George Sherman’s The Lady and the Monster, screened in the UK as The Lady and the Doctor, is notable today for being the first adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s 1943 novel Donovan’s Brain. It’s a book that would be adapted again twice, as Donovan’s Brain (1953), and The Brain (1962) (Orson Welles starred in a radio version for the series Suspense in 1944 and John McIntyre would do the same in 1948). This first version was from notorious penny-pinchers Republic Pictures though it looks to have been afforded a more workable budget than most of their output – or at the very least, Sherman was able to marshal his forces more effectively.

Professor Franz Mueller (Erich von Stroheim) and his assistants Patrick Cory (Richard Arlen), and his Janice Farrell (Vera Ralston) have a laboratory in an old castle in the Arizona desert where Mueller researches the human brain, believing that it can be kept alive even after the body has died and that memories and experiences can be transferred from person to another. While negotiating a love triangle (he’s in love with Janice but she’s in love with Cory), Mueller is asked to help in the investigation of a nearby plane crash by sheltering the only survivor. The man, William H. Donovan, dies and Mueller sees his chance – he and Cory remove the brain and are indeed able to keep it alive. But Donovan’s widow Chloe (Helen Vinson) turns up with her lawyer (and lover), Eugene Fulton (Sidney Blackmer), in tow and don’t believe his story that Donovan died without regaining consciousness. But he soon has other problems – Donovan’s brain develops the ability to communicate telepathically and possesses Cory, using him to investigate the crash which turns out to have been murder.

Today, it’s a familiar story but in 1944, this must have seemed fresh and not a little daring. As noted, The Lady and the Monster (it’s not clear who or what the monster bit of the title is referring to) is a far cry from the impoverished serials and westerns that were Republic’s usual stock in trade. They weren’t exactly spending the money that Universal were lashing out on their horrors – the obvious influence for the company to attempt their first genre film in almost a decade, after The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) which had also starred von Stroheim as a lobotomising villain – but it was very noticeably a step up from the norm. It afforded cinematographer John Alton, a master of film noir, the chance to do some moody lighting business and the enhanced budget even ran to a few not-terribly-good special effects shots.

Von Stroheim is marvellous as the cold-hearted Mueller, though Arlen is a rather bland leading man. Worse still, Ralston is just terrible as Farrell. The Czech former figure skater gets top billing (as Vera Hruba Ralston) and it wouldn’t be too uncharitable to suggest that she only got that because of her relationship with Republic’s studio head Herbert Yates (they married in 1952 after Yates left his wife). However she got it, it’s not deserved. She was never a great actress – two studio investors would eventually sue Yates for allegedly using company assets to promote her career and pointed out that 18 of her 20 films had been flops – and here she’s terrible. Her character is largely superfluous to the plot, but she keeps turning up, woodenly going through the motions as her co-stars stand around trying hard not to look too embarrassed by it all. It didn’t help that her grasp of English wasn’t great and that, according to Tom Weaver in his book Poverty Row Horrors, Joe Kane, who “directed 9 of Ralston’s 26 pictures… remembered that the Czech star acted out her role in The Lady and the Monster phonetically, not knowing what she was saying.” Sherman supposedly quit Republic, concerned that he’d end up having to direct her in further films.

Siodmak was never happy with any of the adaptations of his book (in this one, the book’s protagonist, Cory, is relegated to henchman and Siodmak’s assistant, Dr Schratt, is rewritten as the lead, Mueller) though he also claimed never to have actually watched any of them. Given the wholesale changes that screenwriters Dane Lussier and Frederick Kohner wrought to his original, it’s probably understandable that he wanted to give it a wide berth, but he was perhaps being a little unfair on the film. Certainly, it’s talky and von Stroheim is largely confined to his castle for much of the action (the budget wasn’t that generous) but the moody photography is impressive, even if the underlighting that differentiates Cory from Donovan-possessed-Cory is badly over-used, and Sherman keeps even the chattier moments ticking along nicely. Top marks too to Earl Crain Sr’s sound effects, the initial sound of the brain communicating being particularly creepy.

Republic would only enjoy an intermittent relationship with horror, preferring instead to stick with what they knew. Later genre films, including The Vampire’s Ghost (1945), The Catman of Paris (1946) and Valley of the Zombies (1946), were the usual threadbare concoctions and lacked any of the redeeming features of The Lady and the Monster. It’s a minor film, though perhaps the best of the Donovan’s Brain adaptations, but that extra bit of money that Yates and co had found down the back of the sofa went a long way in Sherman’s hands and even the less action-packed moments are reasonably engaging. If only poor old Vera Ralston hadn’t been promoted above her ability and they’d either cast someone competent in the role or, better still, just written it out altogether.