Perfectly adorable

Instant Favorite.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Laid it on REAL thick about how good the prof was--repeated again and again very stilted Marguerite to marry older saintI love old horror films, so the fact I disliked "Condemned to Live" so much really says a lot about the movie. After all, I should have loved it with its plot about a fiend draining the blood from innocents. But the writing and direction were so sluggish, it felt more like I was watching a community theater production instead of a movie.The story begins with a prologue about some folks stuck on a hellish island with nasty natives and vampire bats. Soon the film skips ahead and folks are back home. There you learn that Professor Kristan (Ralph Morgan) is a saintly man, as folks repeat this about 800 times...just to make sure the audience knows. But it turns out the saintly Professor is struggling with inner demons....as well as overly melodramatic acting! The lines are delivered poorly and the dialog itself is clumsy and unnatural. These, combined with sluggish direction, make watching this film a real chore. Dull beyond belief and a film that simply should have been much, much better.

To begin with, I acquired this only a couple of hours before I watched it; I was in no particular hurry to check it out but, knowing I had the somewhat similar DEVIL BAT'S DAUGHTER (1946) on the schedule anyway, I opted to go with this one beforehand since, of course, it came first. Not having been exactly impressed by the director's other, more popular genre work (namely THE MONSTER WALKS {1932} and THE VAMPIRE BAT {1933} which, again, this resembles quite a bit), I hardly expected the film under review to change matters; while presenting a novel (if silly) spin on the vampire theme, the approach is so stodgy as to defeat its purpose! Here, in fact, we have a man (Ralph Morgan, who would return to the genre with a couple of somewhat better efforts i.e. NIGHT MONSTER {1942} and the recently-viewed THE MONSTER MAKER {1944}) who transforms – a' la Jekyll & Hyde and complete with inhuman slurping sounds – into a bloodsucker (actually preceding in this regard the 1957 THE VAMPIRE by more than two decades!) because his mother was bitten by a vampire bat during pregnancy. The irony is that, being an eminent doctor, the community looks up to him after every new attack (he is himself unaware of his nightly depredations which occur during periodic blackout spells – hilariously and repeatedly described as "swooning" to the point that the film has been disparagingly described by some as CONDEMNED TO LIVE aka I SWOONED!) As usual, he is about to marry a much-younger girl that is loved by another man, who is most vociferous about the fact that the fiend is human as opposed to supernatural.Incidentally, what triggers Morgan off is complete darkness(!?), so that he has the townsfolk keep a candle burning at all times of the night…but, when he begins to feel the blackout coming during a visit to his girl, she unwisely turns out the lights one by one (which sends him off in a fury every time!). Eventually, a family friend of Morgan's comes along and he realizes that the doc is unsettled by his condition and, suspecting the truth, asks him to release the girl until he is cured. In the meantime, the attacks continue – with Morgan's devoted hunchback (future comic Mischa Auer who was also in THE MONSTER WALKS) always lurking behind to save his master from being apprehended as well as finding out about his true nature, even if this means that Auer is himself fingered as the vampire on more than one occasion! Just as THE VAMPIRE BAT was filmed on standing sets from James Whale's much-superior THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932; with which it had even shared leading man Melvyn Douglas), this one uses leftover scenery from that same genre master's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) and, it seems to me, even some from his FRANKENSTEIN (1931), not that these are adopted in any imaginative way given CONDEMNED TO LIVE's relentlessly talky approach! In the end, Morgan bows out not by the traditional stake through the heart but by simply leaping, of his own free will, from a cliff…followed in quick succession by Auer himself (apparently, the latter saw no point in living if he cannot be with his beloved master – make of that what you will!). The film, then, is at least watchable for trying to be different but, ultimately, it emerges as nothing more than a curious footnote in the history of the (sub)genre.

"A small European village is the site of a series of horrible murders, thought to be the result of some vicious animal attacks. When the local doctor begins to look into the deaths, he discovers the victims were really attacked by some type of vampire-like creature. The doctor is also startled to find the he may be responsible for the deaths, due to a condition he acquired when his mother was attacked by a creature while pregnant with him," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.No need to wonder about the vampire's identity; it's given away during the first attack. Although the film goes to dullsville with the idea, it is intriguing to think about a plot involving the offspring of a pregnant female vampire victim. Instead of interesting, "Condemned to Live" bores. As does a "love triangle" involving older doctor Ralph Morgan (as Paul Kristan), fresh-faced fiancée Maxine Doyle (as Marguerite), and more age appropriate young Russell Gleason (as David). Ms. Doyle seems unrehearsed.*** Condemned to Live (1935) Frank Strayer ~ Ralph Morgan, Pedro de Cordoba, Russell Gleason

Ralph Morgan plays a kind-hearted doctor, known throughout his community for his wisdom and charity, that has a terrible secret he does not even know. It seems when he was born he was marked by a vampire bat....and now in his middle age the terrible strain of over-work has caused his affliction to surface. He passes out whenever total darkness envelops him and turns into a hideous monster that rips the throats of the townsfolk. This is a pretty good, ole creaky film from Invincible Films(?). It is a low-budget thriller to be sure, but has a lot of heart behind it and is quite a satisfying story. Ralph Morgan, brother of the Wizard of Oz'z Frank Morgan gives an interesting performance. He is adequate as a man torn apart with this terrible malady as he calls it. The rest of the cast is pretty good too with Mischa Auer standing out as a hunchback and Pedro de Cordoba excelling as a friendly doctor. What I really liked about the film was its rather blatant symbolism about the light and the darkness and how each brings out a different persona..