The Black Sleep

Rathbone is sociopathic scientist willing to do anything through brain surgery and experimentation to recover his wife, lost to coma, with Rudley framed by him to help discover the answer to that mystery. With Lugosi as a mute servant and Chaney as a mute brute, both victims of Rathbone's experiments.

Entertaining mad scientist flick directed by Reginald Le Borg, notable for its cast of horror vets. Basil Rathbone plays the lead character, a surgeon whose beautiful young wife is suffering from a brain tumor. To save her he will need to operate but first he wants to get plenty of practice in on the unsuspecting locals. Rathbone's assistant, played by Herbert Rudley, has some objections. Bela Lugosi (not looking well) plays a mute servant in his last completed film role. A waste of his talents but at least this movie isn't as bad as his Ed Wood dreck. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a lunatic brute, as he often did late in his career. Just like Bela, he has no lines. Also appearing are John Carradine, Akim Tamiroff, Tor Johnson, and Patricia Blair. No one in this has a good part except for Rathbone and Rudley. Still, it's a good B movie of the kind that was so prominent in the '30s and '40s but had died out by this point. Too bad they couldn't get Boris Karloff, though.

I have just watched The Black Sleep for the first time and I found it rather enjoyable despite the low budget and reading several bad reviews about it A mad doctor, Cadmund, experiments on the brains of his subjects to help to remove a brain tumor which his wife is suffering from. To help him, he brings back to life a criminal who has just been hanged for murder. He uses a drug known as The Black Sleep to do these experiments with. Unfortunately, the subjects he had experimented on earlier are now mutants and are released from their underground cellar and they kill Cadmund at the end. This movie is worth having in a collection just for the horror stars in it: Basil Rathbone as Cadmund, Bela Lugosi (in one of his last films) as a mute butler, Lon Chaney Jr. also as a mute, John Carradine as a mutant, Akim Tamiroff and Tor Johnson (Plan 9 From Outer Space). I found this movie great fun to watch. Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

There is a good deal of talking in this movie, which probably puts a lot of people off. It's also not as cut and dry as most movies, the "bad" guy makes a good case for his experiments, he's just too passionate about them. There's an uneasy sense of dread here; the smell of death sulks in every black and white frame. Some viewers might be bored, confused, disturbed by the morbidity of it all. But hang on to your straight jacket kids! The climax of this opus is completely deranged! It comes out of nowhere, it's incredibly disturbing and ends all too soon! Loonies! Religious nuts! Mutants! Dungeons! Exposed brain matter! A refreshingly intelligent premise and a nutso finale. My kind of movie. Good luck finding it though.