THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1962)

Director: Jesús Franco

Writer: Jesús Franco (as David Khune)

Producers: Leo Max, Marius Lesoeur, Sergio Newman

Cast: Howard Vernon, Ricardo Valle, Conrado San Martin, Diana Lorys, Fernando C. Montes, Perla Cristal, Maria Silva, Mara Laso, Venancio Muro, Félix Dafauce, Fuastino Cornejo, Manuel Våzquez, Elena Maria Tejiero, Juan Antonio Riquelme, Javier de Rivera, Carmen Porcel, Rafael Hernández, Marisa Paredes, Juan Garcia Tiendra, Pilar Gómez Ferrer, Tito Garcia, Jesús Franco 

In 1912 France women are disappearing. They are being abducted by the blind, mute, and disfigured Morpho (Ricardo Valle). He is being controlled by Dr. Orlof (Howard Vernon), a retired prison doctor that managed to falsify convicted murderer Morpho's death. Orlof has surgically altered Morpho to make him his obedient henchman. The women Orlof has abducted are for use in his experiments to restore the beauty of his scarred and catatonic daughter Melissa (Diana Lorys). 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

The Awful Dr. Orlof is a seminal film. It is the first Spanish horror film and the first of many horror films made by the man that would become probably the most prolific filmmaker in the world, Jesús Franco.

Prior to this film, most Spanish films were kept in a pretty staid mold. They had to avoid the lurid and sensational, as Spanish censorship was quite stern under the Francisco Franco regime, and traditional Spanish values and culture always had to be positively represented. Jesús Franco got around that by having his horror film set outside of Spain. That was the tactic that he and other Spanish filmmakers would usually have to use when they made horror films. His films were often heavily censored in Spain, but Franco’s films would be shown in some other countries with nudity that was daring in its day. The Awful Dr. Orlof is one of the earliest forebears of the increasingly brazen mixture of eroticism and horror in films. 

Jesús Franco (aka Jess Franco, Jess Frank) brought a mishmash of interests and influences to his films. In his earliest works, this lent them an offbeat vibe at the same time that they dealt with familiar tropes. He seemed to be riffing on characters and situations from earlier genre films while adding his own recurring obsessions. 

The most direct influence would be the Bela Lugosi starring thriller The Dark Eyes of London, aka The Human Monster (1939). The Lugosi character was named Dr.Orloff and had a creepy, blind, huge henchman carry out his murders. Many more Franco films would feature a character named Dr. Orlof or refer to him. 

Of course, the recent French film Eyes Without a Face (1960) had to be a direct antecedent of this film’s plot. It also deals with a doctor abducting women for experiments to restore the damaged face of his daughter. 

Another direct influence was the recent The Brides of Dracula (1960) from Britain’s Hammer Films. Franco has stated that seeing this movie provided the impetus for making a horror film. Since the Hammer films were having great international success and were usually set in a past era, this might have prompted Franco to make his film a period piece rather than a modern day story. 

In this first of Franco’s fright flicks, we have some of his ongoing film fixations make their appearance. As well as the first use of a Dr. Orlof character, he would also have other mad doctors in later films create creepy, mute henchmen to handle the rough stuff. Franco has much of his story take place in a cabaret where we see sexy women perform. This would be a recurrent feature in more of his horror films where beautiful women sing, dance, or strip in drinking establishments. That makes me feel right at home and I save the cover charge. 

Franco uses a very avant-garde score by Jose Págán and Antonio Ramírez Ángel that never seems to establish a melody, but sounds unhinged to create an unhealthy atmosphere. The music in more of his horror films would have a strange combination of prickly and ethereal themes alongside some jazz passages.

I had longed to see this film for many years, being teased by stills of the Morpho character. This wretch looked like one of the creepiest and most depraved fiends in movie history. When I finally had a chance to see this film, Ricardo Valle as Morpho did not disappoint. Those bulging, sightless eyes in that scarred and pale face make for an unforgettable villain. His odd body language and facial tics along with his kill technique of biting people on the neck make for one sick and deadly dude. It is also somehow more disturbing that before Dr. Orlof experimented on him, Morpho looked normal, but he was just as twisted. I still wonder how a blind henchman would be very practical for a mad doctor to use as an assassin, but I must admit this strange touch adds to the eerie vibe in this film. Morpho does have very acute hearing that allows him to zero in on at least one of his victims. Perhaps while Orlof's surgical techniques blinded Morpho they gave him other special senses to help compensate. Yes, I am trying to fill in the logic blanks because I think Morpho is damned cool; creepy, but cool. 

The rest of the cast has some Euro-horror notables. Howard Vernon stars as Dr. Orlof and would go on to star in many more Jesús Franco films. Beautiful Diana Lorys, as ballerina Wanda Bronsky, takes the initiative to track down Dr. Orlof for her fiancé Police Inspector Tanner (Conrado San Martin). She also plays the scarred lookalike daughter of Dr. Orlof. Fernando C. Montes plays Inspector Tanner’s right-hand man Malou. He would go on to be the hero in what may be Franco’s best film, The Diabolical Dr. Z, aka Miss Muerte (1966). Howard Vernon also appears in that latter film. 

Jesús Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof is much more accomplished and disciplined in its story and execution than many of his later films. Many feel that Franco was a hack with no talent because they probably saw some of his later works that he had almost no time or money to make. He was also probably someone more interested in the process of making a film than in the coherence of the final product. 

As he continued to churn out film after film with often impossibly small budgets, Franco became more improvisational. His style of filmmaking was perhaps the cinematic equivalent of his beloved jazz music. Franco was grabbing shots in what seems to be an undisciplined artistic abandon or a short schedule-dictated flurry. We are left to ponder whether the director was lazy, hurried, self-indulgent, or inept. I think that the quality of the images and the coherent plot in The Awful Dr. Orlof, and some of his other black-and-white horror films from the '60s, proves he could make uniquely stylized and accomplished films. They are bizarre to be sure and logic may be as strained as the sanity of the villains, but the best of Franco’s films are hardly inept.