Dr. Pat Corey is a research scientist who's ultimate goal is to keep a brain alive after the death of its body so he can study it and unlock the secrets of how the brain works for the betterment of all man kind. When a plane crashes nearby, a millionaire named Donovan is brought to his house / laboratory for emergency surgery to try to save him. His legs are gone and his chest cavity is crushed, and after making a valiant attempt, Dr. Cory and Dr. Schratt finally give up when Donovan dies and they're unable to revive him.
Shortly after his death however, they realize they have a fresh human brain to use in their experiments, which up to now have consisted only of keeping monkey brains alive in a tank. They discuss it and ultimately decide to give it a try with the only fresh human brain they're ever likely to have at their disposal. Unfortunately for them, the procedure worked and Donovan's brain not only survived in the tank, but thrived and grew.

Dr. Corey becomes obsessed with observing it, losing tons of sleep and watching it to the exclusion of almost everything else in his life. Eventually he decides to try to communicate with it using ESP. He does, and that was the biggest mistake he could have possibly made. The brain takes over his body, and starts leading him on a quest to recover all of Donovan's hidden money in order to build the brain a facility to house it, protect it and keep it alive.

In life, Donovan was a notorious tax cheat and very much despised by everyone who knew him because of his arrogance and because of the way he treated everyone around him. Dr. Corey starts taking on these traits as the brain gains more and more control over him, and eventually his wife Janice and Dr. Schratt figure out what's going on. Their biggest mistake was to not destroy the brain as soon as they figured it out. Dr. Corey / Donovan forced them to keep it alive and to just observe it while Donovan did his dirty work. Anyone who got in the way was murdered or would eventually meet that end if Donovan had anything to say about it.

So that in a nutshell was what this movie was about. Now don't get me wrong here, I know I said the movie was full of boring characters, but it's actually a decent movie. Not without its problems, but a decent movie all the same.

I think what disappointed me the most about this movie is that I expected a more sinister feel and definitely more murders. The only one who was actually killed in this film was Herbie Yocum, and he killed himself when Donovan controlled his mind and made him drive off a cliff. So basically there was very little action in this film as far as the killing goes, which is what I thought I would be getting. I mean, one of the taglines says it told him to kill, kill, kill. Ok, so where's all the killing? He did attempt to kill Janice and Frank, but neither of them ended up dead. I think it would have done this movie a world of good if the body count had been higher. It certainly would have made it more interesting. In general however, despite the lack of killing, this story was entertaining on a different level. The gradual and ever strengthening hold that Donovan has over Dr. Corey is an interesting transformation to watch and despite the boringness of the majority of the characters in this film, good quality acting on the part of everyone involved in this production managed to keep it on its feet. If the quality of the acting hadn't have been there, this movie would likely have died a slow, painful death.

Another thing I liked about this film is the set design in the lab. They did a great job making it look really nifty with all kinds of interesting scientific gear, and the brain in the tank was really well done. It throbbed and glowed and managed to be really ominous and somewhat realistic looking. Again, if it had looked cheap or hokey, it would have killed the entire film. Fortunately, they had quality people working on this production, and that's what saved it and made it worth watching.
The DVD of this film is pretty nice, but also pretty typical of MGM's Midnite Movie releases. It has the film and the trailer and subtitles, but I do have two problems with the release. First, it says the DVD is in standard, full frame format and that it was modified to fit your screen. I despise this practice, and if that's truly what MGM did, they should be ashamed. I'm saying if because many of these old classics actually were shot in that aspect ratio, so I don't know if this one was and they just used a standard logo in the label and it really wasn't modified at all, or if it was shot in a widescreen aspect ratio originally and MGM cut the sides off. Again, if that's what they did, they should be ashamed. Movies should never be modified in any way. If it was shot in widescreen, then that's what should be on the disc.

The other thing I take issue with is the subtitles. My wife is a little hard of hearing, plus English isn't her first language. Even though she speaks English better than most Americans, the subtitles in movies help her to catch and understand everything better, and as such I've gotten used to having them on when we watch films together. I've even grown to like them myself because I can catch things in the subtitles that I may not have been able to hear on the audio track. Unfortunately, and this isn't just MGM that does this because I've seen lots of companies do it, they put subtitles on the disc, but only French and Spanish. So what are all the deaf and hard of hearing English speaking people supposed to do? Read lips? English subs should be a given on every disc, irregardless of any other languages they choose to include. You'd think MGM would actually want to reach that extra bit of audience, but I guess in this case they didn't care enough to bother. Fortunately, this practice seems to only go on a per release basis, as other releases of theirs do have English subs. I just wish they'd make it a policy to make sure all of their releases do. By the way, that's not just for MGM. I wish every company that includes subs on their releases would make it a policy to insure that English is the primary sub language that goes on the disc before anything else.

As for the quality of the transfer, it's pretty nice. It's a bit grainy, but you're likely not to notice it all that much. The sound is clean and quite nice sounding without any of the muddiness that can sometimes plague old, classic films.

So what's the conclusion? Well, even though it didn't meet up with my expectations going into it, this did turn out to be quite a good film. I think there was a lot of wasted potential with the lack of killing, but this film was based on a novel, so I guess we really can't blame the filmmakers for that. I don't know how closely they kept the script to what went on in the novel though, so maybe we can. In any case, it's a good old classic and once you see it, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I kind of struggled a bit with the rating, because in some ways it deserves a bit less, and in some ways it deserves a bit more. In the end I finally just decided to just average it out and give it...