The Sixth Night of Halloween

 

ON THE SIXTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I watched Donovan’s Brain (1953). This was kind of like a feature-length episode of the original Outer Limits. Actually, I know there was at least one episode with this same premise, and it was better done.

At least the Mad Scientist this time is an actual scientist, though. Dr. Cory wants to keep brains alive outside of the body. His experiments to this end are all conducted in a lab put together in his own home, cut off from any academic institution. It’s suggested he does this because his experiments are unorthodox or forbidden by mainstream science. Of course, it just so happens that a mortally wounded man is brought to the lab, and his life can only be saved by turning him into a self-aware brain in a vat.

So, Dr. Cory is in the classic Victor Frankenstein mold of a brilliant adept of the most advanced sciences, who is driven to change the world for the better through innovation upon the natural order, but who is forced to work outside the system, in isolation, in defiance of ethics and laws, due to the particular practices involved in his work being shunned as fruitless or dangerous or both. His well-intentioned but overweening ambition then results in tragedy when the very act that vindicates his experiment at the same time proves its danger.