Yes, this film does have horror icons Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone, Tor Johnson, and John Carradine...not to mention character actor great Akim Tamiroff all in one film. The cast alone is worth a look at this fairly low budget horror film about a mad doctor(Rathbone) who performs unnecessary brain surgery on people brought to him presumed to be dead but in reality alive having taken "the black sleep" drug that the film's prologue tells us about in order to save his comatose blonde, young wife. Whew! That was a sentence and a half! Rathbone over does it with his hammy yet always fun performance. The male "hero" lead is nicely done by Herbert Rudley. In fact the story and by-play between Rudley and Rathbone gives the film an appearance of some chilling Victorian potboiler until we get to Rathbone's castle and find the servant opening the door - the deaf servant -is none other than a very old(and sickly) looking Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's role is probably his last "real" screen role and he doesn't even get to say a word and has little screen time. Lon Chaney plays Mungo - supposedly once a college professor, but c'mmon...he looks like he just got back from the saloon - acts like it too. Tor Johnson has a very minor role. The best performance for my money is the way over-the-top performance of John Carradine who is barely in the movie's first two-thirds but explodes onto the scene in the third act. He is as thick a slice of ham as you will find spouting dialog about Saracens, etc... and having an old Moses beard. The Black Sleep isn't a great horror film but definitely a fun one. You just cannot go wrong with these actors even in a slightly less-than-stellar vehicle as this. Just watching Rathbone make little witty quips or seeing Carradine yell "Up! Up!...Kill! Kill" to a band of freakish mutant coming through a fireplace is worth seeing it all by itself.
Review of The Black Sleep
