Human Monster, The

1120. THE HUMAN MONSTER (Dark Eyes of London) (1939-Great Britain). Wish BEIA LUGOSI. One of the most macabre of horror films! Lugosi plays the “brilliant but unbalanced” Dr. Orloff, an unlicensed medical doctor who owns an insurance company. In his spare time, he works with indigent blind men in a London settleÂment. Beware. This man is no philanthropist He is a fiendish killer! Murder and mayhem abound in this mystery, based on the novel by EDGAR WALLACE. A rash of drownings brings crack Inspector Holt of Scotland Yard to Dr. OrloffÕs door. Several of the dead men had loans or insurance policies with Dr. Orloff. (Float a loan with this man and you may soon be floating down the Thames as a corpse.) With a Chicago cop named O’Reilly and the daughter of one of the victims. Holt solves the crime with typical Scotland Yard flair. At the home for the blind, Orloff has built a torture chamber which he calls his “hospital room.” His blind assistant lake, a man/monster with a face that would scare Lon Chancy, drowns innocent victims in a water tank and throws them into the Thames at the mad docÂtor’s command. In his most hideous act, the sadistic Orloff ties a blind mute to a bed and electronically zaps his ears to deafen “the poor creature.” “Give me a gun and a bunch of hi-jackers, and I’m okay,” brags O’Reilly. But Holt counters, “There is no third degree in this country. We catch our crooks with kindness.” And so Dr. Orloff meets his just desÂtiny not with the violence of a gun, but by drowning in quicksand, having been pushed from his laboratory window into the (midlands by lake, the human monster he himself created. “When a dog goes mad, he has to be destroyed,” Holt insists. Dr. Orloff is one of Lugosi’s most heinous villains and The Human Monster is as frightening a film as ever was made about the dark streets of London! 76 minutes. Horror