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Review
by
B. Lindsey
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6
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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I
like to think of prolific European actor Howard
Vernon as Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre all rolled
into one. With his sinister features and intense,
bulging eyes he never fails to make an impression,
even as a supporting player. In the early Jess
Franco film The Awful Dr.
Orlof he really gets to strut his stuff
as the title villain —
a mad doctor who murders women to procure skin
grafts for his disfigured daughter.
The
story takes place in France just before World
War I, somewhere in the Franco-German border region.
(Strasbourg, perhaps?) The police are baffled
by the disappearances of five women, each of whom
vanished after leaving a cabaret. Bloodstains
and signs of struggle in some of the cases clearly
indicate foul play. Witnesses give contradictory
accounts of strange men glimpsed at or near the
scene; one is described as a middle-aged man dressed
in elegant formal wear, the other a bizarre figure
with the face of a corpse and the stiff, zombie-like
gait of a somnambulist. The city's most esteemed
detective, Inspector Tanner (Conrado San Martin),
is assigned to crack the case and bring those
responsible to justice. He vows to resign from
the police force should he fail.
The 'awful' Dr. Orlof isn't too worried about
being caught. He selects each victim for her epidermal
qualities, then supervises as his hideous blind
servant Morpho (Ricardo Valle) does the dirty
work. The corpses are then transported to Orlof's
gloomy castle across the river. Here he surgically
removes their flesh to restore the beauty of his
daughter, Melissa, whose face was burned in a
lab fire. But again and again his hopes are dashed
as each operation ends in failure. Undeterred,
Orlof decides that only the skin of living donors
will solve the problem. Plans are made to kidnap
women and bring them to the castle alive, using
their skin as needed and leaving them to die in
the dungeon when no longer useful. The doctor
is particularly keen to get his hands on one potential
victim —
a beautiful woman, first spotted outside a favorite
nightclub, who bears a striking resemblance to
Melissa prior to her accident. He's unaware that
his next target is in fact Inspector Tanner's
fiancée, Wanda Bronsky (Diana Lorys), a plucky,
adventurous ballerina who's gone undercover as
a barhopping floozy to smoke out the killer. Problem
is, even her detective boyfriend doesn't know
she's taken such a brave initiative. Once in Orlof's
insidious clutches, Wanda is spirited away to
his castle of horrors for the next operation...
Contrived
and melodramatic, The
Awful Dr. Orlof nevertheless
succeeds as a moody thriller. This is chiefly
due to Franco's direction and the casting of Vernon
in the lead role. The atmospheric black and white
photography lends many scenes the air of Universal's
classic horror films of the 1930s and '40s —
an impression dispelled only by brief moments
of nudity (one such sequence is very clumsily
inserted, using an obvious body double) and the
offbeat, dissonant score. Orlof's monstrous henchman
Morpho, with his scarred death mask of a face
and blank, staring eyes, is genuinely chilling,
vaguely reminiscent of Christopher Lee's creature
in Curse of Frankenstein.
Since Morpho is blind he's given directions via
the tapping of his master's cane, guiding him
on his murderous nocturnal sojourns as a stern
dance instructor would admonish a pupil. Vernon,
of course, completely steals every scene he's
in. He's superbly creepy as the mad doctor, as
when buttering up a gold digging nightclub singer
for a fate she can't possibly imagine. "I'm
fascinated by your skin," he croons lovingly
while caressing the doomed woman's face. "It's
perfect. So soft and fresh... so very smooth."
His Orlof is one of the more memorable horror
film villains I've come across in some time, a
nice throwback to the Lugosi/Karloff era.
Now
that I've dispensed with the praise I'd be remiss
not to warn readers about the film's deficits.
Were it not for Vernon, the Morpho character and
Franco's fine use of the gothic aesthetic, The
Awful Dr. Orlof would
have been long forgotten. The police procedural
elements are boring and downright dumb. Inspector
Tanner is pretty dense for one reputed to be such
a great detective —
were it not for an unbelievably prescient vagrant
providing important clues and suggestions, he'd
never have solved the case. In actuality, his
girlfriend Wanda is the movie's real hero. A lot
of the expository dialog (in the English version,
anyway) is particularly clumsy. Yet despite these
glaring faults I had a good time with The
Awful Dr. Orlof.
It's got a great Bad Guy and all the gothic trappings
down pat. At a lean 83 minutes it chugs steadily
along without the dull bits (i.e., just about
any scene featuring Tanner) becoming too obtrusive.
And being a film from the early period of Franco's
career, it actually has a plot with a beginning,
middle, and end. Eurohorror enthusiasts should
definitely seek this one out.
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the Image DVD is utterly bare bones —
not even a trailer —
the transfer looks remarkably good. The black and
white cinematography is quite crisp in most scenes
and there's very little print damage to report.
Audio is somewhat more problematic as the English
language track sounds slightly muffled; dialog is
readily understandable, however. (An optional French
language track is provided which has much cleaner
trebles, but also some noticeable distortion. Unfortunately
no English subtitles are provided for non-French
speakers.) The disc's only extra are some brief
but comprehensive liner notes by Video Watchdog
editor Tim Lucas.
12/20/02 |
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