La Femme et le Monstre

*Spoiler/plot- The Lady and the Monster, 1944. In a rural castle two medical men and a woman assistant are experimenting with brain chemistry and energy. After a airplane crash, they take a human brain of one of the victims to continue their work. The brain is of a criminal mind that gradually takes over the medical assistant's mind periodically to do more evil. *Special Stars- Vera Ralston, Richard Allen, Erich Von Strohiem. *Theme- Don't tamper with creation. *Trivia/location/goofs- B & W. Film Noir. *Emotion- An interesting combination of science fiction and film noir detective features prominently here. The male cast members overshadow the female lead and the plot has little for her to do to engineer the dramatic situations of this film. The disembodied brain element becomes secondary to the crime plot for this film.

Erich von Stroheim dons his Mad Doctor/Scientist tunic once more in the first adaptation of the much-filmed Donovan's Brain, and finds that his reluctant assistant has become enslaved to the will of the brain they removed from the body of a ruthless industrialist. A strange mix of SF horror and Noir that is only fitfully successful. It isn't helped by the presence of Czech ice skater Vera Hruba Ralston, whom Republic head Herbert Yates was determined to make into a star even though she could barely speak a word of English and had to learn her lines phonetically.

Prof. Franz Mueller (Erich Von Stroheim) is experimenting with keeping the human brain alive after death. A nearby plane crash gives him the perfect test subject in a dying man named Donovan. Mueller and his assistant, Dr. Cory (Richard Arlen) plop Donovan's brain into a tank full of chemicals and strange, unexpected things start happening. As you might have noticed, this is the original version of the story that would become the 1950's sci-fi classic, DONOVAN'S BRAIN by Curt Siodmak. Personally, I prefer this version, since it has a deeper story and more interesting characters. After all, it's hard to beat Von Stroheim practicing mad science!...