Silver Screen Standards: Mad Love (1935)
I’m firmly in the “every day is Halloween” camp when it comes to classic horror movies, and I especially love the lesser-known, off-the-wall, really weird examples of the genre, from Murders in the Zoo (1933) to Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). It’s hard to get much weirder or flat out bonkers than the 1935 MGM Peter Lorre chiller, Mad Love, a Hollywood adaptation of the French novel and 1924 film version both titled The Hands of Orlac. Although director Karl Freund’s update keeps the original premise of transplanted hands that might be murderous independent of their new owner, it adds Grand Guignol theater, romantic obsession, an insane genius, and a strikingly lifelike wax figure to the mix. If that’s not enough, we’re also treated to an over-the-top performance from Lorre as a brilliant but deranged surgeon, with Colin Clive as his traumatized patient and Frances Drake as the heroine whose love for her husband drives her to seek help from her dangerously devoted fan.
Lorre gets top billing as the famous but eccentric Dr. Gogol, whose groundbreaking work has made him a hero to Paris in spite of his odd appearance and behavior. Among his quirks is his dedication to actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), the star of a horror stage show whose performances are promoted by a detailed waxwork model of her character in the theater lobby. Gogol is devastated to learn that Yvonne has gotten married to pianist Stephen (Colin Clive) and is quitting the stage, so he acquires the wax figure, which he names Galatea, to shower with his affection instead. When Stephen’s hands are mangled beyond repair in a train crash, Yvonne begs Gogol for help, but neither she nor her husband know that Stephen’s rebuilt hands are actually transplanted from the executed knife-throwing murderer, Rollo (Edward Brophy).
Even a brief plot summary proves that there’s a lot going on in this movie, with each new element wilder and stranger than the last. I don’t want to spoil its roller coaster turns by explaining too much of the action, but it’s about as gruesome and disturbing as a 1935 American film could manage to be, with a pre-show warning about the content and a note on the promotional posters that declares the movie “suitable only for adults.” Horror fans who came of age after the rise of David Cronenberg won’t bat an injury to the eye motif at the various mutilations of Mad Love, but the scene in which Rollo appears to have been resurrected from the dead is a corker, nonetheless. I’m not a fan of gore, myself, and there’s no blood in Mad Love, but I can’t recommend it to a particularly squeamish viewer, given its depictions of mutilated hands, surgery, guillotine execution, and attempted strangulation. If, however, you can handle all of the Universal horror classics from this era (especially the body horror elements of the Frankenstein films), you should be able to enjoy the absurd terrors on offer here. The use of the actual Frances Drake to represent her wax figure every time the shot switches to a close up of the effigy is jarring, although it does add to the surreal, nightmarish feel of the picture, and it telegraphs the inevitable predicament the heroine faces in the third act.
The performances of the stars, especially Lorre, make Mad Love compelling even at its most bizarre. Colin Clive, best remembered today as Dr. Henry Frankenstein in the two Universal films, comes unglued with perhaps too much authenticity given the actor’s well-known personal demons. Frances Drake has both the soulful beauty and force of character needed for her role as Yvonne, who gains fame as a theatrical scream queen and isn’t deterred from her mission to save Stephen’s hands by using Gogol’s obsession with her. Even the small parts are memorably played, from Keye Luke as Gogol’s assistant and May Beatty as the doctor’s housekeeper to Edward Brophy as Rollo. None of them, however, can steal a scene from Peter Lorre, who cuts loose in glorious fashion as the bald and increasingly maniacal Gogol. Lorre had become a film star thanks to his disturbing performance as the serial killer in M (1931), and over the course of his long career he became indelibly associated with a certain creepiness, often employed in noir films as well as horror. Mad Love, however, lets Lorre take center stage and really lean into the eerie menace of his character, right down to his deeply disturbing recitation of the Robert Browning poem, “Porphyria’s Lover,” in the third act. As his literary knowledge and surgical skill show, Gogol is a brilliant, sensitive, erudite villain, a sublime example of the mad scientist type, pitiable in his loneliness but too untethered from ethics or reality to check his own darker nature. Lorre captures all of those aspects in his performance, and he’s absolutely fascinating to watch, whether he’s quietly brooding over his Galatea or striving to drive Stephen mad.
You can take a deep dive into Peter Lorre’s creepiest roles by pairing Mad Love with The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), which also involves a pianist and a murderous hand, or by seeing his late-career work in horror comedies like Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), and The Comedy of Terrors (1964), which also feature horror icons Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Vincent Price. Karl Freund is best remembered for directing the 1932 Universal classic, The Mummy, in which the title monster, like Gogol, suffers from unrequited obsession with the heroine. Although Mad Love was his final turn as a director, Freund was primarily a cinematographer, with an Oscar win for his work on The Good Earth (1937); he also provided cinematography for celebrated pictures like Metropolis (1927), Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Key Largo (1948). See more of Frances Drake, who retired after her marriage to an English earl in 1939, in Les Miserables (1935) and The Invisible Ray (1936). Colin Clive also appears in Christopher Strong (1933), Jane Eyre 1934), and History is Made at Night (1937).
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
