O Esquife do Morto-Vivo

People sometimes complain that horror movies nowadays lack originality, and that most of them are uninspired and blatant imitations of just a few half-decent films. Well, that may be correct, but it's definitely not a phenomenon that only popped up now. Shameless rip-offs always existed, and here's an example of the late 50s/early 60s to prove it! Sidney J. Furie's "Dr. Blood's Coffin" clearly got made to cash in on the tremendous success of Hammer Studio's first real horror production; - "The Curse of Frankenstein". It must be said that, in spite of the obvious budget restrictions, "Dr. Blood's Coffin" is a grisly little flick with reasonably gruesome make-up effects and quite a bit of violence. On the other hand, "The Curse of Frankenstein" was gruesome as well and, unlike "Dr. Blood's Coffin", it also had a solid screenplay, terrific scenery, great acting and a continuously tense atmosphere. Furie's film is rather incompetent and overall boring, to be honest. The film opens with a feeble attempt to keep the identity of the mad doctor secret, but after ten minutes or so, they realize that idea was just dumb and unfeasible. Dr. Blood Jr. (with a name like that, you're just destined to make a career in mad science) gets kicked out of the medical university in Vienna for conducting unorthodox experiments on deceased patients, although he personally prefers to think of them as revolutionary and courageous. He returns to his hometown in Cornwall, where he settles at his father's small doctor's practice and flirts with the widowed nurse. His main objective naturally remains to complete his research, and thus Peter Blood paralyzes unsuspecting villagers with curare and subsequently drags them to an improvised laboratory in an abandoned mineshaft. Personally, I don't think it's very smart to kidnap people in a town with a population of barely 50 people and I also don't really see the added value of killing people only to revive them via primitive heart transplants. But hey, the idea is sick enough for a horror film and there are filthy make-up effects, especially during the utterly grotesque climax with a revived zombie husband! The rest of the film is unfortunately dull and endlessly repetitive. One of Blood's victims escapes, for example, and the poor sucker spends the next fifteen minutes crawling over the ground. Dr. Blood himself whines so much about his cowardly fellow scientists that he forgets to seduce the nurse! "Dr. Blood's Coffin" is passable Brit-horror from the early sixties, only worth seeking out in case you already watched all the much more superior Hammer, Amicus and Tigon productions from the same era/decade.

Set in a "Cornish village" (high marks for any film of this vintage set in "a cornish village" - those cornish villages went through the mill in the middle years of horror), Dr. Blood's Coffin checks in as a Frankenstein -ish offering. Got your mad scientist tinkering with humans, more lurid and atmospheric lab scenes than the graphic and in your face stuff current movie viewers are used to.

Creepy scenes. In the old days, I loved movies that gave me one creepy scene that made closing my eyes to go to sleep a challenge.

Old horse, corny now but from that impossible to resist title to the whopper denouement, one of the knighted efforts to keep horror alive when 99% of cinema thought horror undignified and unworthy. If you like Freddy, Scream and Jason, you owe a nod of thanks (though not necessarily a viewing) to films like Dr. Blood. If you're a fan of creepier things like "The Ring" and remakes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "Dawn of the Dead", you also owe a nod of thanks to films like this one. You guys, might even find the "loyalty to the cause" in a viewing of this film.

The title has more punch than the story ultimately delivers in this mild shocker, yet another variation on the old "Frankenstein" theme. Kieron Moore ("Crack in the World") stars as Dr. Peter Blood, an intense scientist determined that his experiments in extending life will be successful. Unfortunately for him, he's not very good at what he does, either getting caught in the act or leaving critical evidence in his wake.

"Doctor Blood's Coffin" is mainly noteworthy as one of the horror pictures made in England by under-rated, Canadian-born filmmaker Sidney J. Furie before he hit his stride with "The Ipcress File". The story & screenplay are the work of Nathan Juran (credited as Jerry Juran), himself a famed director of such things as "20 Million Miles to Earth". But, alas, this yarn is lacking in truly interesting features, although the tunnel settings are somewhat unusual. (Said underground tunnels, originally used as tin mines, run throughout much of the locations.)

These locations are quite picturesque, and the film does look lovely in colour, although one can't help but think that it would have had even more atmosphere had it been filmed in black & white.

The picture also offers its audience an opportunity to watch gorgeous Brit scream queen Hazel Court in a contemporary-set tale, unlike the period pieces from the 50s and 60s for which one might already know her. She's quite a formidable leading lady, obliged to scream at one point, but indignant enough that she and Moore pontificate back and forth on what constitutes the "right" thing to do. The excellent supporting cast also includes Ian Hunter as Dr. Blood Sr., Kenneth J. Warren as the police sergeant faced with baffling deaths, the colourful Gerald Lawson as local funeral director Mr. Morton, Fred Johnson as amiable miner Tregaye, and Andy Alston as one of our demented antagonists' intended victims. You have to give this guy credit for his extended, arduous escape.

Overall, this is short on suspense and originality, and spends too much time with Moore as he aggressively pursues Court (not that you can blame him, of course); this doesn't stay on track all that well. Even the finale is underwhelming.

Five out of 10.

Saw this one (again) on (Chicago's own) "Svengoolie" this weekend, and was amazed how interesting and well-done it was, considering the preposterously bizarre and grotesque underlying story. Also, how they make sympathetic, and almost get you to root for, the main character -- a guy who makes Dr. Mengele look like Hippocrates.

Meanwhile, it's striking how appealing Hazel Court is. Definitely a woman with a quality, she's developed nicely since "Devil Girl from Mars" (1953).

So, if you're up for a movie about a warped physician performing hellish experiments on (unwilling) human subjects, this is definitely the one to see. Mellow and affectionate.

Six years before the world's first human heart transplant, Dr. Blood's Coffin saw Kieron Moore star as Dr. Peter Blood, a biochemist determined to bring a man back to life by giving him a new heart. Of course, this being a horror flick, Blood is seriously deranged, his procedure requiring the donor to be still alive while the transplant takes place.

In order to carry out his plans, Blood returns to his rural home village in Cornwall (where absolutely no-one has a West Country accent), and proceeds to drug and abduct locals, taking them down to the tunnels of a nearby disused tin mine where he has set up a rudimentary operating theatre using medical supplies half-inched from the local surgery run by his unsuspecting father.

When he's not injecting victims with curare (which causes paralysis) and playing God in the mine, Peter spends his time wooing his father's curvaceous widowed nurse Linda (Hammer babe Hazel Court). As time goes on, Linda becomes suspicious of Peter, leading to a shocking climax that sees the demented doctor reanimating the nurse's decomposing husband.

While all of the above sounds like a lot of ghoulish fun, Dr. Blood's Coffin is less entertaining than it might have been, suffering from too many dialogue-heavy scenes and a lack of genuine horror, the only slightly disturbing scenes being the hasty removal of organs by a flustered Peter (he's a fast worker, completing the surgical procedure in minutes). The finale, in which Linda's mouldy husband comes back to life is incredibly silly, but easily the most enjoyable part of the film, director Sidney J. Furie finally delivering on the movie's macabre premise.