Very well executed

To me, this movie is perfection.

The Worst Film Ever

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Mad Love is an absolute superb horror film from 1935 starring Peter Lorre as Dr Gogol. In this movie Dr Gogol has an object of affection called Yvonne. However there is a difficulty for him as she is married and does not care much for Gogol at all of his affections for her. As Dr Gogol says during the movie he can conquer science but he cannot conquer love. The frustration for the latter certainly is one that shared by many people around the world. Dr Gogol's frustration in not able to conquer love served as pivotal plot piece and which drives his madness in wanting Yvonne. This all served the movie superbly right up to its denouement and this all thanks in excellent form by Peter Lorre.

In Paris, creepy bald-headed Peter Lorre (as Doctor Gogol) visits the incredibly realistic wax museum figure of beautiful scream queen Frances Drake (as Yvonne). Later, Mr. Lorre is consumed with orgasmic desire as he watches the real Ms. Drake perform on stage as a tortured victim. Backstage, the actress is flattered by the renown surgeon's admiration. But, Lorre is devastated to learn Drake will be leaving for England with pianist husband Colin Clive (as Stephen Orlac).En route, Mr. Clive's hands are wounded in a train wreck. Called in to operate, Lorre decides to amputate Clive's hands and sew on the hands of a recently decapitated murderer. Poor Clive loses his piano-playing ability, but gains other talents… The whole "hand transplant" machinations never grabbed me or aided in my suspension of disbelief; but "Mad Love" is stylish, has Karl Freund directing, and Lorre is an amazing sight for sore eyes. Also watch for the Yvonne's maid Sara Haden (as Marie), who can really hold her own.******* Mad Love (7/12/35) Karl Freund ~ Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy

Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) becomes obsessed with Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), not realizing she is married. When her husband (Colin Clive) has his pianist hands crushed, Gogol must save him... but the new hands take on a life of their own! With all due respect to the other cast and crew, this is Peter Lorre's movie, through and through. He was great in "M", but really breaks through here. As Mike Mayo says, "nothing on screen tops Lorre's eggshell-smooth bald dome, and the makeup he wears toward the end." This was Lorre's first American film and he blends in flawlessly.The imagery is also great with its stark black and white, director Karl Freund's homage to German expressionism. Although also directing "The Mummy", Freund was better known as a cinematographer and occasional producer, not preferring to direct. (He was also a communist sympathizer in pre-Nazi Germany... his wife was exterminated.) The film is beautifully shot, mixing Freund's expressionism with cinematographer Gregg Toland's own skills. Toland, of course, went on to film "Citizen Kane", and many have seen the parallels between this film and that. Also, while multiple versions of this story ("The Hands of Orlac") have been filmed, both before and after "Mad Love", this is the superior film.Much has been written and much more ought to be written, but in short, "Mad Love" is the overlooked gem of 1930s horror and really deserves a wider audience with a better examination of it and those involved.

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."