Watch The Man Who Turned to Stone For Free

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Victor Jory and Ann Doran were fine actors, although they both appeared in some pretty low-grade stuff over the years. However, when William Hudson and Tina Carver are in the cast, you can count on lots of unintentional laughs.Dr. Murdock (Jory) and Mrs. Ford (Doran) are among the creepy administrators of a girls' reformatory. There have been quite a few "suicides" at the institution lately, so heroic state psychologist Dr. Rogers (Hudson) is called in to investigate. What he uncovers is an ongoing cycle of rejuvenation of the old guys who run the place (most of them are around 200 years old), and of course the bodies of young women are needed for the process to continue. (Funny how no one ever needs young male bodies…but whatever.) The end of the movie has Dr. Rogers saving his new girlfriend Carol Adams (Charlotte Austin) while the evil reformatory staff perish in a fire.Hudson is actually pretty good, and it is unusual to see him as a good guy. Jory and Doran are rather restrained (maybe they're embarrassed) but they both deliver good performances. However, it's always fun to watch Tina Carver (here she plays a reformatory inmate), because…well, no one can scream quite like she does. The movie's premise isn't really that original, and the sets are pretty cheap (the inmates' life forces are sucked out while they're immersed in a stainless steel tank) but the film has a certain weird charm to it. It's not a standard 1950s horror flick by any measure. I rather liked it, and it's just offbeat enough to hold your attention.

More of a horror movie set in a "girl's home" than a science fiction movie, with definite exploitation elements, "Man" seems to be built around the scenes where "Eric" grabs the young women and carries them off to the upstairs lab to be tied up, gagged, and drained of their "bioenergies".You'd think a movie with several scenes like that would be cheaply thrilling and maybe a guilty pleasure, but you'd be wrong. The movie is mostly too too dull to keep any interest. The "girls" all seem to be in their late 20's and 30s (I know, it's really hard to get teenagers to look and act believably for extended lengths of movie time) and a couple of them are OK, but none of them are there for any reason but to be kidnapped and victimized.There's one nicely underplayed scene where the scientist/torturers decide withhold the bioelectric treatments from one of their number for reasons that aren't completely clear. The actor playing the dying scientist manages a dignified and believable farewell and you can see how interesting the film might have been if the director and screenwriter had the wherewithal to explore the group dynamics and interplay of a group of 200+ year old bioelectric vampires.To top it off, the hero "wins" because one of the scientists accidentally drops a candle into a box of rags while changing the fuses or something and within seconds the whole building is engulfed. Stupidest. Villains. Ever.Victor Jory is decent in this - you can see even here why the man could continue to get work in films over the years.Not good, not all that bad, "Man Who Turned To Stone" is just...there. If you get a chance to see it, it'll be OK and you won't hate it. But I doubt you'll remember much of it the day after.

This 1957 movie from Columbia has an interesting premise...several scientists, who are over 200 years old, are running a girl's "reform school" so they can obtain energy from the young women to sustain their unnaturally long lives.This is a typical low budget 1950's picture...cheap sets and no big name actors. William Hudson, most famous for playing the cheating husband in the class sci-fi thriller, "Attack of the 50 ft Woman", portrays Dr. Jess Rogers, who has been sent to the reform school to investigate several mysterious deaths of young women at the school. Charlotte Austin plays Carol Adams, an idealistic social worker at the school who starts to suspect foul play when so many healthy young woman suddenly die of "heart failure". Several of the "girls" at the school look like they are being played by actresses who are way too long in the tooth to be teenagers or young woman. Despite this fact, the movie is interesting in it's premise. Victor Jory portrays the sinister head of the reformatory, Dr. Murdock. He is responsible for the "experiments" that end up with the murder of the girls at the school. When the 200 year old scientists are ready for a transfusion they start to turn to stone, hence the title of the movie. The make-up used to show the scientists turning to stone is not at all scary, actually it's laughable.I liked this movie and thought it was fun. It's definitely not academy award winning material, but if you enjoy "b" movies from the 1950's you should enjoy this one.

I purchased a Goodtimes Video of this film in 1989 for $8.99. The jacket promo includes a statement claiming, "Weird scientists murder young girls to prolong life." Ah well, it turns out the jacket is far more exciting than the film. Young inmates of a women's minimum security prison continue to die of "heart failure." This becomes a little too obvious and the handsome young corrections psychiatrist, William Hudson as Dr. Rogers, is called in to investigate. The good doctor finds out that Dr. Murdock (Victory Jory) and the rest of the prison staff are all over 200 years old and must renew themselves from time to time with new life energy. It has been determined that young females are the best sources of this new energy, thus Murdock and his confederates have placed themselves in charge of a women's prison. All ends happily, however, after Dr. Rogers saves his lady love, the kind-hearted social worker Carol, played by Charlotte Austin, from Murdock's murderous clutches. Films such as this must be judged in context to it's genre, the time that it was filmed in (1957), and budget, which in this case it is obvious the budget was very modest. The sets are mediocre, the film is somewhat grainy and production values iffy at best and that is being kind. In short, this is another 1950's era horror / sci-fi B-film which could have been done much better in a different time and with greater financing. Not even the presence of that fine character actor Victor Jory, (a fine player for many years who never received the acclaim he deserved), could lift this one very high, but even with its limitations it is enjoyable to fans of this type of film. Today, the setting and story plot would tempt a director to include nudity and perhaps soft core porno scenes, which would change the tone of the story dramatically and this would be a shame, because the story itself is pretty good. Of course, I am prejudiced. Anything that has to do with time travel interests me greatly and immortality is, to me, a form of time travel. This one is of interest to fans of this type of film only, but don't let that stop you from catching it on late night TV if you can. If nothing else, it is an excellent example of the lesser B films of the era, an era far more interesting to serious students of film than most of the general public today realizes.