SGM Month of Halloween Horror Movie of Oct. 14

"Mad Love" (1935)

Themes: Mad science; body horror; obsessive love
Synopsis (from the back of the box): Play murder for me! Surgeon Peter Lorre replaces a famed pianist's hands with the hands of a killer.

Ah, "The Hands of Orlac!" Based on a French novel, "Mad Love" is in fact the third (at the time) ushering in of the horror subgenre of body transplant horror, that a body part that belongs to an evil person can retain this evil and spread it to an innocent victim if transplanted after death. And, actually, this story bears some merit, preceding as it did more contemporary research into physiological phenomena such as muscle memory.

Peter Lorre plays Dr. Gogol, the quintessential mad scientist; it's this role that established the stereotype that Lorre would become, as portrayed in Warner Brother's cartoons (as Gossamer's handler) and much later in the character of Ren Hoek. This film also adds the unusual sub-plot ripped right from Pygmalion, the myth of a sculptor who falls in love with his statue. It seems a lot for one film to handle, but the film packs in enough Grand Guignol subtexts and bizarre imagery (dig Lorre wearing a body brace that ostensibly is designed to keep a decapitated victim's head connected to his body!) that makes all these bizarre happenings flow together into a cohesive story that is pretty entertaining.

This film moved the mad scientist archetype from second banana supporting villain to major, first-string antagonist that set the stage for the upcoming science fiction horror that all but wiped out the Gothic terror films in the early 1940s.

Rating: 3 count