THE AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOF (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Jess Franco's first horror film, also called the first commercial film in that genre from Spain, stands apart from most of his later oeuvre, much of which is either incoherent or what I called (in my SUCCUBUS review) "phony-baloney surrealism." Crisply photographed on Spanish locations (though set in turn-of-the-century Paris), ORLOF is a straightforward formulaic take on tropes made famous by George Franju's 1960 art-horror film EYES WITHOUT A FACE. Franco, who also wrote ORLOF, displayed none of Franju's gift for visual poetry, but at least the Spanish filmmaker doesn't display the vice of trying to undercut his horrors.

Pretty women are disappearing from the streets of Paris, and since not all of them are mere streetwalkers, the Surete steps up its investigation. In a scene reminiscent of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," several witnesses describe a possible stalker with different descriptions, but clever young Inspector Tanner figures out that the witnesses saw two different men.

The audience gets to see them at work: mad scientist Doctor Orlof (Howard Vernon, from then on "typed" into the horror genre) and his saucer-eyed assistant Morpho (Ricardo Valle). The latter's injured-looking eyes are meant to indicate that he's blind, but I didn't get a sense of his impairment as he unerringly locates pretty women and helps Orlof transport them to the scientist's lab. There we meet two women: housekeeper Arne, possibly in love with Orlof, and Orlof's daughter Melissa. As the result of some barely discussed accident, Melissa's face was deeply scarred, and in response Orlof keeps her a virtual prisoner in his home, so that someday he can repair her face with skin grafts taken from uncooperative women. 

After a visually stunning opening, ORLOF more or less settles into a lot of vague running around as Tanner and his girlfriend Wanda (Diana Lorys, who also plays the scarred Melissa) for about an hour until things finally heat up for the climax. With a few exceptions, most of Franco's films show no interest in developing the second act: he seems to care only about delivering a bravura opening and a big finish. The middle portion of a film, even a purely formulaic one, is often the place where the creator builds up his characters and makes their conflicts more detailed and relatable, but Franco shows no interest in such development. This is a shame, for Vernon gives Orlof a lot of physical charm, and it would have been interesting, as Franju did, to explore the mad scientist's obsessions more. Like the captive daughter of EYES WITHOUT A FACE, Melissa does not want to be the subject of her father's experiments, but Franco allows for just one line in which she complains to Morpho about their mutual enslavement, and then Melissa fades from the story. I may be wrong that Arne carried a torch for Orlof, but not much explains her willingness to go along with the serial murders for a while, and then to suddenly get fed up, at which point Orlof kills her. For some reason this riles Morpho and the film concludes with the de rigeur destruction of the mastermind by his pawn-- though in truth we're never really sure just what Orlof did to Morpho, or why.

Still, if only because Franco was trying to emulate Franju, he produced a very nice looking basic horror film. Considering some of his later productions, that's a fair accomplishment.