The Awful Dr. Orlof: Remastered Edition (1962)

STORY: When beautiful music hall entertainers begin to disappear under mysterious circumstances, Inspector Tanner is summoned to investigate. His resourceful fiancée decides to help him by attracting the attention of the diabolical Dr. Orlof -who, with his blind henchman, Morpho, is using the skin of slain women to restore the beauty of his disfigured sister, Melissa!

PICTURE: 4/5 Image has given Jess Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orlof" a nice looking transfer at 1.66:1. The picture is sharp and blacks look good and solid, but in some scenes the blacks look a little on the gray side. I saw 3 vertical lines on the print and i did not notice any film grain. To spite a couple of flaws on the print, I think the picture looks the best the film will ever look.

SOUND: 3/5 The sound is 1.0 Mono English and French. The english track sounds good and clear, but i heard a couple of pops and the track distorts sometime when the music comes on. Overall, not a bad sounding track for a 26 year old film.

EXTRAS: 2/5 This is where the disc is a let down. You get not thing. But you do get some great liner notes from Tim Lucas.

OVERALL: 4/5 IMO, The Awful Dr. Orlof is a classic! If you like the old gothic films of Hammer, Mario Bava and Universal, then you should like The Awful Dr. Orlof. Even though this disc does not have any extras, it's still worth the buy to see this cool film.

I love this movie. Awful acting and all. There's atmosphere to spare and a morbid story that moves. A mad surgeon uses his disfigured mind-controlled "slave"---Morpho---to kidnap women to use in fiendish skin graft experiments to restore the ruined face of his beloved daughter. Set at the turn-of-the-century, his laboratory is the basement of an old castle surrounded by a moat. In this European version, there's a few [breast]shots here and there. But it's the delirium of the entire movie that keeps me going. Hysterically awful at times but so lovable as a relic of a bygone genre that I have to rate it high. The music is a cacophonus clanging that just adds to the lurid aura of Morpho stalking the women as his "master" waits nearby. Delicious b&w photography is preserved wonderfully on DVD. Jess Franco was noted for his sexy shockers but this is my favorite of them all. Dubbing is bad and this works just fine as well in making this a true-blue "Euroshocker" that to me defines itself.

Buy The Awful Dr. Orlof: Remastered Edition (1962) Now

When I was a boy they would show this movie very late saturday nights on TV and I'd stay up way past bedtime just to watch Gothic Horror Euro-movies like this and BLACK SUNDAY(a.k.a. "The Mask Of Satan")which terrified and scared me to death. I grew up, but I never forgot those two, amongst several other OLD gothic horror flicks I've been lucky to find on Dvd these past couple years. I always thought the terrifying "Mortho" was a vampire! All I know and have never been able to forget is that I was Mortho-fied with fear and terror at the site of him. I'd be so terrified laying in bed when the lights were out because I feared seeing his face on the ceiling if I opened my eyes. He still seems quite creepy after all these years. This movie is a CLASSIC of its genre and a 'must have' for collectors. It is a gem of a remaster in classic B&W, mostly filmed at night(it seems), nevertheless, it's a well made atmospheric movie. More of a "thriller" than a "horror" flick. Nice to have just for the memories of loving scary movies as a child...

Read Best Reviews of The Awful Dr. Orlof: Remastered Edition (1962) Here

THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF is the masterwork from the sinister mind of genius, Jess Franco. This movie contains all of the elements for a perfect movie. We get the mad doctor himself, played by the skeletal Howard Vernon. Then there's Orlof's blind, evil assistant, Morpho (Riccardo Valle), who hunts down and kills the women that the doctor needs. Also included are the police inspector Tanner (Conrado San Martin), dancehall babes, and some peek-a-boo scenes that are quite memorable! I almost forgot to mention the Doctor's disfigured sister, Melissa, who spends the entire movie on her backin a cage! There's even a nice dark castle to boot! Yep, this movie has all the ingredients for a cold, clammy night's viewing! There are many movies w/ similar themes that would go together w/ Orlof to make quite the mega-marathon. I suggest THE HEAD, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, HUMAN MONSTER, BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT, ATOM AGE VAMPIRE, ATOMIC BRAIN, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (after all, what was Buffalo Bill trying to do?) to name a few. TADO has many influences, and has influenced many others. Highly recommended...

Want The Awful Dr. Orlof: Remastered Edition (1962) Discount?

Seen now, some 40 years later, Jess Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orloff" (1962), is a bizarre homage, an S/M twist on the Universal horrors of the '40's (1944's "House of Frankenstein") and producer Val Lewton's horror/noir ( also 1943's "I Walked With a Zombie") to Master Director Terence Fisher's semi-goth Hammer excursions (1958's "Horror of Dracula"). "Orloff" is imbued with fog shrouded camera lenses prowling the cobblestone streets of unknown, syphilitic European villages interspersed with a venereal cohesion of flesh and fantasy.

In 1962, prolific director Franco (credited in "Orloff" as Jess Frank) began a wholly new, wholly subversive subgrenre of horror cinema, merging (long before David Cronenberg) medical science and terror (and, to a certain extent, eroticism in the 'roughie' vein) with varied yet gruesome results. "The Awful Dr. Orloff" isn't far off the stalk 'em/slash 'em realm and could even be seen as a precursor to Roy Ward Baker's pseudoperverse 1971 Hammer produced "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde". The difference is , however, Orloff (played with understated glee by Howard Vernon) pursuing women (usaully nightclub performers/prostitutes) beautiful enough to provide the skin needed for grafting onto his horribly scarred daughter rather than murdering them for their pituitary glands. Orloff's desire to help his daughter is not driven by her wish to be beautiful but by his sinister urge to make his sexual object attractive.Orloff is assisted by a blind, yet perverse, henchman named Morpho (Riccardo Valle) who, previously, fell under the scalpel of Orloff years before in the name of 'science'. Morpho can't see but he can sniff out women, indulge his sexual profondo rosso fantasy by drawing their blood through biting them on the neck (vampiric yet he's no vampire) then hand the body over to the doctor for more nefarious mayhem.Orloff's foil is an innocent police detective named Tanner (Conrado San Martin) who's more smitten with his fiance Wanda (Diana Lorys) than solving the rash of serial killings that's plaguing his little village. In fact, Wanda is more hell bent on ridding the village of the murderer than Tanner so she decides to find the killer herself. And what better bait. Wanda's face is flawless perfect for Orloff's daughter. Somehow Wanda figures out that Orloff needs someone like her so she dresses herself up like a 'shamelss hussy', and, of course, is kidnapped by the strange Morpho. Wanda's boredom with Tanner becomes a turning point for the woman to indulge herself in a masochistic relationship first with Morpho, then with Orloff himself a twisted man who relishes in his own sadistic behavior. The triage Wanda, Morpho, and Orloff become embroiled in a classic manage a trois relationship based on edgy sexual posturing and unulfilled desire. The audience becomes participating voyeurs while Franco exploits Wanda's body in a quick shot of Morpho ripping her shirt open, fulfilling adolescent fantasies fueled by Hammer's Dracula bodice-poppers.

"The Awful Dr. Orloff" is Franco's first step in a long string of bizarre cinematic sexual excursions that promote forbidden urge fulfillment (including, but not limited to, 1967's "Besame Monstruo", 1967's "Succubus", 1970's "Vampyros Lesbos") almost akin to the Brazilian films of Jose Mojica Marins (specifically 1966's foray into sexual madness, "Tonight I Will Make Your Corpse Turn Red"). Marins, who is a truly venal filmmaker, makes Franco's films seem positively Disney-like in their biazarre expulsion of sexual innocence. Where Marins seems to be fulfilling his own warped fantasies through his films, Franco ignites his movies with pop culture references (scoring them with groundbreaking lounge tripping soundtracks and incorporating hyperactive, yet pointless, car chase scenes in his later movies) and an obvious affection toward the Grand Guignol of Shirley Jackson novels and Universal Studio horrors.Franco recently stated a desire to remake "The Awful Dr. Orloff" utilizing up-to-date filmmaking techniques and refurbishing his flawed script. Its an interesting notion but the 1962 feature is, at best, a historical film adressing timely taboos (incest, immoral medical procedures, sexual oppression and scant nudity) thus paving the way for entrees into cinematic psychological darkness explored by Mario Bava, Dario Argento and, eventually, George Romero and David Cronenberg.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Grade: B+ 90%

Save 17% Off