Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 5.0 | 7/32 | Anniversary Film 6/10 | Decades 5/6 | 50s
London, 1840s Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff) is a surgeon by day who volunteers at a hospital in London’s Seven Dials slum. He has one aim: to make surgery painless. He experiments with nitrous oxide as an anesthetic.
In one surgery, a patient wakes up mid-procedure, screaming in agony. To avoid another incident, he works to make the anesthetic stronger, adding opium to the mix. Bolton becomes addicted to the resulting gas.
In Bolton’s addicted state, a gang of criminals, Black Ben (Francis de Wolff) and Resurrection Joe (Christopher Lee), exploit Bolton. To avoid blackmail, they force Bolton to sign forged death certificates, allowing them to kill at will and sell the bodies to the hospital.
This movie marks a proverbial passing of the torch from horror icon to horror icon. Karloff, still giving some of the best performances of his career at 70, acts alongside up-and-comer Christopher Lee, who became a household name to horror fans after his turn as Dracula in Hammer’s Horror of Dracula.
Karloff has such a tenderness that watching Ben and Joe’s exploitation is heart-wrenching.
The film is a beautiful black-and-white, creating rich shadows to interplay with the fog and lights. The movie drips in Gothic dread but pulls it into the slums and darker recesses of the city.
The movie falls into a bit of a circular routine, but at 86 minutes, it accomplishes what it needs to with a moderate pace.