⭐️⭐️1/2
In the late 19th century, a hooded figure stalks the dark at an isolated mental institution in the middle of the woods. The head of the place, Dr. Vance, is up to suspicious activities involving skin graft experiments so he’s hesitant about getting the local authorities involved in the string of murders. He’s already got a bad wrap after an accident left his sister deformed thanks to stumbling into a vat of lime during construction of the state-of-the-art clinic. The body count grows as staff and patients fall at the hands of the cloaked fiend. There’s plenty of strange suspects amongst the patients and staff and not just the hideously scarred woman and her up-to-something brother. Vance’s jealous wife, an elderly woman prone to violent outbursts when someone touches her stuffed cat (there’s a joke in there somewhere), a doped-up schizophrenic sure that everyone wants him dead, a head nurse with a stick lodged firmly up her butt, a bald servant who lurks just as well as every other bald servant in horror history and a horny handyman who just so happens to own a straight razor much like the one we’ve seen our gloved killer wielding. All there to raise suspicion. The clinic exists because after the accident that melted Vance’s sister’s face and a witness who claimed to have seen the doctor push the woman off a scaffolding, Dr. Vance had his reputation ruined and was forced to take on patients that no other place wanted. He now works on skin grafts with guinea pigs in his free time and hopes to restore his sister’s looks. A compassionate nurse (Mary, naturally) joins the staff just as the murders begin and the arrival of a scheming woman who is rescued by the doctor following a carriage accident sets things off into dangerous territories. This woman happened to stumble upon Vance burying the body of a murdered girl and, after failing at seduction, decides to blackmail the not-so-good doctor. She’s a real piece of work. Needless to say, there won’t be a lot of people breathing by the time the end credits hit. It’s a period piece proto-slasher that hits familiar story-beats from Euro horrors of the era. Eyes Without a Face being the obvious inspiration (as it was for many, many outings that followed and feels as if added as an afterthought to this) and mixed in with Krimis which would give way to giallo and the inevitable fierceness of the slasher genre. This one fits comfortably toeing the line of all three without being able to be pigeonholed in any descriptor. That’s not to say it’s a revelatory original script or anything, it’s all very familiar and it just adds and drops aspects of the film descriptors to make it so it’s kinda of everything and nothing all at once. It’s a bit stuffy and ambling but that doesn’t take away from the dark fun of the scheming (Françoise Prévost’s excellently awful blackmailer is a treat) and the eventual (admittedly limp) explosion of murdering that finally hits after chaos is brought to the secretive inner workings of the clinic. Beautiful women and some effective, cheap makeup effects also hit my sweet spot but you can tell it didn’t really have any idea of the cinematic stylings it actually had its hands on and fumbles everything. More interesting than entertaining.
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