The Black Sleep Might Keep You Awake
Life is too short to miss Tor Johnson movies. Tor, yet another dead Facebook presence who regales his “friends” with updates on his amorous adventures, left this earthly realm forty years ago. Made a cult favorite through his work for Ed Wood, Tor made his sizable mark in a film considered by many to be the worst ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space. In 1956, he featured in Reginald LeBorg’s mad scientist flick, The Black Sleep (another outstanding offering from MGM Limited Editions).
The Black Sleep sports a famous cast: Basil Rathbone, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, and Bela Lugosi, leaving the ungrateful viewer asking “Where’s Karloff?” Rathbone is the oh-so-elegant, egocentric surgeon with a screw loose, Sir Joel Cadman, who is anti-death penalty, believing that lives should only be taken for legitimate reasons, like medical research (“In the interests of science, anything is justified.”).
Sir Joel has a country abbey where his beautiful, young wife wastes away in a vegetative state from a mysterious tumor, Mungo (Lon Chaney, Jr.) runs amok due to a serious “brain condition,” and Casimir (Bela Lugosi) serves as mute doorman and ash collector. Sir Joel plans to perform brain surgery on his wife with the help of Dr. Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley), an unfortunate innocent who was to be hanged for a murder he claimed he didn’t commit. Sir Joel rescues him with a special potion that fakes death.
In secret chambers behind the fireplace is Sir Joel’s surgery, a modern facility (for the late 1800s) where he can experiment on unfortunate subjects in an effort to perfect a procedure to use on his beloved wife. Now, watching Basil Rathbone cut into people’s skulls may not be your idea of a fun way to spend Mother’s Day, but don’t worry, it’s all very classy, he doesn’t even get any brain bits on his lab coat.
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