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Simply Perfect

i must have seen a different film!!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This well intentioned horror drama tries to go down the dark streets of the human mind, and in trying to become the type of thriller made Val Lewton a cult figure fails miserably in this unfortunate misfire. Beloved scientist and doctor George Macready is dying but suddenly given a second chance at life, and starts to behave very strangely. It seems to have started with an encounter with the strange Rose Hobart, a meeting set up by his worried wife (Jeanne Bates). It's up to Macready's colleague (Jim Bannon) to get an answer, and it doesn't seem to be one that Bannon will care to try to comprehend.While there are some extremely tense moments, the script drags out the mystery and the intrigue a little bit too far. The photography is moody, semi film noir in nature, but too bizarre and convoluted to really work overall. It's a noble experiment to try something different, and the performances are intriguing. But this seems to be trying to be as profound, spooky and mysterious as "The Seventh Victim", but ends up being a dark misfire, a pretentious piece of art that strived too hard and didn't quite meets its goal.

Despite its lurid title, Soul of a Monster is much less of a horror film and much more of a religious allegory. A saintly doctor, George Winston, nationally famous for his humanitarianism is dying and no power on earth is able to save him.Because of this his wife Ann has lost her faith in God. She calls on the dark powers to save him. A rather severe and intimidating women appears out of nowhere to save his life. Her entrance into the story is the eeriest and most mysterious part of the film. She arrives at the doctors deathbed with the claim that she can help him and takes over the situation . The woman calls herself Lilyan Gregg and she does bring about Winston's recovery. The doctor has recovered but he is a changed man. He seems to have lost his humanity. He no longer has any empathy with those whom he formerly cared for.He is now cold, aloft and unsympathetic. He comes to reject his wife and friends for a relationship with Lilyan.His wife Ann regrets her plea to the dark side to save her husbands from death for now she must battle Lilyan for his very soul.Anybody who watches Soul of a Monster to see a horror film is really going to be disappointed. It's a cleverly done fantasy film but hardly horrific.Rose Hobart was a talented actress and here she is quite effective as the Devils messenger. She is someone that seems to invite confrontation and she can intimidate just about anybody.Lilyan is the movies most watchable character.George Macready made a career out of playing egotistical, unscrupulous, slightly feminine men who played at being mentally superior but are actually weak and cowardly. I buy him as the soulless George Winston. It's him as the noble and saintly Dr Winston that I just can't picture.Soul of a Monster has a bit of the Devil and Daniel Webster and Cat People and even a bit of Frankenstein written into it's story.As I said Rose Hobart stands out and its her performance that makes the picture worth viewing. Erik Rolf plays Fred Stevens a family friend who is the conscience of the film. He is the Christian voice in the movie. Rolf always reminded me of Nils Asther. Soul of a Monster is really trying to sermonize about keeping faith in God and not losing morality in times of stress. It's not a terrible film but it ain't great either.

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.

Try as it might, this Columbia programmer just can't quite get over the hump. Even with George Macready and Rose Hobart heading the cast, there are too few scares and far, far too much walking. Rose walks (and almost gets hit by a car). George walks with a knife in his hand. Rose walks some more. Bland co-lead Jim Bannon even goes for a stroll. In fact, there's so much shoe leather burned in this film that I humbly offer Sole of a Monster as a more suitable title. It's all shot well by Burnett Guffey, and there IS a modicum of Lewton-style atmosphere, but the stifling straitjacket of Christian spirituality (not to mention the cheat ending) ultimately undoes whatever good work went into this production. An intriguing but ultimately disappointing failure.