Mad Love, the first film he chose to direct, was a remake of The Hands of Orlac, a German silent made in 1924 by Cabinet of Dr.
In 1935, MGM lured director Karl Freund away from Universal to help shepherd a new unit at the studio focused on genre films. As elitist as the studio heads could be about horror films, they could not argue with the bottom line. The film goes on to argue that the popular art of this Theater of Horrors can coexist alongside high art as the theater’s starlet Yvonne Orlac ( Frances Drake) is married to a preeminent concert pianist Stephen Orlac ( Colin Clive). You bring me to a place like this where they make you scream and faint.” He counters that it is fun, to which she demands that he take her home. At the box office, a woman protests to her male companion, “when I go out to a play, I want to have some fun. Metro Goldwyn Mayer was considered the most prestigious of the golden-age studios, famous for its big budget musicals, epic spectaculars, and boasting “more stars than there are in the heavens.” The uneasy relationship MGM had with horror is evident in the early sequences of Mad Love, which opens at a Grand Gignol Guignol style theater in Paris, Le Théatre Des Horreurs. Hyde (1931), Freaks, and Island of Lost Souls (both 1932), it manages to just barely sneak its lurid subject matter by the censors under a layer of dark humor, exceptional cinematography, and a masterful performance by Peter Lorre in his first American film.Īfter Dracula proved to be a huge success for Universal, other Hollywood studios became eager to get in on the horror game, though many of these studios felt the genre was beneath them.
Though it may seem tame compared to pre-Code fare like Dr. Mad science, body horror, insanity, obsession, executions, gaslighting, sadomasochism-it’s all here and presented with unparalleled excellence of craft. No film of the Hays Code era revels in its own perversity quite like Mad Love (1935).
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