This is by no means the best brain-in-a-tank movie ever made, but it is the best known. It’s hardly “plenty frightening” or “terrifying,” as fifties-era critics apparently found DONOVAN’S BRAN, but it offers mild fun for viewers in the mood for some seriously dated kitsch.
The basis for this 1953 film was a 1942 novel by the late Curt Siodmak (1902-2000), adapted previously as THE LADY AND THE MONSTER (1944), and later as THE BRAIN (1962). The younger brother of director Robert Siodmak, Curt was a prolific screenwriter of horror and science fiction pictures like THE WOLF MAN (1941), I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943), HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956). After THE WOLF MAN, DONOVAN’S BRIAN was Siodmak’s most famous creation, and he wrote two follow-ups: HAUSER’S MEMORY (1968) and GABRIEL’S BODY (1992). The film, for its part, inspired numerous rip-offs and spoofs that included THE CURIOUS DR. HUMPP/LA VENGANZA DEL SEXO (1969) and THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (1983).
Another important player in the DONOVAN’S BRAIN saga was Nancy Davis, a reasonably prolific actress during the late forties and early fifties who in 1952 became known as Nancy Reagan. Her husband was of course Ronald Reagan (who has another connection with DONOVAN’S BRAIN in the form of lead actor Lew Ayres, whose previous film JOHNNY BELINDA co-starred Jane Wyman, Mr. Reagan’s first wife).
In DONOVAN’S BRAIN Dr. Patrick Cory (Lew Ayres) perfects the art of keeping bodiless monkey brains alive in a fish tank. When he’s provided with the just-killed corpse of millionaire Warren Donovan, Cory decides to isolate the brain and resurrect it. Unfortunately, he also learns that Mr. Donovan was a real scumbag, and a murderer to boot—not the sort of person whose brain one would want to keep alive, but Cory soldiers on with the experiment. A breakthrough occurs when Donovan’s brain telepathically links with Cory’s, and in so doing Donovan takes over the doctor’s body and makes it do his bidding.
The brain actually grows in its tank as its powers increase. Its telepathic influence extends to a pesky photographer it compels to commit suicide. Cory, it seems, is no match for Donovan’s brain; it’s up to Cory’s wife Janice (Nancy D.), and a fortuitous lightning storm, to stop it.
Director Felix Feist (DELUGE) does as good a job as can be expected on this film, but it’s nearly impossible to take it seriously. The scenes of Donovan’s brain pulsating in its fish tank are staged and photographed quite skillfully, but that doesn’t obscure the fact that the brain looks like a wrinkled balloon. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Lew Ayres is quite hammy in the lead role, and that Nancy Davis/Reagan was never much of an actress. The best performance is delivered by Gene Evans (1922-98), a Sam Fuller regular who plays Ayres’ best friend with a gritty, hard-boiled air that stands out in an otherwise highly stagey atmosphere (in which low angles and shadows predominate).
In truth the film had little chance of ever being anything other than kitsch. I’ve always found the Siodmak novel clichéd and predictable with science that’s strictly of the weird variety (despite a great deal of misplaced praise heaped on the book by Stephen King in his 1981 tome DANSE MACABRE). This film is a largely faithful adaptation of that novel, and therein lies the problem.
Vital Statistics
DONOVAN’S BRAIN
Dowling Productions/United Artists
Director: Felix Feist
Producer: Tom Gries
Screenplay: Hugh Brooke, Felix Feist
(Based on a novel by Curt Siodmak)
Cinematography: Joseph Biroc
Editing: Herbert L. Strock
Cast: Lew Ayres, Gene Evans, Nancy Davis, Steve Brodie, Tom Powers, Lisa Howard, James Anderson, Victor Sutherland, Michael Colgan, Peter Adams, Harlan Warde, Shimen Ruskin