Interesteg
What makes it different from others?
StunnaKrypto
Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
ChicDragon
It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Rainey Dawn
A really fun movie to watch and a super role for Basil Rathbone. Rathbone plays Sir Joel Cadman, a mad doctor of sorts, that wants to heal his wife of her brain tumor but the horrors he's caused to others in search of a cure for his wife is unspeakable. Expect a grand ending to story of John Cadman's chamber of horrors.The main focus here is on Basil Ratbone! John Carradine gets a small spotlight thrown on him, while Tor, Bela and Lon are mute but highly important characters to the film.This is great late night movie - easily a "dark and stormy night" film!9/10
gavin6942
Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone), a mad scientist, kidnaps his victims and cuts open their brains in an effort to discover a means to cure his wife's brain tumor.Okay, so you have a 1950s mad scientist story about a guy doing experimental brain surgery that results in some serious mistakes. That alone could probably make a pretty decent horror film -- who is opposed to seeing brain dead lobotomy patients lumbering through a dungeon?But, really, this film could not have failed if it tried. Besides Rathbone, it features Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and John Carradine. They could have stood around and played hackey sack and I would still watch it.Paul Corupe makes an interesting observation about this film's role in history. He notes that on the surface, Cadman is your typical 1930s mad scientist, saying things like, "In the interests of science, anything is justified." But underneath that, he is a 1950s scientist, a transitional figure who does experiments not just because he can but because he is trying to save a life -- he is one of the very first mad scientists we can feel sorry for, possibly. The only earlier example Corupe offers is from "The Ape" (1940).
st-shot
The Black Sleep is an inferior mad scientist generic that conjures up past their prime horror masters for marquee value only. With the fight out of their fright you find yourself worrying about their fragile health in this chill less thriller.On the eve of his execution for a murder he did not commit Dr. Ramsay is visited by Sir Joel Cadman who administers a potion to Ramsay to make him appear dead before prison officials. Whisking the body back to his laboratory he revives Ramsay who he needs to help him bring his comatose wife back to life. Ramsay questions such ethics however as Cadmon's staff of assorted flunkies Mungo, Borg, Casimir and Odo the Gypsy resort to unsavory practices in assisting him.Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. are a long way from their Universal hay days as they huff and puff about the castle trying to muster some fright factor who along with John Carradine appear like worn out dummies from a traveling carny fun house all the chill thrills rusted. Basil Rathbone's distinguished air does give the film a small degree of polish in the early moments but as problems arise, nerves fray and things get a little bumpier in the night Rathbone begins to go Colin Clive. Akim Tamirroff's Odo the body snatcher easily steals the show with a wry sense of dark humor; the only way to approach this film if one is to salvage anything from it.
BaronBl00d
Yes, this film does have horror icons Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone, Tor Johnson, and John Carradine...not to mention character actor great Akim Tamiroff all in one film. The cast alone is worth a look at this fairly low budget horror film about a mad doctor(Rathbone) who performs unnecessary brain surgery on people brought to him presumed to be dead but in reality alive having taken "the black sleep" drug that the film's prologue tells us about in order to save his comatose blonde, young wife. Whew! That was a sentence and a half! Rathbone over does it with his hammy yet always fun performance. The male "hero" lead is nicely done by Herbert Rudley. In fact the story and by-play between Rudley and Rathbone gives the film an appearance of some chilling Victorian potboiler until we get to Rathbone's castle and find the servant opening the door - the deaf servant -is none other than a very old(and sickly) looking Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's role is probably his last "real" screen role and he doesn't even get to say a word and has little screen time. Lon Chaney plays Mungo - supposedly once a college professor, but c'mmon...he looks like he just got back from the saloon - acts like it too. Tor Johnson has a very minor role. The best performance for my money is the way over-the-top performance of John Carradine who is barely in the movie's first two-thirds but explodes onto the scene in the third act. He is as thick a slice of ham as you will find spouting dialog about Saracens, etc... and having an old Moses beard. The Black Sleep isn't a great horror film but definitely a fun one. You just cannot go wrong with these actors even in a slightly less-than-stellar vehicle as this. Just watching Rathbone make little witty quips or seeing Carradine yell "Up! Up!...Kill! Kill" to a band of freakish mutant coming through a fireplace is worth seeing it all by itself.
