A living-yet-disembodied head is a theme in some horror movies:
The Thing That Could Not Die (1958) :
Re-Animator (1985) :
I’m sure that there are others, but at the moment I can’t think of any.
Can you guys come up with some? Either movies or television shows
would be fine…
Just about every episode of Futurama.
Close but no cigar:
Donovan’s Brain (1953) [with Nancy Reagan]
Is this the one where she opens the box and it slowly, quietly mouths out commands to her? There’s a head, yes, vocal cords, no. Man that scared the bejesus of me as a kid. Nightmare stuff.
Not a full head but Steve Martin had the one, The Man With Two Brains was it?
Madmen of Mandoras AKA The Saved Hitler’s Brain
The Frozen Dead
The Brain that Could Not Die, that classic of BadMovieDom, which MST3K mocked with “Jan in the Pan”
The movie was effectively remade as Frankenhooker, which featured, in addition to the chopped-off head, the Brain In A Jar that appears on the poster of The Brain that Could not Die, but didn’t appear in that actual movie.
I did a Teeming piece on Brains in Jars (albeit without the rest of the heads:
http://www.teemings.net/series_2/issue_03/brain_1.html
Be advised that Donovan’s Brain was filmed THREE TIMES!
best movie plot ever: A crazed scientist keeps the heads of Nazi war criminals alive until he can find appropriate bodies on which to attach them so he can revive the Third Reich.
Has the famous ladies head at the end of the movie sayin “bury me… bury me…”
Oh, and Mombi’s room in Return to Oz, where she can choose a head to match her mood.
The Thing With Two Heads had Ray Milland’s head attached to Rosie Grier’s body, which also had Rosie’s original head. Does that count?
Reanimator.
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
I could have sworn that Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures put one out that had the disembodied heads of three murdered boys floating around and fighting evil, but I can’t seem to find it on their website.
On the plus side, I found out that they are back in business and have put out two more Puppet Master movies.
My favorite line from that film:
Herbert West: Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.
It’s said with such dripping contempt.
Does it count as disembodied if the body’s still around? If so, then Baron Munchausen and X-men Origin: Wolverine have such heads. Also, if it’s disembodied but not technically a head, John Carpenter’s The Thing had a head which grew legs and ran away… Also, Alien3 had Bishop’s reanimated head.
“The Head” (1959)
Not a movie, but still, you should watch Señor Wences work every now and then anyway:
Shrunken Heads - Richard Elfman’s movie about a voodoo priest and shrunken animated heads that can move and talk and… it’s just… crazy.
Yes, that’s the one. It frightened me as a wee lad, as well.
There’s a scene in Red Dwarf where Kryten has a conversation with his spare heads.
One of the poster cutlines was:
Dr. Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders… and another one on his desk!
Zardoz?
Mars Attacks starts at 01:11. The disembodied heads are not the point of the movie but they are a fun part of it.