Tweet
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: March 22nd, 2015.
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Akim Tamiroff, John Carradine
Year: 1956
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Reginald LeBorg's 1956 film The Black Sleep, also known under the alternate title of Dr. Cadman's Secret, begins in 1872 when Dr. Ramsey (Herbert Rudley) is to be hanged for a murder of which he is completely innocent. His friend and colleague, Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone), administers a strange drug called The Black Sleep to Ramsey that will allow him to fake his own death and escape the hangman's noose, while Cadman will talk wise and convince the powers that be to let him take his departed friends corpse to deal with. This works and Ramsey begins to help Cadman with his research using The Black Sleep to put patients into a death like state so that they can perform brain surgery on them in the deep reaches of Cadman's creepy old castle home, which also happens to be where Cadman imprisons those who he operated on with varying degrees of success. In essence, he has a basement full of lobotomized mutants.
The reason that Cadman is so obsessed with his work is so that he can find a way to bring back his wife, Angelina (Louanna Gardner), who lies dormant in a coma and who has been that way for some time now. But Cadman will soon learn that experimenting on people's brains isn't quite so free of consequence as he would like it to be.
Notable for supporting performances from the likes of Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Tor Johnson, and Akim Tamiroff The Black Sleep may not be the most original horror film ever made but it's still a whole lot of fun. Carradine is unintentionally hilarious here, playing the part with as much camp and overzealousness as he could possibly muster, while Tor Johnson lumbers around in that way that only he could. Lugosi doesn't get as much screen time as his fan base might have hoped and his character is mute but he's good here too, while Akim Tamiroff has an unusually sleazy quality to his screen presence that works in the film's favor. Rathbone shines in the lead as the mad doctor, while Reginald LeBorg keeps the film moving at a good pace and makes the most of the creaky, creepy, castle locations.
Some nice cinematography and a good melodramatic score help things a bit, though there's an air of sadness here for some when you think that this would be the last picture Lugosi would make (he shot this after the footage for Plan 9 From Outer Space was shot and then edited into Wood's picture after Lugosi's death the year The Black Sleep was made), and he's noticeably in poor health here. That said, this is a film in which John Carradine runs around with a caveman beard and lights a maid on fire and beats people with a giant club (the screen lights up when he and Tor Johnson go nuts towards the end...) - you can't get too saddened when you've got that going on. Throw in a still surly Chaney and an awesome scene in which he goes nuts and chocks a character, and some neat 'mutant' make up effects in which human characteristics are blended with animal features and you've got a pretty great mad scientist monster movie.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Black Sleep is presented in a nice looking AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. This is a nice improvement over the previous standard definition presentation of the film that was offered up on MOD/DVD-R as part of the MGM Limited Edition Collection. Contrast looks very solid here and black levels stay strong. The whites never bloom or look too hot while detail and texture show a lot more than we've seen previously on home video and the widescreen framing looks very good. There is very little print damage here to note, the picture is very clean. There are no signs of edge enhancement, noise reduction or compression artifacts to complain about and the upgrade in picture quality this release offers is considerable.
The only audio option for the disc is a DTS-HD Mono track in English. No alternate language options or subtitles are provided. Dialogue is clean and clear and the levels are properly balanced. There aren't any issues with hiss or distortion and for an older mono dubbed mix, the audio here sounds just fine.
The main extra on the disc is a commentary track from film historians Tom Weaver and David Schecter. Weaver carries most of the weight here, talking about the different cast members he spoke to over the years and some of the crew as well. He shares some interesting stories about Lugosi and the other stars, makes some interesting observations about the sets, talks about how the film almost feels like it should have been made a decade before it was and quite a bit more. Schecter's talk focuses solely on the music used in the film but he too clearly knows what he's talking about as he sheds some light on Les Baxter's maybe/maybe not contributions to the picture.
Aside from that we get a Trailers From Hell entry for the movie with commentary from Joe Dante, an original trailer for the feature, bonus trailers for Donovan's Brain and The Magnetic Monster, static menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
The movie is a good one, lots of quirky fun thanks to an amazing cast and some solid direction. It's low budget and prone to the pitfalls of plenty of other similar monster movies, but you can't help but have a blast with this one. Kino's Blu-ray looks and sounds quite good and throws in a few decent supplements as well.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
