Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961)

Pretty straight forward little thriller, one I've always wanted to see, that interestingly makes a monster out of a doctor who wants to do heart transplants! And this was about 4 or 5 years before it actually happened for real! I wonder how Christiaan Barnard felt about that! OK I just checked the first heart transplant was 1967.Dr. Blood himself is pretty over the top not hesitating to sacrifice the useless and unworthy to further his pursuits.It's close and a little clammy when down in the mine tunnels but the location work is good and I want to add my praises for Hazel Court who is too attractive for her role. There's a great bit in the first two minutes. She's a nurse and when the village Dr drives up she runs over to help with his packages. He loads her up with an armful of five or six boxes then wanders off to jaw with the locals. Pretty funny bit no matter how you parse it from a period or contemporary perspective.I wouldn't recommend it. It's OK of its kind but the ending, which the whole movie builds up to, is ludicrous and let's all the steam out of the slowly, but effectively, developed tension.

SPOILERS!!!! Story about people disappearing in a remote Cornish town. It seems the well-liked doctor Peter Blood (Kieron Moore) is killing people he thinks are not needed and transferring their hearts into the corpses of intelligent people. HOW this is supposed to bring them to life is never explained. Pretty nurse Linda (Hazel Court) begins to suspect that something is up. The plot is pretty stupid but this is an OK horror film. The scenery is beautiful (I believe it was shot in Ireland) and it moves fairly quick. Moore and Court are great in their roles which helps. If you're going to watch this for blood or violence forget it. It's not a gory film at all but there are a few shots of exposed beating hearts. The ending is silly but effective. All in all just an OK horror film. Great title though.

Creepy little horror film that I like a great deal. The plot has Dr Blood returning to his home in England to take over for his dad. Unfortunately for the town the younger Blood is actually trying to follow in the footsteps of Dr Frankenstein and revive the dead, and to that end he has set up shop in an abandoned mine and has been kidnapping the locals to continue the experiments that got him run out of Vienna. Coming out of the British horror boom of the late 1950's and early 1960's this is neat little low key film that uses its locations and a muted color scheme to great effect. Where the Hammer films in someways heightened everything into an almost fairytale like feel, this film goes the opposite way using the drabness of the real world to make a real feeling film. Indeed the film doesn't throw too many unreal twists or way out ideas at you its all low key and close to reality which helps to add to the feeling of unease. Is the film perfect? No. Its clunky in some of the ways that the revive the dead films are and perhaps things are a bit too contrived, with Hazel Court's rescue being too aptly timed. That said its still a nice way to pass a rainy Saturday night n front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn and a soda. 7 is out of 10.

Dr. Peter Blood (Kieron Moore) shows up in a small Cornish village to move in with his father (Ian Hunter) to carry on with the old man's experiments. Maddened by his ambition and arrogance, Peter paralyzes unwilling victims with curare (African arrow poison) until their still-beating hearts can be removed and transplanted into other bodies. Will his new widowed nurse girlfriend Linda Parker (Hazel Court, as always, a strong female lead) catch on before it's too late? Saddled with a very implausible plot and pretty minor compared to some concurrent Corman and Hammer films, this still has good acting, nice location filming, atmosphere and a decent surprise ending.