A private plane crashes on the Sussex Downs. The sole survivor, ruthless millionaire tycoon Max Holt, is rushed to the nearby research laboratory of Dr Peter Corrie (German actor Peter van Eyck) and his colleague Frank Shears (Bernard Lee).
Corrie has a theory that a dead man’s brain can be kept alive, and when Holt dies, he decides to put it to the test.
But the brain has a strange effect on him, and he finds himself writing, under a strange hypnotic compulsion, a list of four names followed by the signature of the dead man.
Holt’s troubled son, Martin (Jeremy Spenser), is as obvious a red herring as you’ll ever see, while Holt’s widow, Anna (Anne Heywood), either did or did not try to kill her husband, depending on which version you watch . . .
The British/German co-production was simultaneously filmed in English and German language versions, each with a different ending.
The production was plagued with difficulties. Van Eyck took an instant dislike to Heywood and eventually refused to be on the same set as her, and the constant rewrites left the script in tatters and the film a disjointed and sometimes hard-to-follow mess.
The film was screened in some markets as The Brain.
Anna Holt
Anne Heywood Dr Peter Corrie
Peter van Eyck Stevenson
Cecil Parker Dr Frank Shears
Bernard Lee Martin Holt
Jeremy Spenser Marion Fane
Maxine Audley Ella
Ellen Schwiers Mr Walters
Siegfried Lowitz Immerman
Hans Nielsen Furber
Jack MacGowran Dr Miller
Miles Malleson Thomas Gabler
George A. Cooper Stevenson’s Secretary
Ann Sears Mrs Gabler
Irene Richmond
Director
Freddie Francis
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But the brain has a strange effect on him, and he finds himself writing, under a strange hypnotic compulsion, a list of four names followed by the signature of the dead man.
Anna Holt
Ella
