Mad Love (1935)

Film: Mad Love (1935)
Stars: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Edward Brophy
Director: Karl Freund
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horror with something of a cheat, as I technically saw Mad Love last month, rather than this month, but it fits so well into our theme that I'm going to include this movie along with the other classic horror films of the Golden Age of Hollywood, as it stars an actor I don't believe we'll have time for otherwise who was pivotal to this period: Peter Lorre.  Known best to modern audiences for his supporting roles in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca (and for being an easy target for cartoon parody in Looney Tunes or The Simpsons), Lorre enjoyed a decade's run as a leading actor in B-Grade horror movies like Mad Love, an MGM picture that performed poorly at the Box Office but has had something of a cult following since then.  I recently caught this as part of a Lorre retrospective (am I the only person who goes to retrospectives mostly so I can start sentences "I recently caught this as part of a retrospective"?), and was enthralled at how well acted the film is (at least by Lorre), and that it was creepier than I would have anticipated from a film of its era.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film itself is short, sweet, and doesn't have much time for B-plot.  Lorre's Dr. Gogol is madly in love with an actress named Yvonne Orlac (Drake), who is the leading actress in a Grand Guignol-style show where she is seen by Dr. Gogol every single night.  She's quitting the show, though, to get married to her husband Stephen Orlac (Clive), a famous pianist.  Orlac is on a train headed to Paris when he meets the famous murderer Rollo (Brophy), a knife thrower who is headed to death row.  After a train accident, Stephen's hands are destroyed, and Yvonne begs Dr. Gogol to fix his hands, which he does with Rollo's hands after he is executed.  Orlac begins to feel like he is being possessed by Rollo's hands, now unable to play the piano but suddenly a skilled knife-fighter, and is worried that the hands are making him kill.  His distant father is found dead, and Orlac worries that he is possessed by Rollo's need to kill, but in fact it's psychosomatic, and in fact Dr. Gogol is gaslighting Orlac, as he is the mad murderer.  The ending of the film finds Gogol trying to kill Yvonne after she reveals that she'll never be his, and Gogol then being killed by Orlac by a tossed knife, with a happy ending (or as happy as a clearly cursed pair of hands can be) for Orlac and Yvonne.

The film is as ridiculous as that plot suggests, but that doesn't mean it can't be a good movie.  I was asked by my date to the picture whether or not I cared when people laugh at scenes that once were supposed to be terrifying (as happened several times during the screening), and I said "you can't control these things, but I wasn't a fan" as it's not particularly funny, even at its most ludicrous.  That works best in a scene where a maniacal Lorre, dressed as a deformed Rollo, tries to convince Orlac that Rollo is still alive and has a head transplant onto another body.  It's a petrifying scene, and one where I genuinely didn't put together right away that it was Lorre who was in disguise.

Easily the best moments of the film involve the horror actor, giddily eating up the scenery and making the most of his nasty, villainous doctor.  Lorre is too good of an actor to phone this in, and he makes his obsession mesmerizing, in part almost making everyone else look terrible by comparison (Frances Drake is good too, though the less said of Colin Clive the better).  That great scene where he dresses as Rollo is one of the best I've seen in a 1930's horror movie, and worth the price of a ticket in general.  If you can get past the thick line readings and occasionally ridiculous plot, this is well worth your time and a gem I'm glad I uncovered (...when I was recently at a retrospective).

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula