Doctor Blood’s Coffin, 1961.
Directed by Sidney J. Furie.
Starring Kieron Moore, Hazel Court, Ian Hunter, Fred Johnson, Kenneth J. Warren, and Paul Hardtmuth.
SYNOPSIS:
People are mysteriously disappearing near a remote Cornish village, where a doctor is experimenting with reviving the dead.
Dr. Peter Blood (Kieron Moore) is a biochemist who returns to his home village of Porthcarron in Cornwall, where his father Robert (Ian Hunter) still serves as the local doctor, assisted by widowed nurse Linda Parker (Hazel Court). However, his arrival coincides with the theft of medical supplies and the disappearance of some of the locals, but whatever could it mean?
Well, it doesn’t take Columbo to put two and two together, but where are the missing persons being taken to and for what reason? It turns out that the people who have been kidnapped are deemed unworthy of living and their organs are being used in experiments to bring the dead back to life, but surely the good doctor cannot be involved?
In one of the worst examples of a killer hiding in plain sight, Dr. Blood’s Coffin – yes, the title is a bit of a giveaway – is a British horror movie produced by Caralan Productions and distributed by United Artists, and despite being a Frankenstein-by-the-sea type story it really does feel like somebody had some money to spend on a film but didn’t put any of it into hiring a scriptwriter with a talent for nuance, as the shots of the Cornish coast look fantastic, the costumes, props and set designs are all delightfully 1961without being kitschy, and there are a few familiar faces from the Hammer stable that pop up to add some weight.
However, one of those faces is Kieron Moore and it must have been his looks that landed him the lead here as he is painfully bad as the titular Dr. Blood (which is a great name, but a bit of a spoiler). To be fair to him, the writing gives him nothing to work with as the audience knows from the second he turns up in his fancy car who he is and what he is doing there, and despite his best attempts to sizzle with the wonderful Hazel Court as his love interest, he just comes across as a wrong ‘un as soon as she starts to ask him questions about anything related to the recent crimes.
With people disappearing and the locals blaming the tin mine, because there is nothing else of any interest in the village and so it must be something to do with the mine and not the man who has just turned up, destroyed police evidence, offered to do the post-mortem on a villager whose life he couldn’t save after injecting him with something in full view of everybody in the village and appears unfazed at the medical lab that has been set up in the tin mine, it is a bit of a giveaway who is to blame but the film keeps on going with the red herrings, batty science and scenarios that just don’t make any sense.
The best scene in the movie is the pre-credit sequence, which Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator took and ran with, as the scientist about to inject a dead body with something is interrupted by his superior, who orders him to get out and promises that he will never practise medicine again, etc. In any other movie you would have expected said scientist – who is still holding the syringe – to maybe attack his boss with it, proclaiming that he is really saving lives and then go on a rampage, but here he basically shrugs and walks off, with no other consequences for his actions by the medical board that we know of.
It is a wasted opportunity because there is scope here to do an interesting murder mystery with removed body parts – and for 1961 the shots of Dr. Blood removing organs are surprisingly lurid and graphic, and it does try for some proto-zombie action at the end – but the whole thing just meanders along at a leisurely pace with no surprises other than Hazel Court agreeing to appear in it.
Released by Hammer as part of their Hammer Presents… range, Doctor Blood’s Coffin comes with the UK and US cuts of the movie, the UK version featuring an audio commentary by UK horror authorities Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons, which is the best way to view this movie, but no other extras to bulk it out. Doctor Blood’s Coffin is a terrible movie featuring a script that is barely serviceable, bad performances from most of the cast and is just plain dull, so unless you are collecting these Hammer box sets and couldn’t bear having a gap in your collection, it is quite okay to give this one a miss.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
