I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Entertaining mad scientist flick directed by Reginald Le Borg, notable for its cast of horror vets. Basil Rathbone plays the lead character, a surgeon whose beautiful young wife is suffering from a brain tumor. To save her he will need to operate but first he wants to get plenty of practice in on the unsuspecting locals. Rathbone's assistant, played by Herbert Rudley, has some objections. Bela Lugosi (not looking well) plays a mute servant in his last completed film role. A waste of his talents but at least this movie isn't as bad as his Ed Wood dreck. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a lunatic brute, as he often did late in his career. Just like Bela, he has no lines. Also appearing are John Carradine, Akim Tamiroff, Tor Johnson, and Patricia Blair. No one in this has a good part except for Rathbone and Rudley. Still, it's a good B movie of the kind that was so prominent in the '30s and '40s but had died out by this point. Too bad they couldn't get Boris Karloff, though.

Take two of Ed Wood's stars of "Bride of the Monster" and the not yet released "Plan 9 From Outer Space" (Bela Lugosi & Tor Johnson), a bunch of other horror vets (Basil Rathone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine), and place them in a spook fest that at first appears to be the best horror film of 1936. Then, only half an hour into the film, toss in all of the silliness you can muster, and you end up with the worst supernatural film of the year. ("Plan 9", made in 1956, was not released until 3 years later...) Like in "Plan 9", Bela Lugosi doesn't utter a word (which would make Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway" very happy....). He's Casmir, the mute "Butler" for mad doctor Rathbone who saves a convicted killer (Herbert Rudley) from the gallows by giving him "The Black Sleep", a potion that renders him to appear dead. Rathbone then takes him to his castle (a must for all mad doctors) to assist him in his nefarious experiments concerning the study of the brain. The first half hour is satisfactorily equivalent to the Monogram horror films of the first half of the 1940's, but once Akim Tamiroff (as an evil gypsy) visits Rathbone at the castle, everything turns into a pathetic mess. Chaney, Johnson, and Carradine are all wasted in ridiculous parts. Carradine is dressed and acts like he is still waiting for Charleton Heston to come down from the mountains in the same year's "The Ten Commandments".The science fiction elements of the plot (examinations of the functions of each part of the human brain) is at first interesting, but ridiculously acted by the guinea pig who must demonstrate physically what each part of the brain controls. The film reaches its nadir with a fleeing nurse whose back is on fire, and the revelation of Rathone's laughable prisoners. That part itself is a rip-off of "Island of Lost Souls". The rest of the film is the poorest attempt to re-capture the fun of all those Karloff/Lugosi mad doctor films Monogram turned out 15 years before. Thank American International for giving us Vincent Price to show us how it really should be done!

Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone), a mad scientist, kidnaps his victims and cuts open their brains in an effort to discover a means to cure his wife's brain tumor.Okay, so you have a 1950s mad scientist story about a guy doing experimental brain surgery that results in some serious mistakes. That alone could probably make a pretty decent horror film -- who is opposed to seeing brain dead lobotomy patients lumbering through a dungeon?But, really, this film could not have failed if it tried. Besides Rathbone, it features Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and John Carradine. They could have stood around and played hackey sack and I would still watch it.Paul Corupe makes an interesting observation about this film's role in history. He notes that on the surface, Cadman is your typical 1930s mad scientist, saying things like, "In the interests of science, anything is justified." But underneath that, he is a 1950s scientist, a transitional figure who does experiments not just because he can but because he is trying to save a life -- he is one of the very first mad scientists we can feel sorry for, possibly. The only earlier example Corupe offers is from "The Ape" (1940).

Oddly enough The Black Sleep was some years ahead of its time medically speaking. The title refers to a drug from India that scientists Basil Rathbone uses to do that. Today it's a technique to enable recovery from certain illnesses or injuries. But being that this is Basil Rathbone mad scientist you know the drug will be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes. Rathbone gets Dr. Herbert Rudley out of prison to assist him by use of his coma inducing Black Sleep. Rudley is in prison for a murder he didn't commit. When he 'dies' before the death sentence is carried out that's the end of it. But Rathbone has a lot of work for Rudley to do, operations on some willing and not so willing patients. What it's all about you have to see The Black Sleep for.If you do see it you're in for a treat because with a cast of scene stealing actors such as Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., and John Carradine, this is not to be missed. All three of their characters are products of Rathbone's failed experiments. Carradine in particular is joy. He plays a deranged man who thinks he's a Crusader King and he's overacting outrageously and I'm loving every minute of it. Also in the film is Akim Tamiroff as a gypsy grave robber who also aids Rathbone.All these people have legions of fans still. So if you want to see a film that's a combination of Frankenstein and the Island of Dr. Moreau with a great cast you can't miss with The Black Sleep.