The Black Sleep: Reginald Le Borg

Many horror films from the 1950s haven't aged well. Reginald Le Borg's The Black Sleep is not one of them. Despite its age, The Black Sleep scared me on a primitive, basic level. It exploits two very basic yet powerful fears. The first is that of biological deformity and sickness. The second is of medical professionals, i.e. people we trust with our very lives, betraying and abusing our bodies. The Black Sleep follows Sir Joel Cadman, a prominent surgeon whose wife falls ill with a fatal brain tumor. He has a gypsy kidnap people so he can use them in "experiments" that he hopes will unlock the secret to saving her life. He does so with the use of an Indian anesthetic, Nind Andhera, which puts the patient into a death-like sleep. Once he has cut and explored their brains, he locks them up in a dungeon in a perverse gallery of medical horrors. I was stunned by the graphic surgery scenes in The Black Sleep. Some of them, particularly one shot where a still-living cerebellum is split open, would warrant an R-rating by today's standards. And yet, despite its graphic violence, the film doesn't rely on it. The film revels in atmosphere and character drama. The cast is full of horror veterans who deliver magnificent performances, including Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson. I personally cannot believe that I have never heard of this film before. It deserves to be enshrined as a horror classic.

9/10