I Watch Films: The Awful Dr Orloff

 

The Awful Dr Orloff

It’s Paris about 1910 and Inspector Tanner returns from holiday to discover he has a case. Beautiful young women are being kidnapped from nightclubs. His investigation moves slowly – there seem to be no clues – and the press claim he’s spending all his time with his fiancée Wanda, a beautiful young ballerina.

They’re being kidnapped by Dr Orloff, a former prison doctor, who is using them to make skin grafts to treat his daughter*, who is in a coma. He’s assisted by Morpho, a huge blind mute henchman, and Arne, a beautiful woman who is mostly there so someone actually speaks to him, both of whom he faked the deaths of while in prison. There are extended scenes of Morpho and Orloff chasing down young women while Inspector Tanner fails to make any progress, eventually tracking down some odd things to realise that Orloff, ignored because he is believed dead, might actually be alive. In fact it is Wanda’s courage and insight that makes the breakthrough, only for her to immediately become a damsel in distress and Tanner to fail to read her message to him half a dozen times to increase the tension in the dumbest way possible.

There’s a little nudity, a bit more gore, and a lot of stylised violence in empty mansions. It’s not trying to be serious, but it is trying to scare, and, perhaps, succeeds. The dubbed lines are sometimes baffling.

Watch This: A cool, European, black and white horror film, giving bigger and more interesting roles to the women than might be expected
Don’t Watch This: Iconic villains abound in film and Dr Orloff is not that great

* Played by the actress who also plays Wanda, as becomes important in the last act.