Fresh and Exciting

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

M notwithstanding, MAD LOVE is probably Peter Lorre at his very best: his bulging eyes and sinister whisper combine to make his ghoulish Dr. Gogol (whose obsessive patronage of the Grand Guignol theater leads in the end to disaster) very Strange- but also strangely Sympathetic. In M, his unsavory character stalked unsuspecting children; here, he moons for a beautiful woman he can never really hope to possess and it's an absolutely riveting performance- one of the finest in the history of Fright Films. Director Freund no doubt deserves a great deal of credit for what we see here, but it's Lorre at his bug-eyed best who commands center stage. An outstanding movie.

'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein' paved the way for films to go a little further into the realms of the macabre. 'Mad Love' is the child of those films in that it represents the utmost pinnacle of how far the grotesque could be taken before a conservative 30's society would say enough is enough. It is a very grim film with the blackest of humor. Like 'Dracula' and Lugosi and 'Frankenstein' and Karloff, this is the film that cemented Peter Lorre as a master of the macabre. And like those films the casting of our title monster is so quintessential.Lorre is a whole different kind of animal. He has none of the gentlemanly qualities of a Lugosi or a Karloff. You take one look at his thick bulging eyes and you want to scream pervert. While the whole concept of rape is pretty explicit in 'Dracula', there is an almost bizarrely romantic quality to the vampiric predatory lust. Lorre and his Dr.Gogol leave nothing to interpretation. What is so amazing about his performance here is how Lorre seemingly keeps this character grounded in the concept of heartbreak. I don't know if I'd call his performance or character similar to the Lon Chaney films but I do once again notice the idea of rejection leading to madness. With a title like 'Mad Love' you expect extremities and to be fair there are but they do not come from Lorre's performance. The whole subplot with the "Hands of Orlac" is not what draws one into the film and I think with not much finagling you could almost underplay the story entirely. This entire story is about a descent into madness and sexual lust. You cannot take Lorre's natural oddness and quirks at face value at the beginning of the film because by the end he becomes a beast.Karl Freund in his last horror film shows why he is rightly considered a legend of the genre. The most striking thing about Mad Love are it's macabre visuals. Like Lugosi or Karloff in 'Dracula' and 'The Mummy' Freund knows just how to film his menace. The camera has never had a more 'mad' love affection than it has with Lorre. One of the most frightening and weird visuals ever put on film is Freund's slow reveal of Lorre masquerading as the dead killer Rollo. We as an audience know it is a conceit and yet just the thrill of the scene and the build up is incredible. Cinematographer Gregg Toland went on to helm 'Citizen Kane' and one can see the DNA here.Aside from Lorre and Freund though this film has a great cast. Our old friend Colin Clive is back as the tortured Stephen Orlac who finds himself the guinea pig for this horrific experiment. I find it hard seeing Clive in anything but 'Frankenstein' but he is good and is versatile. While Henry Frankenstein embraced his insanity Orlac tries desperately to keep his. He's wonderful in the film. Even more deserving of praise though is Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac. Yvonne is a quintessential role in making this film work. Since Lorre is so ruthless in his lust Drake has to be strong enough to stand up to Lorre. She does. In a genre where the female roles were often victims this is a stand out role and performance. We genuinely fear for Drake. The last exchange between the doctor and the object of his affection is outstandingly tense.'Mad Love' is a fine piece of horror. In many ways it was ahead of it's time in it's grim subject matter. The fan of the golden age of horror films will find an example of the genre at it's peak with characters and performances that exhibit the best of macabre movie magic

Brilliant surgeon Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) is in love with actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake). Yvonne is married to pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive). When Stephen's hands are crushed in a train accident, Yvonne turns to Dr. Gogol to save them. Gogol performs a hand transplant, giving Stephen the hands of recently executed knife-thrower Rollo (Edward Brophy). Over time it becomes apparent Stephen's ability to play the piano is gone but now, whenever he's angry, he finds he has a knife-throwing ability he never had before.I believe this is the first sound adaptation of the Hands of Orlac story. It's certainly the best version of that story I've seen on film. It's an often copied story, usually without credit. Every movie you've seen that features a transplanted body part that belonged to a murderer is derivative of The Hands of Orlac. Variations of it are still being made today. But none has surpassed this one. This is one of the best horror movies of the 1930s and, surprisingly, it wasn't made by Universal. Peter Lorre is superb as the obsessive insane Gogol. Colin Clive and Frances Drake are both good, though more typical performances of the genre than the extraordinary performance of Lorre. Edward Brophy is great fun in his brief screen time as Rollo. Much is made of Ted Healey's unwanted comic relief as a nosy reporter but I don't feel he intrudes on the story much so it didn't bother me. Director Karl Freund does an amazing job, just as he did when he directed The Mummy. Freund was better known as a cinematographer. He shot such legendary films as Metropolis, Dracula, and The Good Earth. He had a wonderful eye and all of the films he worked on looked great.. This would be the last film Freund directed before returning full-time to cinematography. Check this one out if you haven't already. Mad Love is a must-see for classic horror fans.

In this reasonably good 1935 film, Peter Lorre is Dr. Gogol, a genius at surgery who is driven irretrievably mad by his love for Frances Drake. Drake is an actress at the Grand Guignol Theater in Paris. The shows at the theater consist of nothing more than scenes of staged torture featuring different characters, much like today's unending stream of slasher movies, appealing to the most noble parts of human nature.Drake, however, is married to a renowned pianist, Colin Clive as Stephen Orlac. You'll remember Colin Clive when you see him. You'll probably recall his most famous lines: "Get BECK! Oh, get BECK! -- It's ALIVE!" Gogol attends every show that features Frances Drake, hopeless as his love is. It's a kind of self torture. She, on the other hand, has no idea that his passion for her extends beyond her role as an actress.Then Clive has his marvelous hands crushed in a train accident. (Good scene.) Drake importunes Lorre to help, so Lorre takes the hands of a recently guillotines murderer who was a circus knife thrower, and attaches them to the stumps of Clive's wrists. The hands seem to take on a life of their own, with Clive still unable to play the piano well but now a skilled thrower of knives.This is a familiar theme, probably started by Maurice Renard's novel, "The Hands of Orlac" (1920). It was not only made into a silent film in 1924 but remade again in 1962. And on top of that there have been myriad variations on the theme. Michael Caine had trouble with his hand in the innovatively titled "The Hand." I don't think we need to go on to list all the other transplant horror movies. There are enough to make me think twice about having a hair transplant. Brain transplants alone would run to thousands of pages. And then there's Frankenstein's monster with his enormous Schwanz in Mel Brooks' movie, "Young Dr. Frankenstein." As Dr. Gogol -- where do they get these names? -- as Dr. Gogol, Peter Lorre is really rather creepy. He keeps popping up with queerly apt quotes. "Each man kills the things he loves," from Oscar Wilde, and later some shtick from "Othello". His face is chubby and pasty, his head is shaved, his eyeballs pop, he plays mournful music on the organ, and as he descends into madness he begins to look and act drunk instead of just insane. His lower lip droops and he seems to drool. There are a couple of horrific scenes that will scare the kids, the most likely being the one in which Lorre poses as the guillotined man and rips open his collar to show the neck brace and metal struts that keep his head attached to his body. His wild and manic cackle is spooky.I thought it was well done, as these things go. It was part of a series of shocking monster and horror flicks that came out of Hollywood and elsewhere in the 1930s. After 1935, they declined rapidly in quality and lost their surprise value. There was a brief revival of horror flicks, half spoofs of themselves, in the early 60s, and then about 20 years ago a new cycle began that has yet to exhaust itself. For the most part they're pretty revolting gore fests, not nearly as scary as some of the better done, practically antiseptic movies like "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby."