Mad Love (1935)

Mad Love (1935)

Directed by Karl Freund

Screenplay by P. J. Wolfson and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Les mains d’Orlac by Maurice Renard

Runtime: 1 hr, 8 minutes

 

In film, and most likely any medium, there is a fine line between scary and funny.  Given poor execution in any department, a scene or character that is meant to instill terror in the audience instead brings them to floor in stitches.  Perhaps the actor or the writing is too hammy, or the setup is too unrealistic for the viewer to accept.  Rarely, however, does the very concept of the work inspire that undesired reaction.  Such is the case with the only Karl Freund-directed film and Peter Lorre’s American debut, Mad Love.

Lorre plays Dr. Gogol, a brilliant Paris-based surgeon.  Gogol is obsessed with one Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), an actress at Le Théâtre des Horreurs.  Meeting her after a performance, however, he discovers that Yvonne plans to retire from the stage and head to England with her concert pianist husband, Stephen (Colin Clive).  This sends what is clearly an unstable man over the edge, and he’ll do anything to get Yvonne to be his.  Gogol is more than ready to strike at a chance to ruin Stephen’s life.

This is where Mad Love jumps over the believability cliff and into the ravine.  Following a train accident which smashes Stephen’s hands, Yvonne takes her husband to Gogol for surgery.  Gogol has to amputate, but then attaches the hands of the recently executed knife thrower Rollo (Edward Brophy).  This not only prevents Stephen from playing piano as well as he did before, but also makes him a knife thrower.  Gogol then just uses the power of suggestion to convince Stephen that he murdered his father.

Yeah, there’s no way that I’m taking that plot seriously.  “Yeah, right” is my consistent, sole reaction for most of the film.  Yet the film plays it perfectly straight throughout, as if the whole hands plot is inherently terrifying, rather than simply being ridiculous.  The mood of the film is always eerie with nary a moment of genuine levity that this sort of premise requires.  This does give the story some humor value, but even then it only stretches so far before it becomes a mere head scratcher.

That’s not to say that the film itself is poor quality, even though most of it is.  Stephen, despite going through all this trauma—the crash, the surgery, the realization he now sucks at piano—never shows all that much emotion, and when he does it’s too upbeat to be believable.  Yvonne is a bit better, but no matter who she’s acting with she never really stands out.  And then there’s the comic relief character, a journalist played by Ted Healy.  To put it bluntly, I laughed more at a car horn which lasted for a second than at the totality of Healy’s performance.

In the cast, the only saving grace is Lorre.  When he first appears on screen, it seems possible that Mad Love might be legitimately scary.  From the complete baldness to the lack of blinking to his Hungarian accent, Lorre exudes creepy as Gogol.  I would completely buy this man swiping the wax figurine of Yvonne and having conversations with it, or just trying to make Stephen miserable to get to his beloved.  He and the film still lose me the knife throwing hands plan, though.  Can’t win them all, I guess.

I will say, though, that though Mad Love is a pretty bad movie, it’s not that painful a watch.  I’m not even sure if it’s because it’s so bad, it’s good.  It may just be the absurdity of the proceedings.  It’s not just the premise—like I said, that only goes so far.  There’s the cinematography, which I hear inspired Citizen Kane but I’m not seeing it  At one point, Gogol’s silhouette is cast on the wall, and it’s so gargantuan that it makes me think that a vulture is about to attack.  Clearly going for scary, but that’s just hilarious.

And that’s not even getting into the strange behavior of Gogol’s maid (May Beatty), the unconvincing manner in which Stephen’s new found knife throwing talents are shown, or how blasé Stephen sounds when he gets arrested for murder.  Hell, if Freund had taken this premise and played it for laughs, it could have been an effective spoof of mad scientist/doctor movies.  That’s obviously not what he did, however, and the result is movie which is rarely frightening and only intermittently funny.  Not a winning formula, that.

So can I recommend even an ironic viewing of Mad Love?  Not really, considering that it only gets truly humorous, as opposed to strange, on occasion.  I can certainly see how having crazy hands attached could make for some psychological drama, but not when part of a crazy scheme to win over an actress.  I guess you could say that this was filmed in all seriousness is a bit frightening, but suffice to say that as is, Mad Love does not make for a good horror movie, or for that matter, an exceptionally “so bad, it’s good” one, either.