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Mad Love (1935) N
A clumsy horror melodrama that doesn't handle its subject very gracefully.
A beautiful actress is married to a concert pianist / composer. When her husband gets into an accident the actress asks a favor from her biggest fan, mentally unstable but gifted surgeon Dr. Gogol. Gogol gives the lady a hand and fixes the husband with some spare parts from an executed murderer.
I think the story is outright stupid and for such a short film there is plenty of filler material too (like the drunken housekeeper). Gogol looks mad as a bat from the beginning and I wonder who trusts such a man with patients. The autonomous hands feel pretty far fetched for a horror that doesn't draw its terrors from the supernatural but from science (and why would Rollo's hands want to kill in any case - didn't they say his sentence was for one murder only so he clearly wasn't a serial killer or anything).
I remember really liking Lorre in M but he's overdoing the crazy with Gogol (maybe Freund wanted that but still). Otherwise acting is quite mediocre at best and terribly wooden at worst. There are visually good scenes (especially the ending in Gogol's apartment) but they're not enough to draw attention away from other flaws.
I much prefer hands possessed by demons (like Demonoid) over this pseudo-scientific mangling of muscle memory. Silly concept, flawed writing and forgettable characters result in quite lackluster movie experience.
A clumsy horror melodrama that doesn't handle its subject very gracefully.
A beautiful actress is married to a concert pianist / composer. When her husband gets into an accident the actress asks a favor from her biggest fan, mentally unstable but gifted surgeon Dr. Gogol. Gogol gives the lady a hand and fixes the husband with some spare parts from an executed murderer.
I think the story is outright stupid and for such a short film there is plenty of filler material too (like the drunken housekeeper). Gogol looks mad as a bat from the beginning and I wonder who trusts such a man with patients. The autonomous hands feel pretty far fetched for a horror that doesn't draw its terrors from the supernatural but from science (and why would Rollo's hands want to kill in any case - didn't they say his sentence was for one murder only so he clearly wasn't a serial killer or anything).
I remember really liking Lorre in M but he's overdoing the crazy with Gogol (maybe Freund wanted that but still). Otherwise acting is quite mediocre at best and terribly wooden at worst. There are visually good scenes (especially the ending in Gogol's apartment) but they're not enough to draw attention away from other flaws.
I much prefer hands possessed by demons (like Demonoid) over this pseudo-scientific mangling of muscle memory. Silly concept, flawed writing and forgettable characters result in quite lackluster movie experience.