While the typical science fiction-horror film of the mid-1950s might be expected to feature some variation on giant atomic monsters, The Black Sleep (1956) appeared in mid-cycle to offer its own style of throwback, would-be chills. It is a period piece, featuring the type of mad scientist role typically seen in 1940s potboilers from Monogram or PRC. As in those earlier creaky spook shows, Bela Lugosi is present here, and yet he isn't the starring madman. Instead Lugosi is the most conspicuously non-spooky member of a team of bogeymen ranging from the raving Shakespearean John Carradine, to the Kharis-like foot-dragger Lon Chaney, Jr., to that empty-eyed lump of a Swede, Tor Johnson. The budget of The Black Sleep was large enough to allow for impressive sets and an atmospheric score (by Les Baxter), but the schedule was rushed enough to sabotage any further attempt at atmosphere.

In retrospect, however, The Black Sleep comes across as the missing link between something like Monogram's Voodoo Man (1944, with Lugosi and Carradine) and the slick mad-lab doings seen from England's Hammer Studios beginning in the late 1950s. The linchpin here is the sterling performance by Basil Rathbone. Surrounded by such a motley group of born scenery-chewers as Carradine, Lugosi, Chaney, and Akim Tamiroff, Rathbone could have tipped the scale and made the film a textbook for sorry thespian antics. Instead he gives a measured, intelligent reading (that helps to blot out the ham-fisted performance he gave in Son of Frankenstein, 1939). Many may feel that The Black Sleep only comes to life during the final 10-minute freak parade, but those waiting for the nutzoid ending fireworks should pay closer attention along the way to the silky-smooth Rathbone; he elevates Sir Joel's dark mission statements to a finely-etched study in inevitable tragedy, and in the process, he elevates some low-budget hokum to effective, watchable fun.

Producer: Howard Koch, Aubrey Schenck
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Screenplay: John C. Higgins, Gerald Drayson Adams (story)
Cinematography: Gordon Avil
Film Editing: John Schreyer
Art Direction: Robert Kinoshita
Music: Les Baxter
Cast: Basil Rathbone (Sir Joel Cadman), Akim Tamiroff (Odo), Herbert Rudley (Dr. Gordon Ramsay), Patricia Blair (Laurie Munroe), Lon Chaney Jr. (Dr. Munroe), Bela Lugosi (Casimir).
BW-82m.

by John M. Miller