lunacy. Two doctors disappear, two headless bodies show up, and the police never take a look inside Abel’s private clinic. The storyline instead concentrates on Sister Irene’s sensual conversion. Although Irene is a nun, the movie doesn’t touch the subject. We’ve not seen Irene say a prayer or cross herself, and now she’s enraptured by her beautiful, sensual new form. Irene never peeks under the choker collar affixed to her neck, where we assume should be (but never see) a circle of Frankenstein stitches.

A nun from the neck up but an aggressive stripper from the neck down, Irene has several ‘getting to know you’ encounters before a mirror.  Her new body has notions of its own, like Orlac’s transplanted hands in Mad Love. Flesh Doesn’t Lie: Lilly’s former boyfriend Paul, a sculptor (Dieter Eppler) recognizes Lilly’s body, under a different face.  A feminist might exploit this Identity Crisis for a critique of male-defined female roles.

The (male-centric) assumption is that all women desire to be sensual sex bombs, that there’s nothing more important than attracting men. Irene doesn’t become a dancer, but she looks on in interest at the Tam-Tam Bar’s new star stripper (Barbara Valentin, in her first role), who performs with a bed for a prop. When Irene dresses up to visit the Tam-Tam Bar, she’s a dead ringer for the presumed-evil Alraune played by Hildegard Knef seven years before.

The movie doesn’t decide if Irene is an innnocent angel or a sex-driven siren. The Awful Doctor Ood soon puts the moves on her, stating that she’s his creation and therefore naturally his property. The ‘healthy’ Paul admits openly that he’s obsessed with the bodies he sculpts. His initial attraction is to what seems to be Lilly with a different head.

Irene is perplexed by the dictates of her new sensuality. If this were an American film seeking a Production Code seal, it would have been stopped 10 times already for unacceptable content. As a German film it can go its own way . . . the ‘liberated’ Irene submits voluntarily to the sexual advances of both men.

Almost reduced to a footnote is the lonely Dr. Abel, whose multiple chins do not look comfortable resting on that glass table. We almost expect to see a folding poster board set up behind him, bearing a school Science Project First Prize ribbon. The impressive illusion of the severed head on the lab table presumably adapts a magician’s mirror trick. A few shots use a convincing dummy head.  Abel’s reflection in the mirror is an optical split-screen, with considerable image degradation. But all the other shots are expert A+ physical illusions, first-generation on film.

When allowed to speak, Dr. Abel protests being the involuntary subject of Ood’s morally dicey experiment — he’s literally become ‘something you wouldn’t do to a dog.’  Dr. Ood now has total control. By grafting together the most desirable aspects of Irene and Lilly, he’s also  ‘created’ an ideal sex partner, a Bride of Oodelstein.

Nobody worries about the unidentified man whose heart Dr. Abel was meant to inherit. Celebrity sawbones like Drs. Gogol and Abel can apparently have critical cases delivered to their clinics with just a telephone call.  The main cop (Paul Dahlke) ought to be extremely suspicious. Two doctors are unaccounted for.  A morgue identification is made by a new doctor who looks and behaves like a sinister figure from a German Expressionist drama.  At the finale, when the polizei  finally spring into action, it’s only because the man making crazy claims of head transplants happens to be related to a city official.

←  Die Nackte und Der Satan is at least 20% a girlie show for Männer, die gerne nackte Frauen anschauen. Someone’s always disrobing. There are the bold stage acts, Lilly’s vulgar behavior in the Bar, and Irene’s fascination with her own figure. She’s bothered that Dr. Ood expects her to live in a sheet while recovering, but then willingly poses for Paul, on just a brief acquaintance.

In its rush from one sensational scene to the next, the movie ladles on several confusing, undeveloped character complications. Lilly was apparently once ‘Stella,’ and Dr. Ood was at one time a plastic surgeon named ‘Dr. Brandt,’ who helped her avoid a murder charge by altering her face . . . shades of  Circus of Horrors.

Lab assistant Bert Jaeger’s actions and motivations are a complete muddle. Is he a genius or a moron?  Why is he steadfastly loyal to Ood, after seeing what’s been cooking in the operating theater?  Why does he re-bury the corpse of a man he admired, and not tell anyone?  Did Dr. Abel operate on Bert’s brain, too?

As if not content to accept Dr. Ood as merely a criminal madman, the script contrives to make him a product of mad surgery:  his mentor Dr. Hartman ‘operated on his glands’ to make him a genius. That goofball rationale explains doesn’t explain Dr. Ood’s occasional mental seizures, otherwise known as Cody Jarrett Syndrome.

Also not accounted for is Ood’s habit of staring at the moon at night, while the clinic’s dog howls. It’s something that belongs in a werewolf movie. This corner of Germany is very interestingly situated . . . whenever Ood looks at the night sky, the moon is always FULL.

I have no idea if the English-language version of The Head is as good; we avoid dub jobs when we can. In its original form the film is polished pop moviemaking that tests the commercial market in search of new thrills. Its potpourri of mad doctor and horror notions is swiped from old Universal thrillers, and is also cognizant of early research seeking to medically transplant organs. We’re reminded that arcane notions about the human body still persist. When heart transplants became feasible, some people wondered if a heart recipient would now love the same person the donor had loved . . .

Anolis’s Blu-ray of Die Nackte und Der Satan (The Head) is a terrific HD encoding of this exotic, cheerfully demented German entry in the late- ’50s horror sweepstakes. The All-Region disc plays perfectly on an ordinary American-bought Blu-ray player. The transfer appears to be from prime elements, revealing the film’s stylish and dramatic cinematography.

I was initially disappointed to find that the show is open-matte full frame.  German features from 1957 or so onward were widescreen-cropped, just as in America and elsewhere. Only after viewing did I find a welcome second 1:66 widescreen scan hidden in the extras menu. Not to nitpick — well yes, it is a nitpick — the 1:66 scan is a little low, a center scan instead of cheating a bit toward the top of the frame. The main title blocks ride a little high. Filmmakers formatting for widescreen soon took their 1:66 or 1:85 slice a little higher than center. This allowed them to build sets without extra-high walls: it’s more work to hide lights above than cables below. Proof that the movie wasn’t planned for full frame comes when various bits of microphones peek in at the top now and then.

The on-screen title is the reissue title, Des Satans Nackte Sklavin, aka Satan’s Naked Slave Girl.  The original cut may have had a slightly longer strip performance by Barbara Valentin. There’s no obvious editing in the music track, but a couple of shots in Barbara Valentin’s strip performance look abbreviated, and are awkwardly matched with an audience cutaway. More explicit frame grabs have shown up online.  →

Excellent lighting brings the fancy sets to life. Designed in part by the legendary Hermann Warm (Der müde Tod,  Vampyr),  the clinic and mad lab glow and shine, while all those night exteriors teem with rough paths and threatening thickets. In his earlier review Charlie Largent noted the film’s architectural heritage — that lab set puts Die nackte in a class by itself.

Dr. Ood’s truly cool car is an Auto Union 1000, which looks like a knockoff of a Ford Thunderbird. We’d never heard of it.

Anolis’s earlier deluxe releases of Die Nackte used more exciting cover artwork and reportedly had a mediabook presentation with essays, etc.. This followup standard edition has no lack of interesting extra content, especially if one understands German:  full pressbooks with sales text, and two full audio commentaries in un-translated Deutsch.

English-language audio commentator Tim Lucas expresses surprise that he’d be asked to record for a German disc, when his fine track is of course present to enhance export value. Tim dispenses a great deal of information about the colorful cast and the interesting filmmakers, especially the curious career of writer-director Victor Trivas. Various sources have tried to explain the presence of the legendary actor Michel Simon in this exploitation picture. The star might have been having bad times  — a problem with facial paralysis is often noted — but maybe the pay for a few days’ work was too good to pass up. He’s given a special card in the credits, but it isn’t like his name is trumpeted on the posters.

Tim takes a good shot at analyzing the ‘headless Dr. Abel’ visual illusion. He picks up very strongly on the film’s superb sets, and investigates its creative music track, which incorporates electronic constructions credited as ‘special audio.’ Tim doesn’t commit to an identification of a Tam-Tam bar girl seen with customers in several scenes, who is given no dialogue lines. Could she be Barbara Valentin, the club’s second dancing attraction? (left, just above  ↖  ; the image can be enlarged.)

Tim reserves special mention for Karin Kernke’s expert performance in a difficult role. Actually, the committed perfs of everyone on screen are what keep Die nackte on the rails. Nobody behaves as if they were too good for the movie. Good or bad, Victor Trivas’ film is in no way the proto-Camp romp of Joseph Green’s delirious The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Die Nackte und Der Satan (The Head)
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Two German audio commentaries (no subtitles): Dr Rolf Giesen Gerd Naumann, Christopher Klaese, Matthias Künnecke
English audio commentary by Tim Lucas
German trailer
U.S. The Head title sequence
German release pressbooks, film programs and photo, ad & poster galleries.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: October 23, 2022
(6820nack)

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