Crimson (AKA The Man with the Severed Head) (1976) Review
Crimson (AKA The Man with the Severed Head) (1976) Review
Crimson’s alternative title, The Man with the Severed Head, tells you more or less what you need to know about this Paul Naschy film (starring here as Paul Nash) but unfortunately it also makes it sound more fun than it actually is. You half expect a kind of mad scientist B-movie but it’s not, instead it leans heavier on the gangster and soft porn elements, creating a hybrid more confused than our lead character becomes following surgery.
During a bungled jewel heist gangster Jack Surnett (Naschy) is shot in the head. With his life-force fast fading away the other members of his gang elect to take his body to a scientist, who conveniently has been experimenting in the field of brain replacement. The gang force the doctor to perform the procedure on their buddy but there’s a snag, they need parts from another human being’s brain for the operation to work. They decide to nab the brain of their nemesis, a randy criminal by the name of The Sadist (Roberto Mauri) but things don’t exactly work out for the way they had planned.
Being a big fan of Eurocult icon Paul Naschy’s films I was left wanting with Crimson, as the main man was off-screen for much of the duration, his screen-time limited to lying inert until the climax. Instead I was left with a dull gangster flick with sporadic sex scenes that tame by latter day standards but, and although some may find the scenes titillating, they are about someone having sex against a woman’s will and therefore feel totally wrong.
Crimson is one of those films where stupid people do stupid things often irritatingly so. For example, a young woman drops her bicycle and runs into the woods to escape the leering Paul Naschy, rather than jump on the saddle of her bike and ride off. She would have got further away quicker on her bike, oh well – it’s a cue for another needless sex scene. Elsewhere there’s a rather laboured scene involving a nightclub act where two men dance around a lady that adds nothing, and a claimx that sees Naschy wander around with a towel wrapped around his head. It’s hardly the thrilling climax one would have expected, but then Crimson is not the movie one would have wanted it to be either.
