DoctorBloodsCoffin

Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961)

This movie opens up with a doctor being caught experimenting on human beings by one of his colleagues. He is kicked out of the hospital. The action then shifts to an isolated town in England where some of the locals have begun to disappear mysteriously. Tossed into this situation is a local man, Dr. Peter Blood, who has returned from a prestigious medical research position. He is the son of the local doctor and offers to help search the local mines, where the police think that whoever is behind the disappearances is hiding. Of course it is obvious, in spite of the movie trying to hide his appearance, to we the audience that Dr. Blood is behind everything. The doctor has been drugging people so that they appear dead, but really aren’t, so that he can harvest their hearts for transplants. As is the case with all mad scientists things don’t end well for him.

This isn’t a terrible movie and starts off with a really engaging and interesting story. The movie does a really good job of keeping the identity of the villain hidden for the first 20 or so minutes. I thought for sure that there was going to be some big twist where the obvious suspect, Dr. Blood, was going to turn out to be a decent guy. Hell the movie even spends some time establishing a romantic relationship between the young doctor and his father’s nurse. But then, as if it wasn’t ever in doubt, the movie reveals that Peter is in fact the villain. This sort of spoiled what was shaping up to be a pretty cool movie, at least for me anyway. The cast is solid with Kieron Moore (Day of the Triffids) in the title role of Dr. Peter Blood. Moore manages to keep Blood charming, especially when he is romancing the nurse, while being genuinely creepy and evil when dealing with his subjects. Hazel Court, who was in just about all the Roger Corman Poe movies, plays the previously mentioned nurse. While she is just as beautiful as ever I think her talents are wasted here in a supporting role that asks her to do very little.

Overall the technical aspects of the movie are pretty good. There are several nighttime shots that are handled very nicely. But be warned that there are many bad prints of this movie available out there as it appears the movie is in the public domain. Some of them are so dark that you can’t see much of the action in the night shots or in the mine. I also wanted to mention the special effects. While nothing shocking for today’s audience I was pleasantly surprised at how gruesome and gory they were. The “creatures” didn’t thrill me, but then again you find out that they aren’t actually dead but just drugged. So the white makeup doesn’t bug me so much.

Bottom line here is that Doctor Blood’s Coffin delivers some fun, and a Doctor Blood. But then I’m not sure where the coffin is? Since it is public domain it appears that this movie can be had all over the Internet for free. While most of the public domain stuff isn’t worth checking out this one is in spite of some flaws. Plus the price is right.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer