Woodyanders Paris, France in 1890. The ruthless and unscrupulous Dr. Georges Bonnet (well played with chilling conviction by Anton Diffring) has found the secret to living forever by using glands taken from unwilling donors. More honorable colleague Dr. Pierre Gerrard (the always excellent Christopher Lee) suspects that something is amiss with Bonnet and becomes determined to stop him.Director Terence Fisher relates the compelling story at a steady pace, offers a flavorsome evocation of the late 19th century period setting, stages the fiery climax with exciting aplomb, and does a nice job of conjuring up a reasonable amount of misty'n'spooky atmosphere in a few back alley scenes. Jimmy Sangster's smart and literate script addresses interesting issues concerning ethics, moral responsibility, and upsetting the balance of nature. Diffring brings a strong sense of urgency and even a touch of pathos to his juicy lead role, with Bonnet paying a heavy lonely and emotional price for his immortality. Moreover, there are sturdy supporting contributions from Hazel Court as the sweet Janine DuBois, Arnold Marle as the aging and ailing, yet resolutely principled Professor Ludwig Weiss, Delphi Lawrence as the bitter Margo Philippe, and Francis De Wolff as the pesky Inspector Legris. Both Jack Asher's vibrant color cinematography and Richard Rodney Bennett's rousing score are both up to par. While this film does occasionally get bogged down in too much talk, it nonetheless still rates as extremely intelligent and entertaining fright fare just the same.

Spikeopath The Man Who Could Cheat Death is directed by Terence Fisher and adapted to screenplay by Jimmy Sangster from the Barré Lyndon play The Man in Half Moon Street. It stars Anton Diffring, Hazel Court, Christopher Lee, Arnold Marlé, Francis de Wolff and Delphi Lawrence. Out of Hammer Film Productions, music is by Richard Rodney Bennett and Technicolor photography by Jack Asher.Paris 1890 and sculptor Georges Bonnet (Diffring) has perfected a way to halt the aging process. Trouble is that it involves murdering young women so as to extract their parathyroid gland to formulate his eternal life elixir.Disappointingly weak Hammer Horror that would be near unwatchable were it not for the efforts of Asher, Fisher and Bernard Robinson (production design). The source story is made to measure for Hammer, where berserker science mixes with Gothic murder tones, all the ingredients are there for a lively fusion of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with The Picture of Dorian Gray. But the film is more concerned with much talking and posturing, thinking that sci-fi babble and moral quandaries are going to keep things interesting. We of course want some meat and reasoning for main characters to impact on the plotting, but using up an hour for it, in a film that only runs an hour and twenty minutes, leaves very little room for thrills and drama. It also demands that the finale be explosive, a whirlwind of horror revelations and biting comeuppance, sadly the ending we get is rather a damp squib.Things aren't helped by the casting of Diffring, who overacts far to often, or that Lee is underwritten and firmly disinterested in making the thin characterisation work. Court looks ravishing and gives the film its best performance, but she is also hindered by a bare bones script from the usually excellent Sangster. The story just plods to its inevitable conclusion, the screenplay never daring to veer away from the safe formula road. While much of the detective work from de Wolff's Inspector LeGris leaves a great deal to be desired. On the plus side it looks real nice, a triumph over low budget restrictions, the minimal sets dressed in period splendour, the colour sizzling and Fisher uses wide shots to make certain scenes that are played out on tiny sets actually look expansive.Devoid of up-tempo terror and finishing on a whimper, this is very much average Hammer and not easily recommended to the horror faithful. 5/10

Robert J. Maxwell Not an uninteresting story, though it's familiar enough in its broad outlines. Anton Diffring is a doctor who is 104 years old, though he looks about 35. He manages to stay young by killing young women and snipping out their parathyroids, which are then transplanted. The glands of cadavers will do as well but they're not always available. The transplant lasts ten years.Paris, 1889, and Diffring's last transplant is winding down. He's forced do take hits off a jar of blue liquid bubbling with dry ice, which has the effect of keeping him young for a few hours. As usual, he needs the help of his old colleague, Arnold Marle, to perform the operation.Marle is late arriving in Paris and Diffring is desperate. When Marle realizes the gland he is about to transplant is from a living person, not a cadaver, he refuses to go through with the operation and Diffring, in a rage, strangles him.It's a little confusing, granted. Why, for instance, is it difficult to get parathyroid glands from cadavers now? And when Marle performed those several earlier transplants of glands from living humans, didn't he recognize them for what they were? How stupid can you get? There's also a subplot involving Diffring's having young women model for him -- he's a sculptor on the side -- then killing his models, presumably for their glands, and hiding the finished busts. It has nothing to do with the story. Anatomists will be interested in knowing that, according to this movie, the parathyroid is evidently located in the upper left quadrant of the patient's abdomen.And early on, Diffring attacks a young woman and she appears dead, only to show up in the climactic scene, crazy, so that she can throw on lantern on the rapidly deteriorating Diffring and burn his murderous arse to death. I don't know how she survived the first attack or what drove her mad or why Diffring keeps her locked in his basement.The play from which this is derived might have been better than the film. At one point, another upright surgeon, the elegant Christopher Lee, asks Diffring why he and Marle didn't publish their work when they first discovered the secret of eternal life seventy years ago, and Diffring comes up with two thoughtful reasons why.No outdoor locations are used. There are only a handful of well-dressed indoor sets but they're reasonably effective. Diffring is, I suppose, handsome in a way but he's a terribly wooden actor. With his every move, his every utterance, it's as if he's following the director's orders and doesn't want to get them wrong. On those rare occasions when he tries to smile, one can almost hear the agonized creak of wood.The ladies' performances are perfunctory. The best performances come from Lee, a steady hand at the helm there, and Arnold Marle, who over acts outrageously but engagingly. He looks an aged wreck but his voice is a delight.The only thing I'll probably remember from the film is not the final holocaust but Diffring's giving those reasons why eternal life will lead to catastrophe for the human race. If nobody dies, for example, then the world will become impossibly crowded as humans multiply like rabbits. He was right about that. It's following that trajectory despite our mortality. In 1900, the world's population was about one billion. In 1950 it was about two billion. Now it's approaching seven billion. In other words, it's more than doubled over each of the past two half centuries. That's known as a logarithmic curve. And nobody is addressing the problem.As for the film as a whole, it should please those who enjoy these sorts of things -- the mad doctor, spilling over with hubris, strangling people for their glands, the shoddy lighting and neon colors on Chunking film stock. For me, once was enough.

BijouBob8mm THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (the Hammer Films remake of 1945's THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET, based on the play by Barre' Lyndon) seems to be a forgotten fantasy-thriller. Often compared with Oscar Wilde's PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, this film rarely seems to get the same airplay on late night TV or on any of the "Shock Theatre" programs that many of the other Hammer horror hits did, and has yet to receive a home video release. With so much of the Hammer library now out on DVD, and since Paramount handled Hammer's distribution for this (as well as having produced the 1945 original), it would be nice to see the two films released to DVD as a double feature. (Much like the HOUSE OF WAX/MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM or the Frederic March and Spencer Tracy versions of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.)