I don't know how many movies -- most of them pretty poor -- have been made about anatomical transplants causing the recipient to ape the deranged behavior of the donor. Maybe the most amusing is Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein", when Igor rushes to get the transplant from the laboratory, drops the good one, and substitutes a brain labeled A. B. Normal. ("Abnormal," get it?) There's a movie circulating on cable TV now about a baboon heart, and I remember Michael Caine got a murderous black hand a few years ago.
In this instance, Boris Karloff is a doctor convicted of a mercy killing and sentenced to hang. He's been working on an anti-death serum and, while in prison, is permitted to continue his research alongside the prison's doctor, Edward Van Sloan.
He undertakes an experiment that results in the kind of evidence that investigators refer to as "self report." That is, he injects himself with serum based on tinkering with the blood of a murderer. Well, let's not laugh too hard. That's how the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman discovered LSD.
The problem is that the serum works in the sense that it regresses the ancient Doctor Karloff to the age of about forty, but since the original blood sample was drawn from a murderer, the desire to kill has also been transferred. You can always tell when one of his irrational impulses are coming on because he rubs the back of his neck. Before he collapses, Karloff is able to strangle Van Sloan in private. The murder is blamed on someone else and Karloff is released from prison for his contribution to medical research.
Now he's out in the open, back in society, and he wants to experiment on his close old friends, including Pedro de Cordoba as a pianist whose age has slowed down the tempo of his Chopin. De Cordoba sees Karloff alone and agrees to the injection but Karloff kills him instead.
And so on.
This seems to be regarded as a horror film by some. I don't know why. It's more of a drama. Karloff gives a very sympathetic performance. He's particularly endearing as the ancient practitioner, bent and kyphotic, who is convicted and sentenced to death for putting an old acquaintance out of his intractable pain after months of treating him.
Evelyn Keyes doesn't have much to do, but what little she does is critical.
There's little violence, no blood, and nothing supernatural. It's a relatively quiet movie about a man who finds that, now and then, he can't help himself. Doctor Jeykll had the same problem, didn't he? It wouldn't be surprising if the writers hadn't begun their story with the kernel of Stevenson's in mind.
In this instance, Boris Karloff is a doctor convicted of a mercy killing and sentenced to hang. He's been working on an anti-death serum and, while in prison, is permitted to continue his research alongside the prison's doctor, Edward Van Sloan.
He undertakes an experiment that results in the kind of evidence that investigators refer to as "self report." That is, he injects himself with serum based on tinkering with the blood of a murderer. Well, let's not laugh too hard. That's how the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman discovered LSD.
The problem is that the serum works in the sense that it regresses the ancient Doctor Karloff to the age of about forty, but since the original blood sample was drawn from a murderer, the desire to kill has also been transferred. You can always tell when one of his irrational impulses are coming on because he rubs the back of his neck. Before he collapses, Karloff is able to strangle Van Sloan in private. The murder is blamed on someone else and Karloff is released from prison for his contribution to medical research.
Now he's out in the open, back in society, and he wants to experiment on his close old friends, including Pedro de Cordoba as a pianist whose age has slowed down the tempo of his Chopin. De Cordoba sees Karloff alone and agrees to the injection but Karloff kills him instead.
And so on.
This seems to be regarded as a horror film by some. I don't know why. It's more of a drama. Karloff gives a very sympathetic performance. He's particularly endearing as the ancient practitioner, bent and kyphotic, who is convicted and sentenced to death for putting an old acquaintance out of his intractable pain after months of treating him.
Evelyn Keyes doesn't have much to do, but what little she does is critical.
There's little violence, no blood, and nothing supernatural. It's a relatively quiet movie about a man who finds that, now and then, he can't help himself. Doctor Jeykll had the same problem, didn't he? It wouldn't be surprising if the writers hadn't begun their story with the kernel of Stevenson's in mind.