The Black Sleep (1956)
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Starring Basil Rathbone, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi,
Herbert Rudley, Patricia Blair, Phyllis Stanley, Tor Johnson

Basil Rathbone stars as Dr. Joel Cadman, who is obsessed with discovering the mysteries of the human brain. His wife is in a coma due to a brain tumor, so he is determined to discover a way how to save her, even if this means through un-ethical experimental operations on live patients to find that cure. He saves a fellow doctor, Dr. Ramsey, from the gallows who was wrongly accused. He does this by use of a drug he found in India, which he calls the Black Sleep. Once taken, it makes the person appear to be dead, even to the prison’s doctor. Once another injection is given, the “dead” comes back to life. For this favor, Cadman wants the young doctor to assist him in his experiments.  But once Ramsey discovers that Cadman is experimenting on live subjects, he realizes he must find away to escape this madness.

Over the years, I never read any good reviews of this film, with them basically saying it featured a bunch of once big horror stars that were past their prime, all trying to see who could over act. So even with the cast, I never made it a top priority to find it. And there, my friends, is why you should never take in a 100% of what reviews tell you. Believe it or not, but sometimes you might not think the same way about a film as they do! So use reviews as a guide to help decide your viewing habits. But unless you trust that person’s opinion, don’t let it totally persuade you from watching something. Especially one that has a cast like this one!

While this has now been released on Blu-ray, my first viewing was from a VHS copy, which wasn’t the greatest quality, but highly watchable. So when I did get around to watching this, I will admit that some of these actors here were past their prime and some even wasted in their roles, mainly poor Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. Chaney plays a dim-witted would-be strangler and does go over the top quite a bit, it’s a shame that he couldn’t give a performance that I’m sure he still had in deep somewhere inside of him. Lugosi plays the mute butler and seems to just stumble through his performance. Sad, really to see such a great star, having trouble with such a minor role. He passed away a couple of months after this movie was released.

But on the flip-side of these “has-been actors”, John Carradine plays Borg, plays a bearded old man shouting biblical verses, when he’s not yelling “KILL! KILL! KILL!” Even though he has a minor role, he really performed like he was back on the stage performing Shakespeare for the Queen. Tor Johnson also is in the cast, first as the police, but after Rathbone gets a hold of him, he’s once again a white-eyed zombie figured stumbling about. Rathbone is the real star here who, while it was already reported hating these types of films, he seemed to give it is all here. He plays a wonderful deviant doctor who will do anything to achieve his goals. Great stuff.

Plus one thing that was rather shocking was the gore here, especially for an old black and white film from the ’50s, were some of the brain surgery sequences that must have had the audiences really squirming back then. Add in some pretty interesting camera work, and you are in for a well entertaining 80+ minutes. So while this might not be the classic Universal stuff that we all know and love, I would say that it is definitely worth your time. If you love the old black and white classic horrors, then you really can’t go wrong here. No matter what others might say.