The Awful Dr. Orlof [1961]

Dr. Orlof and his assistant Morpho are out on the town kidnapping pretty women – so he can force them to donate their faces (and bodies) to his disfigured daughter.

Remember when I said Franco likes to do medical oddity films? Well, I also should have mentioned that he likes to repeat the same themes – even plotlines of previous films. The Awful Dr. Orlof was remade by him as the film I reviewed for yesterday – Faceless. I wish I knew that before I went in – but I tend to hit the jackpot when I watch several Franco films in a row – they will end up being the exact same plots – Franco remaking Franco.

So, the Howard Vernon Dr. Orlof reference is no longer lost on me from Faceless.

The film was fairly fun – it had an old monster film feel to it – though I thought they spent too much time in the investigation than in the “horror” – so I was a little bored by the film. Morpho was a very disturbing monster – I quite liked the portrayal by Richardo Valle. The mask was a bit cheesy – but how he would walk, his posture and how he mouth words was actually fairly creepy.

Actually the entire cast was very good – though the roles were fairly standard. Vernon was a creepy Dr. Orlof – San Martin was a great straight up detective – Lorys was a steamy but sassy love interest with backbone.

I was a little taken aback when there were a few flashes of bare chests – I just wasn’t expecting that. It seemed as though this was a fairly mainstream horror film – like something along the lines of the Universal classics – so when Morpho grabs the girl and he rips her shirt off and we zoom in to see her boobs struggle – I was surprised. There wasn’t much of it – but maybe a full 15 seconds in the entire film – but like I said – I didn’t expect it.

I have a hard time with explaining this film – as it just felt like something was missing and I can’t really pinpoint it. Something with the story – it just felt stop & go with the plotlines – it just felt off. I kind of liked the movie – I kind of didn’t.

You can tell Franco was at the helm for the most part – but he was playing up as a sort of a classic monster movie director – so there wasn’t much exciting to talk about when it came to the style of direction.
The story was fairly coherent – though I would’ve liked more time with Orlof explaining his desire to reconstruct his daughter’s looks (and I’m not sure if I missed an explanation as to what happened to her). The direction was solid – the movie was kind of fun in that classic monster film sense – but was lacking – another take it or leave it Franco film for me.