THE
AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962)Director: Jess Franco
Image Entertainment
THE
AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962)Jess Franco has probably directed more films than anyone alive, and if you sift through the tremendous amount of these, you'll only find a handful of really good ones. Well, the Spanish-made THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF is one of his most accomplished features, placing him and star Howard Vernon on the European horror map. Filled with gothic imagery, shadowy photography and uniform pacing, the film is much unlike most of Franco's work that followed. With Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959), the theme of a surgeon stooping to murder in order to correct a women's scarred face has become a horror staple, but this film is unique in its own right.
During the turn of the century, the mad Dr. Orlof (Vernon) desperately tries to restore his wife's beauty through skin grafts. He does this by stalking the streets of Paris, looking for pretty actresses while his servant Morpho (Ricardo Valle), a bug-eyed, blind, zombiefied creature, carries the girls off to his castle. It is there that he conducts his bizarre surgeries while the police remain baffled until the end.
This film led to a long running series of "Orlof" films (Image will be releasing some on DVD), some of them featured Vernon who played the character well into the 80s! Those of you who follow Spanish horror films will recognize two starlets who later appeared with Paul Naschy: Diana Lorys who was in HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN (1973) and Perla Cristal who was in FURY OF THE WOLFMAN (1970).
Filmed in the wake of Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and other atmospheric period black and white genre pictures, DR. ORLOFF owes a lot to the Universal horrors of the 30s and 40s but is explicitly updated for the 60s. Image has made sure to release the original French Eurocine version which includes two scenes missing from all American prints. One scene has Orlof taking a scalpel to a topless victim on the operating table; the other has Morpho raucously unveiling Diana Lory's (or at least her stand-in's) breasts as she attempts to escape.
Image's DVD looks excellent. Letterboxed at 1.66:1, they present a clean, black & white transfer with very little markings or other blemishes in the source print. Since this is the uncut French print, the credits are in French, but you can view the film in either English or French (with no subtitles). The mono sound is in very good shape. There are no extras except for the accomplished liner notes by Video Watchdog's Tim Lucus. Highly recommended. (George R. Reis)