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Mad Love (1935)
Directed by Karl Freund who served as cinematographer for horror classics such as The Golem, Dracula, and Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mad Love is the epitome of the classic horror film. Freund had already made his mark in American Horror serving as the director of the legendary Universal production of The Mummy starring horror luminary Boris Karloff, but Mad Love did heighten the career of its star Peter Lorre quite a bit. Lorre was no stranger to foreign cinema, but Mad Love distinguished Lorre as an actor worth Universal acclaim. Lorre’s performance brought a new ideal antagonist for the big screen, and is still one of the creepiest damn performances I’ve ever seen. His wide eyed stare, soft voice, and strange look make his character, Dr. Gogol, menacing in a way that only Lorre could pull off.
Mad Love is the type of stuff that Halloween was built off of. It contains the macabre, the monstrous, and the direful, and tells a tale of obsession and passion with a horrific twist. For almost the entire runtime, the film builds up to a man’s breaking point. It tells the story of Dr. Gogol, who is desperate for love, yet cannot find it anywhere he turns. The story takes a disturbing turn once the audience is shown the man’s interest in death and horror. The story begins to build in horror as the man is shown becoming less and less emotionally stable. The fright kicks in when the man tries to obtain his love… by any means necessary.
Midway through, the movie borrows from numerous genres to achieve a more empathetic look, and not a very pretty one. When a pianist named Stephen Orlac loses his hands in a train wreck, his wife brings him to Dr. Gogol, who was the only doctor she knew and trusted at the time with her husband’s hands. Little does she know that she herself is the obsessive interest of Gogol, and Gogol may not be the most trustworthy guy with the job after all?
Prior to the train incident in the film, Gogol obtains a headless corpse that was recently decapitated by guillotine. The decapitated man was once a knife thrower at the circus who had murderous instincts which led to his death sentence. The film brings a bit of science fiction into the story when Gogol decides to replace the pianist’s hands with those of the knife thrower. When the pianist is able to use his hands once again, his talent for the piano is relieved, thus replaced with a murderous urge of knife throwing.
Gogol tries to put the pianist in jail at all costs. When Gogol performs the surgery on the pianist where he replaces the man’s hands for the knife throwers, he ends up keeping the pianists hands. He then goes out and commits a violent crime against the pianist’s father leaving Orlac’s fingerprints at the scene of the crime. On top of that, Gogol convinces Orlac that he killed his father by making him believe that he’s losing touch with sanity. He does this by putting on a neck harness and pretending to be the guillotined knife thrower whose head Gogol replaced. Every element of the film adds up at the end forming a horrifying climax in which Orlac’s wife ends up trapped by Gogol in Gogol’s own home.
Though it may look like Child's Play by today’s standards; the film was considered fairly disturbing in its day and was banned from numerous countries, while many other countries cut scenes of death out of the film. If looked at the right way, Mad Love can be one of the most emotionally horrifying films ever made, and the story carries much more emotional depth than a typical horror film.
Mad Love was regretfully the last directorial effort of Karl Freund, who if given a chance, could have sealed his spot as one of the most capable horror filmmakers of his day. Mad Love is often referred to as one of the greatest horror films of the 1930’s; I’ll take it a step further and say that Mad Love is one of the greatest horror films of all time.
Directed by Karl Freund who served as cinematographer for horror classics such as The Golem, Dracula, and Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mad Love is the epitome of the classic horror film. Freund had already made his mark in American Horror serving as the director of the legendary Universal production of The Mummy starring horror luminary Boris Karloff, but Mad Love did heighten the career of its star Peter Lorre quite a bit. Lorre was no stranger to foreign cinema, but Mad Love distinguished Lorre as an actor worth Universal acclaim. Lorre’s performance brought a new ideal antagonist for the big screen, and is still one of the creepiest damn performances I’ve ever seen. His wide eyed stare, soft voice, and strange look make his character, Dr. Gogol, menacing in a way that only Lorre could pull off.
Mad Love is the type of stuff that Halloween was built off of. It contains the macabre, the monstrous, and the direful, and tells a tale of obsession and passion with a horrific twist. For almost the entire runtime, the film builds up to a man’s breaking point. It tells the story of Dr. Gogol, who is desperate for love, yet cannot find it anywhere he turns. The story takes a disturbing turn once the audience is shown the man’s interest in death and horror. The story begins to build in horror as the man is shown becoming less and less emotionally stable. The fright kicks in when the man tries to obtain his love… by any means necessary.
Midway through, the movie borrows from numerous genres to achieve a more empathetic look, and not a very pretty one. When a pianist named Stephen Orlac loses his hands in a train wreck, his wife brings him to Dr. Gogol, who was the only doctor she knew and trusted at the time with her husband’s hands. Little does she know that she herself is the obsessive interest of Gogol, and Gogol may not be the most trustworthy guy with the job after all?
Prior to the train incident in the film, Gogol obtains a headless corpse that was recently decapitated by guillotine. The decapitated man was once a knife thrower at the circus who had murderous instincts which led to his death sentence. The film brings a bit of science fiction into the story when Gogol decides to replace the pianist’s hands with those of the knife thrower. When the pianist is able to use his hands once again, his talent for the piano is relieved, thus replaced with a murderous urge of knife throwing.
Gogol tries to put the pianist in jail at all costs. When Gogol performs the surgery on the pianist where he replaces the man’s hands for the knife throwers, he ends up keeping the pianists hands. He then goes out and commits a violent crime against the pianist’s father leaving Orlac’s fingerprints at the scene of the crime. On top of that, Gogol convinces Orlac that he killed his father by making him believe that he’s losing touch with sanity. He does this by putting on a neck harness and pretending to be the guillotined knife thrower whose head Gogol replaced. Every element of the film adds up at the end forming a horrifying climax in which Orlac’s wife ends up trapped by Gogol in Gogol’s own home.
Though it may look like Child's Play by today’s standards; the film was considered fairly disturbing in its day and was banned from numerous countries, while many other countries cut scenes of death out of the film. If looked at the right way, Mad Love can be one of the most emotionally horrifying films ever made, and the story carries much more emotional depth than a typical horror film.
Mad Love was regretfully the last directorial effort of Karl Freund, who if given a chance, could have sealed his spot as one of the most capable horror filmmakers of his day. Mad Love is often referred to as one of the greatest horror films of the 1930’s; I’ll take it a step further and say that Mad Love is one of the greatest horror films of all time.