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Sorry, this movie sucks

Best movie ever!

Absolutely Fantastic

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Dr. Thomas Bolton fights for the use of anesthetic in surgery and uses himself as a guinea pig but soon finds himself addicted.After the success of "The Haunted Strangler", producer Richard Gordon looked at making a follow up with Boris Karloff. At one stage a color remake of Dracula was discussed as was an adaptation of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Eventually producer John Scott discovered a screenplay by Jean Scott Rogers based on the early days of anesthesia, originally called Doctor from Seven Dials.From what I can gather, the film was put on hold for a few years between shooting and release, and ultimately made a very small profit. This is unfortunate, given the casting of Karloff and Lee, but there is no denying that this film is somewhat inferior to "Haunted Strangler". The fact it was marketed as terrifying seems a bit odd and false... it has some horror elements, but is definitely not scary in any sense.

A near-forgotten film, consigned to the depths of history due to the fact it's in black and white and is low budget. If there ever had to be a film that was worth seeking out, this is it, not least for Karloff's brilliant and winning performance as a drug addict. The title makes it sound like some lurid chiller, but in fact it's more akin to a melodrama, with horror elements added in. If you've ever seen THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, you'll find the setting and characters in this film very similar, from the devious criminals and cut-throats to the doctors who turn a blind eye to the cadavers they receive on their operating tables.Modern audiences might find this a bit taxing, mainly because there is very little action or suspense; the film is like a character study of Karloff's Dr Bolton, showing that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Karloff is so good and moving in this film that I found it difficult to watch, his portrayal of drug addiction is really spot on, and true to life, I'm sure he researched the role carefully. Karloff here is more sympathetic than Cushing in the above film, because he doesn't knowingly consort with thieves and murderers, but instead is blackmailed by them into helping. For much of the film Karloff is beset by health problems; he's always on the receiving end of trouble, and this makes us feel very sorry for his character. I actually think this is the best acting performance of Karloff's career.He's surrounded by an exceptional British cast, nearly every face on screen is a famous actor or actress. I'm happy to report that all of the acting in this film is of a high standard, think of the actors and actresses in Hammer films and you'll be there. Christopher Lee plays a very human monster, Resurrection Joe, and it's one of his meanest, cruellest and most frightening films, because it's a man who's doing the murdering, not a monster. He also always sports a very realistic cockney accent. Francis Matthews also pops up as Karloff's son and assistant, and it's almost exactly the same role he played in THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, strangely enough. A youthful-looking Nigel Green is a police inspector, obviously gearing up for later roles like Nayland Smith in THE FACE OF FU MANCHU.The film is at it's best when we see glimpses inside Karloff's drugged mind, where he is continually taunted by the failure of his work to discover an effective anaesthetic, "knives and pain are one and the same" type dialogue fills his head. He also hears patients screaming, and sees blood running. Although Lee has a small role in this film, there is a wonderful finale where he attacks Karloff and gets a jar of vitriol thrown in his face, eating the skin and eyes like acid. Plus a man climbing up a rooftop and collapsing, breaking his body when he hits the ground. Don't be fooled by the title, CORRIDORS OF BLOOD is drama, not horror, but it's a very good psychological insight into a dedicated scientist's mind and his slow degradation and collapse.

This was Karloff's second film for Director Robert Day in 1958, the other being Grip Of The Strangler. That movie ain't bad but this is certainly the better offering of the two.Boris Karloff is excellent as Dr. Thomas Bolton, operating with great speed to minimise pain for those under the surgeon's knife in the London of 1840. Convinced that chemical inhalation can separate agony from the knife, dedicated Boris uses himself as a test subject - and whoops, is that tincture of opium being added to the mixture? It isn't long before Bolton becomes addicted to the gas, falling under the control of inn-keep Black Ben (an agreeably seedy Francis De Wolff). With Christopher Lee in tow as his side kick Resurrection Joe, they fancy they have a nice littler earner by getting Bolton to forge death certificates, and providing the corpus delicti to the local hospital for a nice fat fee.This is a film with more than a hint of Oliver Twist, and a touch of Karloff's own earlier triumph The Body Snatcher. Yet it works extremely well, capturing the atmosphere of 1840s London effortlessly. Karloff is well aided by his supporting cast, including a quietly creepy Lee, Francis Matthews as Bolton's son and Adrienne Corri. M.G.M. apparently had a change of management after the film was delivered and buried the movie for four years before giving it a limited release. Shame, as this is a very good drama with some stand-out horror moments. Well worth seeing.

Well, as it turned out, I needn't have worried that I would eventually regret my purchase of the Criterion set "Monsters And Madmen" - as this film proved superior to THE HAUNTED STRANGLER (1958).Featuring literate dialogue and a more realistic story (incidentally, inspired by the book "Triumph Over Pain" on which Preston Sturges also based his THE GREAT MOMENT [1944]!), the film was made for something like twice the budget of THE HAUNTED STRANGLER and had the advantage of being shot on existing sets at the MGM-British studios. All of this allowed for an evocative and meticulous recreation of mid-19th century London, highlighting Geoffrey Faithful's cinematography and Anthony Masters' production design. The film's opening sequence creates an admirable mood of mystery and dread, which is generally sustained throughout - propelled considerably by Buxton Orr's powerful score. Besides, here we have a truly remarkable cast - in my opinion, one of the best ever assembled for a horror film: Boris Karloff, Betta St. John, Francis Matthews, Christopher Lee (impressive as the quietly-spoken black-clad resurrectionist), Francis de Wolff, Adrienne Corri, Yvonne Romain, Frank Pettingell, Finlay Currie, Basil Dignam and Nigel Green.While the film has some thematic points of reference with the Jekyll & Hyde story (already dealt with in THE HAUNTED STRANGLER!), Karloff's mad doctor cycle over at Columbia during the early 40s (though all of these had contemporary settings), as well as THE BODY SNATCHER (1945), it manages to hold its own perfectly well - and, as such, succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls of cinematic convention into which THE HAUNTED STRANGLER falls (rather than physically turn into a monster, here Karloff becomes addicted to chloroform). The film has been much criticized for its supposed gore, but it's really quite tame (perhaps it's the intensity of the operation scenes that does the trick, suggesting a lot more than it actually shows); I know the present version is slightly incomplete, but even the few seconds of deleted footage found among the supplements isn't all that graphic! Even so, I really liked the way in which slow motion is utilized for the climax when acid is thrown into a character's face.The accompanying Audio Commentary is just as entertaining as all the Tom Weaver/Richard Gordon tracks I've heard: most fascinating here is the discussion centering around the film's chequered history - CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (by the way, though also known as DOCTOR FROM SEVEN DIALS, it was never shown under that title) was released in the U.S. as part of a double-bill with the low-brow Italian horror WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY (1961), which I watched a few months back (on the other hand, THE HAUNTED STRANGLER was paired with another Gordon production, the maligned but quite effective sci-fi FIEND WITHOUT A FACE [1958], also available as a "Special Edition" from Criterion). Just as informative are the separate interviews featuring director Day and co-star Francis Matthews (he hates his performance and, amusingly, implores the audience not to watch the film merely for his sake!) and the audio-only career overview with starlet Yvonne Romain (I was surprised to learn that she's half-Maltese and, apart from enjoying her recollections of the various distinguished leading men throughout her career, I was especially glad that she mentioned the ironic fact that Oliver Reed - with whom she appeared four times in film and TV - died in Malta).Finally, I didn't generally mind the fact that both this and THE HAUNTED STRANGLER were presented full-frame rather than being slightly matted so as to duplicate their theatrical exhibition - but there was quite a bit of overscan during the credit sequence of CORRIDORS OF BLOOD...