My take: This remake of The Hands of Orlac is different enough to keep things interesting and Peter Lorre is phenomenally diabolical.
I’m only 21 movies into Studies in Terror, and there are 130 movies listed in the book. I’m already seeing remakes.
Perter Lorre as Gogol in Mad Love attacking Mrs. Orlac.
It astounds me that remakes have been around for so long. Every time they remake a popular horror film, every one groans and laments that no one can come up with good, new stories any longer. Apparently, they liked to rehash old stories even in the 1930s.
Fortunately, Mad Love is different enough than The Hands of Orlac that it held my interest. It’s the same basic story: famous pianist Stephen Orlac is in a train crash. His hands are crushed and the doctor wants to amputate. But after the pleas of the pianist’s wife, the doctor relents and transplants hands onto Orlac. But those hands happen to be the hands of a murderer.
After the surgery, Orlac senses that his hands are not his own. They seem to have a desire to kill.
This is the same plot as the Hands of Orlac. But Mad Love kicks it up a notch by focusing not on Orlac but on the doctor, Gogol. This mad doctor has fallen in love with Orlac’s wife after having watched her perform in the theater for months. With Orlac’s injury, he sees an opportunity to get the woman he desires.
Gogol was played by the infamous Peter Lorre, whose voice and demeanor will forever remind me of the Maltese Falcon and his short screen time in Casablanca. Unlike those films, however, he takes center stage in Mad Love, and he uses his screen time well. As a result of his acting alone, I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes classic thrillers or horror.
I ordered the DVD via Amazon. Here is the trailer so you can see how terrific Peter Lorre is, though the beginning of the trailer is a bit ham-fisted:
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