Tuesday, October 15, 2013

31 Days of Horror: Mad Love (1935)


One of my favorites, Mad Love features Peter Lorre at his creepiest in his first American film role. Lorre plays Dr. Gogol, a surgeon obsessed with an actress who's married to famed pianist Stephen Orlac. When Gogol transplants a murderer's hands onto Orlac after his have been mangled in a train accident, Gogol uses this to try to drive Orlac mad in order to have Orlac's wife. After seeing this film, Charlie Chaplin called Peter Lorre "the screen's greatest living actor", and he certainly gives a mesmerizing performance as the brilliant but isolated and obsessed surgeon, particularly near the end when his madness has taken over and he believes he is close to achieving his goals.


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