Customer Reviews

Mad Love [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
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Mad Love is an interesting and well made little picture. You've got Karl Freund,Peter Lorre and Greg Toland all working near their peaks and that alone is something to behold. Another beautiful black and white film, some may want to hold off and see if it hits DVD but VHS is not evil-not like Peter Lorre...Fans of classic cinema (and Citizen Kane in particular as this film influenced a young Welles-he sought out Toland as a collaborator based on his work on this and other films) and the almost always entertaining Lorre should pick this up. Not well known but well worth discovering.

Dr. Gogol is a somewhat bizarre, but brilliant surgeon who is obsessed with the beautiful actress Yvonne. He goes night after night to see her perform in a Grand Guignol-style performance as a victim of sadistic torture. When the theatre is closing for the season, he is upset to hear that Yvonne is not returning as she is married and will be joining her husband. He is able to purchase a wax likeness of her from the theatre and this he keeps and fantasizes over, speaking to it as if it were alive. Yvonne's husband, the famed pianist Stephen Orlac is injured in a train accident and his hands are crushed. Yvonne, wary of Dr. Gogol's attentions, but knowing of his reputation as a surgeon, asks him to help her husband. Dr. Gogol, anxious to do anything to keep the object of his desire close by, agrees. He grafts the hands of the recently guillotined knife-throwing murderer Rollo onto Stephen Orlac. After recovering, Stephen finds that he cannot play the paino as he used to, but his hands do have the ability to wield a kinfe with deadly accuracy, and they seem to have a mind of their own! With bills for therapies piling up, Yvonne and Stephen's life seems to be falling apart. Dr. Gogol sees this as a chance to make Yvonne his own. Peter Lorre gives a stellar turn in this role. We are truly able to see his character's descent into madness. Director Karl Freund's expressionist style makes every frame interesting to look at. Some of the comic relief is a bit over the top, especially the batty maid, but overall a great film, well worth a look.

Fine horror gem starring Peter Lorre doing what he does best: scaring the daylights out of viewers by going over the deep end into madness. He plays a doctor who is in love with Frances Drake, who in turn is married to concert pianist Colin Clive. When Clive loses his hands in a train accident, Lorre gives him new ones - that once belonged to a murderer who specialized in knife-throwing (an idea copied later most memorably in BLACK FRIDAY). Lorre schemes to get rid of Clive by killing Clive's stepfather with a knife and then getting Clive to believe he was the one who did it. It comes close to working, but Drake interferes and when Lorre attempts to strangle her, Clive saves his wife by, yep, tossing a knife right into Lorre. Lorre is perfect in his role, and when he finally snaps and goes into that hysterical laughter - wow! But Drake and Clive are excellent, too, and everything about the production, from the script to the editing, is done with care. Definitely worth a watch.

The macabre Dr. Gorgol (Peter Lorre) is so madly infatuated with the beautiful wife (Frances Drake) of a concert pianist (Colin Clive) that he conceives a diabolical plan...That there is something twisted behind the shaven head and dead face is indicated by an opening sequence in which, enraptured, Lorre watches a Grand Guignol stage performance in which Drake plays a faithless wife put to torture. Lorre later turns her into a waxwork image to be worshipped, serenaded on the piano, and read poetry to in the privacy of his own weird home...This is by far the best of many versions and variants of Maurice Renard's novel LES MAINS d'ORLAC. Karl Freund, the master cinematographer who won himself an AA for THE GOOD EARTH in 1938, is, however, no more at ease direction-wise than he was making THE MUMMY three years prior. However, the film boasts an astounding performance from Lorre in his American picture debut.

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)

While Karl Freund is one of classic cinema's greatest cinematographers (he's best known today, probably, for being the guy placing the cameras for I Love Lucy), he did get behind the camera and direct every now and again. Ten times, to be exact, of which only one remains well-known today-- the Boris Karloff hit The Mummy. Mad Love, Freund's final film as a director, is to be blunt nowhere near the level of The Mummy, but it certainly has its moments.

Adapted from Maurice Renard's potboiler The Hands of Orlac, Mad Love is the story of Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) and his all-consuming love for stage actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake). Yvonne's husband, Stephen (Colin Clive), is a famous concert pianist. Gogol, however, is unaware Stephen exists, and thinking Yvonne single, he pursues her until she mentions she's married. Not a good thing where an obsession is concerned. Gogol resigns himself to a life of loneliness, contenting himself with a wax figure of Yvonne that had stood in the theater, until a train wreck mangles Stephen's hands and Yvonne calls on Gogol to save him. Other doctors have said Stephen's hands were beyond saving, but Gogol, who attended the execution of the murderer Rollo (Edward Brophy) that morning, has a sudden flash of inspiration: a hand transplant. It's a success, with one exception: Stephen's new hands have kept the proclivities of their former owner.

This is fun stuff indeed, though the script could have used a bit of polishing (the climactic scene is unintentionally hysterical more than once); Lorre and Drake are two great tastes that taste great together, and Clive (The Bride of Frankenstein) makes a great milksop. (In both looks and-- at least in this movie-- temperament, he seems to have been the Bill Pullman of the thirties.) There is excellent comic relief to be had in the form of Gogol's constantly-drunk housekeeper and the dogged reporter who woos her as a way to find out what Gogol did with Rollo's body after it was shipped to him. It is, in most respects, a fine film, and one well worth watching. Just get ready to cringe when Peter Lorre starts that last monologue. ***

Brilliant surgeon Dr Gogol is in `mad love' with actress Yvonne Orlac. Night after night he watches her performance in a Grand Guignol production where he almost passes out with ecstasy during her torture scenes. Clearly insane, Gogol's final decent into madness is exacerbated by the news that Yvonne is retiring from acting to tour with her genius pianist husband Stephen.

Gogol's evenings are spent lamenting his loss with a waxwork replica of the actress; regaling it with declarations of love and piano sonatas.
When Stephen Orlacs hands are severed in a train smash, Yvonne goes to Gogol for help. Gogol acquires the hands of a recently executed maniac and grafts them on to the stricken musician with questionable success. What Stephen now lacks in musical dexterity is more than made up for by a murderous rage and deadly knife throwing abilities. After a row with his father, Stephen is blamed for murdering him. Gogol seizes his chance to frame Stephen and vent his `mad love'.

An almost forgotten classic, Mad Love is a creaky expressionist chiller based on Maurice Renard's `Les Main D'Orlac' (The Hands of Orlac) and was directed by shadow-miester Karl Freund who later went on to direct The Mummy and lens `greatest movie ever made `Citizen Kane.

Mad Love is a fairytale of the darkest timbre, but its main thrust about creepy limb transplants is totally derailed by Lorre's murderously `lost in love' Dr Gogol. With his baby smooth skin and bulging eyes Gogol is a bizarre arrangement of ping pong balls and reptilian charm. His whining whispery voice seems to slither around you until it finds a suitable opening in your clothing - or worse - your skin! Mad Love was Lorre's first major role in the states having established himself in Germany with the Fritz Lang classic `M'. Here Lorre turns in an early example of his unhinged outsider shtick - and although he acts everybody else off the screen - it's no great stretch when you consider that here he's playing opposite the likes of `Frankenstein's Colin Clive who, as always, displayed more ham than Fray Bentos.

Mad Love is a Tim Burton film before there was Tim Burton. The scene in which Gogol disguises himself as the resurrected killer in surgical braces and artificial limbs to convince Stephen that he's responsible for his father's murder is as jarring an image of abject revulsion ever committed to celluloid - the diabolical offspring of Humpty Dumpty and Edward Scissor Hands.

During a film course I attended in Brighton a few years ago legendary film maker Jack Cardiff related the tale of Peter Lorre's `dying' on the set of a film he was directing and then suddenly coming back to life and asking for directions for the nearest bar whilst being given his last rites. Lorre's life was a litany of persecution, (a Hungarian Jew - he had to flee the holocaust) typecasting (forever tagged as the worlds greatest `Peter Lorre type' actor) and morphine addiction. Whatever the source of Lorre's demons, it can't ever be said that he didn't make those demons work for him. Mad Love alone is testament to that.

Adrian Stranik

I thought this movie was good overall. Peter Lorre gave a convincing portrayal of a man rejected and unloved. It was a bit slow-paced in spots but overall, I enjoyed it.

Has anyone noted that Orson Well's Kane is Peter Lorre's Dr. Gogol incarnate? Perhaps it is due to the fact that Gregg Toland was the cinematographer for both...and perhaps other technicians as well, such as make up artists, went in tandem with Toland reworking the set and design magic of Mad Love for Wells. The likeness is unmistakable, particularly in Kane's destruction of his second wife's bedroom after she leaves him. Wells' genius was for finding and using the great talent that preceded him and the German cinematographer- director Karl Freund was cinematographer on F.W. Murnau's 'The Last Laugh' the personification of German expressionism that has as much to do with self-destruction and pride before the fall as Citizen Kane did 25 years later

This movie is a strange one. Some of the acting is bad, the premise of the story is pretty far out in left field, and Ted Healy's attempt at comedy is irritating. But this is quibbling. The whole movie is no more or no less than a stellar performance by Peter Lorre. His mad Dr. Gogol is one of the most over the top performances ever seen.

Yes, this movie is a strange one, but for a Lorre fan, a must-see! Recommended!

peter the genius, was so scary in this strange movie...a must for collectors!