The Black Sleep *** (1956, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, Akim Tamiroff) – Classic Movie Review 4549

‘Horror beyond belief rising from the depths of a black hell!’ Ah, yes, excellent! But, wait, there’s more: ‘A horror horde of monster mutants walk the Earth!’

Horror icons Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine and Bela Lugosi combine their formidable talents for the 1956 chiller The Black Sleep, another run through an ancient tale about a mad doctor Sir Joel Cadman (Rathbone) experimenting on humans’ brains and turning out rampaging monster mutant freaks.

It is set in England in 1872. The prominent knighted surgeon Sir Joel operates on a fellow scientist, Dr Gordon Angus Ramsay (Herbert Rudley), and makes him drink the Black Sleep potion (that would be the powerful East Indian anaesthetic drug ‘Nind Andhera’) to get inside his brain so that he can cure his wife’s tumour.

Despite the enjoyable cast, especially Rathbone, who is first rate, this grisly material can spark an only fair horror movie, since neither John C Higgins’s screenplay nor Reginald LeBorg’s direction ever quite get going dynamically enough or come to the best terms with the intriguing material.

But there are plenty of unintentional laughs to keep things entertaining, and Chaney Jr is especially amusing, playing one of the freaks, Mungo. It is the last film of Lugosi, who has no lines as the mute Casimir, to the actor’s great disappointment.

Lugosi had then recently dried out from his morphine addiction, but he died while lying on his bed in his Los Angeles apartment of a heart attack aged 73 on 16 August 1956, the year of the film’s release.

He was buried in his Dracula costume, including the cape, as requested by his son Bela G Lugosi and fifth wife Lillian, in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. They said they made the decision but believed that it is what his father would have wanted.

Also in the cast are Akim Tamiroff as Odo the Gypsy, Tor Johnson as Mr Curry, Phyllis Stanley as Daphne, Claire Carleton as Carmoda Daily, John Sheffield as Det. Redford, Sally Yarnell as Nancy the Female Monster, George Sawaya as Sailor Subject, Louanna Gardner as Angelina Cadman, Peter Gordon as Det. Sgt. Steele, Clive Morgan as Roundsman Blevins, and Patricia Blake [Blair] as Laurie Munroe.

The executive producer Aubrey Schenck appears as the Prison Coroner’s Clerk.

A typically low-budget project (costing $225,000), it was released in the early summer of 1956 as a double feature with the 1955 British film The Quatermass Xperiment [The Creeping Unknown], and re-released in 1962 as Dr Cadman’s Secret.

The Black Sleep [Dr Cadman’s Secret] is directed by Reginald LeBorg, runs 82 minutes, is made by Bel-Air Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by John C Higgins, based on the story by Gerald Drayson Adams, is shot in black and white by Gordon Avil, is produced by Aubrey Schenck (executive producer) and Howard W Koch, is scored by Les Baxter, and is designed by Clarence Steensen (Set Decoration).

The photographic effects are by Louis DeWitt and Jack Rabin.

It was shot in February 1956 at American National Studios, Hollywood, and ZIV Studios, 7950 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood.

The opening title card reads Newgate Prison over a shot of the Tower of London!

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4549

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