Mad Love

Mad Love (1935)

A new, a strange, a gifted personality comes to the screen!

An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist husband's hands with those of a knife-throwing murderer.

Date of release
1935-07-12
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (129)
Runtime
1h 8m
Genres
Horror, Thriller
Director
Karl Freund

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Les Mains d'Orlac

Mad Love is a 1935 American body horror film, an adaptation of Maurice Renard's novel The Hands of Orlac. It was directed by German-émigré film maker Karl Freund, and stars Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol, Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac and Colin Clive as Stephen Orlac. The plot revolves around Doctor Gogol's obsession with actress Yvonne Orlac. When Stephen Orlac's hands are destroyed in a train accident, Yvonne brings them to Gogol, who claims to be able to repair them. As Gogol becomes obsessed to the point that he will do anything to have Yvonne, Stephen finds that his new hands have made him into an expert knife-thrower.

Production

Florence Crewe-Jones provided MGM with an original translation/adaptation of Renard's story "Les Mains D'Orlac". Writer Guy Endore worked with director Karl Freund on early drafts. Producer John W. Considine Jr. assigned the continuity and dialogue to P.J. Wolfson, and John L. Balderston began to write a "polish-up" of the draft on April 24, 1935.

Filming started on May 6, 1935 with Chester Lyons as the cinematographer. Freund insisted on Gregg Toland, whom he got for a reported "8 days of additional photography". Actress Frances Drake recalled difficulty between Freund, Toland and Considine. Drake said that "Freund wanted to be the cinematographer at the same time", and that "You never knew who was directing.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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