The brain of a milli*naire

Last night I watched a pretty nifty old movie from 1953, Donovan's Brain, that I had taped off the TV earlier in the day. It involved a doctor who keeps a dead milli*naire's brain alive, and starts to communicate telepathically with the brain. The doctor is eventually taken over by the brain and takes on the traits of the dead milli*naire, who it turns out was a despicable sort bent on taking over control of the financial world. The film was played really straight, with none of the cheezy qualities usually associated with 1950's sci-fi movies. The doctor's assistant, hailed as a brilliant surgeon, is an unrepentant drunkard who disappears to go on binges - "i've got 11 bottles left in that case I bought, so I won't see you for a few days..." I found this interesting, as you couldn't have a character like that in a film nowadays unless he was to see the errors of this ways or get into a car accident by the end if the story. The female lead was played by Nancy Davis, now known as Nancy Reagan. Her performance was even more impressive than her appearance on the very special "Just Say No" episode of Diff'rent Strokes. Okay, I admit it, I never actually saw that episode - but I hear it was great, and got all of the nation's kids to quit doing drugs.

This was the type of film I was hoping to catch on Halloween. I had to work that day, and it was incredibly busy, so I wanted nothing more than to go home and catch an old horror or science fiction film on the tube. I was disappointed to see that very few channels were even acknowledging Halloween. AMC, which the previous year had devoted the entire month of October to spooky movies, only had repeated screenings of Scream 2 scheduled - ugh, hardly a classic. I’m not sure why nobody had scary movies scheduled, but my conclusion is that everyone was too freaked out about the election that was happening in a few days to think about Halloween.