an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Most here have commented on the Sci-Fi aspects, but I wanted to focus on what seems to be an element of Business Fiction underlying the Sci-Fi (the science and experimentation being perhaps a way to cover another theme that some might want not to hear).The antagonist is a ruthless businessman whose brain is preserved...or more importantly, his mind. This mind lives on and infects others to do its will. The businessmen does not want to be bound by the rules of Government, taxation or even normal morality, it merely wants to conquer, possess and benefit itself. Some of you may be familiar with the work of Napoleon Hill and his book "Think and Grow Rich" which posits that business empires are the work of forming a Mastermind between people to accomplish and build great corporations.Wow. And the year is 1953? Can you imagine if someone had made a plain spoken film about such things? I wondered if Donovan (who flies in small planes a lot) is based maybe on Howard Hughes?Then there is the doctor. He is driven to perform his highly irregular experiments. He seems driven, but also reckless. He hustles his obviously inebriated friend into the operating room! He gets him to perform illegal and unregulated experiments on humans! This all goes on in the California mountains, away from the eye of the law (Nancy Reagan's future husband would be proud!) Law Enforcement are mere tax collectors, looking for their cut.We have the professional class, serving the business class and inflicting pain on the "little people". The Press, represented by a two-bit hustler named Herbie Yocum are no more than a bunch of blackmailing ambulance chasing paparazzi. Bankers, who are supposed to safeguard money, are more concerned with losing a big account than with giving money away to a potential fraud. And everyone else, hotel clerks, and so on, are bullied or cajoled by money. (Oddly, the one solid citizen is a taxi driver, who can't be persuaded by Donovan's money to ruin his livelihood for a short term payday.)Donovan's partners, confronted with the absurdity of their boss now inhabiting the body of someone else, pause for just a minute, then, seeing dollar signs, nod their heads and move on with the deal making. The Horror here is not a pulsating growing brain, but the giant Mastermind manipulating, and perhaps corrupting, all of America.

A doctor tries to keep a brain alive after the body dies, but the brain is too powerful and soon commands the doctor around. With the deceased man's mob connections, life is soon troublesome for the brilliant doc.Starring Nancy Davis (the future Nancy Reagan) and written by Curt Siodmak, who had written many sci-fi and horror films (most notably "The Wolf Man")... this came from his original novel of the same name.Although not the original film version of this story (that would be "The Lady and the Monster" in 1944) it went on to influence a great many other films and television shows, from "Star Trek" to Stephen King's "It". (The "Star Trek" influence is on the episode "Spock's Brain", though it should be noted that a character in this film does say, "I'm a doctor, not an electrician." Bones?)

Made in an age when the science fiction film genre was dominated by giant insects and monsters from beneath the sea (not that there's anything wrong with those) "Donovan's Brain" stands out as a more understated (and under-appreciated) gem.A movie about a dead financier's brain being kept alive in a fish tank as it takes over the minds of people around it could easily become silly; in fact it would be hard for such a premise NOT to be silly (which is why Steve Martin loosely adapted the premise for his comedy "The Man with Two Brains.") But thanks to deliberate pacing and fine performances from its cast, what could have been an exercise in the ridiculous becomes instead a surprisingly effective film. The very reserved script keeps "techno-babble" to a minimum as the story unfolds, and a low budget limits most of the visual and special effects to the very basic, but rather than feeling "cheap," the film's spare quality instead tends to limit distractions from the story.In 1944's "The Lady and the Monster" (a lesser and earlier adaptation of Curt Siodmak's novel) the brain's takeovers were signaled obviously, using lighting and musical cues. But in "Donovan's Brain" you know the brain has taken control solely due to the controlled and subtle performance of Lew Ayres, who indicates a transformation in Dr. Cory by as little as a change in posture and a hardening of his expression (no such kudos for Steve Brodie as Herbie Yocum, whose inane "zombie walk" stands out in its cheesiness.) Gene Evans also did well in the movie playing Cory's assistant Dr. Frank Schratt, and future first lady Nancy Davis turns in a serviceable, if somewhat wooden, performance as Cory's steadfast wife."Donovan's Brain" will not be anyone's favorite movie; coming out in a year which also saw the release of classics like "The War of the Worlds," "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," "It Came From Outer Space" and "Invasion from Mars," it's not even anyone's favorite sci-fi movie of 1953. But although it's not considered a classic, this small film far overcomes its B-movie title. It's better than it sounds, and well worth a look.

This is a film for sci-fi fans who are able to put up with some outdated effects and technology, not for people who like "so bad it's good" films. The film is not campy at all, and is handled very straight and serious. Good thing too, because it does have a lot of disturbing elements.Dr. Cory (Lew Ayres) and his wife (Nancy Davis, later Reagan) are engaged in an experiment in preserving living animal brains when fortune puts an irresistible opportunity in his path -- a private plane crashes and he is able to harvest one passenger's brain after his body expires and before the brain dies. Unfortunately for him the brain happens to belong to Donovan, a Hearst-esquire multi-millionaire with a really bad attitude and a lot of mental prowess. The brain soon learns to communicate telepathically with the doctor and eventually begins to control him, even inspiring Cory to begin wearing the dark suits and smoking the cigars that were trademarks of Donovan's extravagant lifestyle. The brain also begins to take control back of his financial empire and to scheme for a permanent house for itself, seeking to control the international financial world with his new mental powers and his old financial cunning.It's a bizarre but very interesting and effective premise, from Curt Siodmak's (The Wolf Man) novel. The directing is only average as far as actors are concerned but it is well enough handled in the terror sequences, such as when the brain sets out to kill one investigative journalist who gets too close to the truth by "driving" him to suicide, literally. Ayres is good as well as Davis, and all the actors treat the material with respect and add a level of dignity to the film that other "living brain" films lack. There's also a very interesting parallel between Dr. Cory's tendency to enable the alcohol addiction of his assistant (Gene Evans) and his wife and the assistant's enabling of his increasingly strange behavior with regards to Donovan's brain. Good solid 50s sci-fi without the laughs, for those who are interested.