The Soul of a Monster

Soul of a Monster, The (1944)

* (out of 4)

Forgotten horror film from Columbia about a doctor on his deathbed whose wife prays, to good or evil, that he lives. He gets better thanks to a mysterious woman but what they don't know is that this woman put the soul of a monster into the doctor's body. There's a very good reason Columbia hasn't released this sucker on any home video format and that's because it's pretty damn bad. I took me three viewings before I could watch the entire film without falling asleep. The film tries very hard to recapture the mood and feel of a Val Lewton film but it fails on all levels.

This little-seen Colombia horror film from 1944 is a pretentious, but still interesting film.

It stars George Macready, in one of his first films, as a good doctor who is on his deathbed. His wife, played by a solid Jeanne Bates, wishes at the family fireplace for any force from heaven or hell to save him as she has lost faith with her god. Her wish is instantly granted by an unseen Satan as Rose Hobart plays a sort of 'Soul Master' who coldly arrives on the scene and saves Macready. Her action, of course, has a price.

Without revealing too much, this seems to have tried to copy the Val Lewton formula, which was popular at the time. The film opens and closes with a narrative quote. The direction is adequate. There is a long "chase" scene in the middle that seems to go on forever. The two characters walk as if elderly people on prozac. It is meant to be suspenseful, but it's just too darned long to keep up the suspense.

The film has very few "horror" moments, but some nice cinematic ones. There are shadows aplenty, but the best touch is the arrival and departure of Rose Hobart's character. The film changes to a negative image and then back to positive. I hadn't seen that technique used before in a classic horror film and there were some effective dutch angles that did a good job of building the suspense.

A decent film that unfortunately is just never too interesting, it's worth viewing for hard core classic horror buffs only. 5/10

Some reviewers automatically hate on every lower budget B movie.But if you know what you're in for, a slow burning atmospheric Lewtonesque 40s creeper, you'll be delighted. Great acting from the leads, eerie camerawork and music, hypnotic dialogue interrupted by jump scares. This would have fit in perfectly with the Shock TV movie package, and would now be regarded as a classic of the "creepy" genre.

To films where the casting director is on crack and is a flaming Misogynist. There is a 19 year age gap between the husband and wife characters in this bloviated farce of a flick.

So I will not torture myself with another zero chemistry debacle made by old white men who view women and pieces of property.

Sorry, but not sorry as I grew up on these movies not realizing how unfairly women and minorities are portrayed in them. So as an African American Veteran who grew up during segregation, I have learned much over the years. As well as seen a lot of these old movies in the truthful ignorance and degradation that spews from them.

Nope, a hard pass for me.

What little reputation this film has is very mixed, so it is no surprise my own reaction proved likewise. Revolving around an intriguing concept, yet the script (by genre regular Edward Dein) is seemingly at a loss about what to do with it: an eminent and much beloved physician (George Macready) lies dying and, in desperation at the unfairness of it all, his wife (lovely Jeanne Bates – who, late in life, somehow got to appear in two David Lynch movies!) renounces God and asks the Devil for help; immediately afterwards, a mysterious woman (Rose Hobart – from the 1931 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE) turns up, restores Macready to health and basically starts running his life. While happy to see her husband get better, Bates soon notices that his personality has changed – becoming distant, aggressive and even loses interest in his work: in short, alienating everyone around him – so that she actually wishes he had died back then! All of this sends her running into the arms of Macready's best friend, Erik Rolf (looking like a cross between Glenn Ford and the young Orson Welles...or, for that matter a local film-buff friend of mine, Robert!!): his character and relationship to the couple is pretty ambiguous – he acts almost as their spiritual adviser (thus being instantly and openly averse to Hobart's machinations), yet is a constant presence even at social engagements, hardly deigning to keep the 'love triangle' situation in check! Anyway, Macready's negligence costs a colleague's life and the once-respected doctor is put on trial…only this takes us back to the very beginning, so that all that went on in the interim turns out to have been nothing more than a death-bed hallucination – the moral being that one must face up to death with dignity and resignation, apparently after having done one's bit for the good of mankind (which should have especially resonated with wartime audiences)! The film offers more than adequate atmosphere (courtesy of future double Oscar-winning cinematographer Burnett Guffey) and Hobart (with an icy demeanor and a devilish coiffure to boot) is quite good – the combination of which leads to its eeriest moment, the very first appearance of the Devil's envoy in which she is unperturbed by a car running her over and then, after following her in a tilted camera angle shot, no less, she is seen literally electrifying her surroundings! However, as I said at the start, the plot is insufficient as Macready is not seen doing much of anything after he is revived (what was the point, then?) and Hobart actually has to prod him towards committing murder (naturally because it constitutes the extremity of an evil deed)! That said, the choice of target (the 'pastor'/rival) would benefit each of them – only he flubs it and, so does the film, since this clearly Lewtonesque sequence is kept on going much longer than necessary!; consequently, the inherent suspense in having the 'sleepwalking' Macready (armed with an ice pick long before BASIC INSTINCT [1992]!!) stalk Rolf by night out on the streets is gradually diffused…particularly with the unintentionally comic off-screen effect of the sudden opening of a rising street elevator's hatch sounding like Macready had bumped into some dustbin or a mailbox around the corner! Mind you, I am glad I acquired the film also because, as it happens, this viewing actually urged me to get back to work on my unfinished review of the slightly similar but far superior ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949; which I had originally watched on my birthday back in August) – in which Macready now actually (and atypically) takes on the role of the Minister Of God who strikes fear into (and eventually brings down) the Agent Of Hell.