Within five minutes of this movie starting, I knew that I was in the process of watching one of the most wretched pieces of celluloid ever to be captured on film. Every tedious B movie cliché is present, from a women's prison setting to lame dialog (so bad it sounds like it was written by an elementary school student) and truly wretched acting from a cast of some professionals and some not so professional. I had to keep reminding myself that I was not watching an early John Waters film where the actors had been directed to over-play it broadly. While the film lasted only 71 minutes, I felt that it seemed closer to two hours. I have never wanted to see "The End" pop up as much as I did here. I don't always agree with Leonard Maltin, but he gave this a bomb, and I agreed only because there is not a negative rating system.
Looking like he's covered in plaster of Paris, Friedrich von Ledebur sulks through this film looking like Boris Karloff's corpse a week after his death. He is revealed to be two centuries old and Victor Jory's mad doctor Murdock is researching a way to keep him alive. There's no motivation for it, and along with his bird-like assistant (Ann Doran made up to look as coldly plain as possible), female inmates of this minimal security prison are utilized for their purposes. These young ladies are purposely incorrectly diagnosed with heart conditions to explain their sudden "death by natural causes", but when von Ledebur begins to get more desperate, he begins to break into the woman's dormitory to collect a human guinea pig for the experiment.
It's up to Charlotte Austin's assistant (hired obviously against the will of Jory and Doran to ensure the inmate's continued mental well being) and handsome doctor William Hudson to expose the evil goings on here, and this leads to a fiery showdown. Frankly, I wanted hideous death scenes for Jory, Doran and von Ledebur (whom I hoped would suddenly break into a million pieces with his stony face) but even that didn't occur. The film is so overloaded with ridiculous dialog that didn't even have the decency to be unintentionally unfunny. Whoever approved this piece of garbage being made should have been instantly canned by Columbia and the film immediately shelved. At least this probably did have the good taste into playing at a drive-in where at least the teen-aged audience was forewarned so they could make out through the showing.
Looking like he's covered in plaster of Paris, Friedrich von Ledebur sulks through this film looking like Boris Karloff's corpse a week after his death. He is revealed to be two centuries old and Victor Jory's mad doctor Murdock is researching a way to keep him alive. There's no motivation for it, and along with his bird-like assistant (Ann Doran made up to look as coldly plain as possible), female inmates of this minimal security prison are utilized for their purposes. These young ladies are purposely incorrectly diagnosed with heart conditions to explain their sudden "death by natural causes", but when von Ledebur begins to get more desperate, he begins to break into the woman's dormitory to collect a human guinea pig for the experiment.
It's up to Charlotte Austin's assistant (hired obviously against the will of Jory and Doran to ensure the inmate's continued mental well being) and handsome doctor William Hudson to expose the evil goings on here, and this leads to a fiery showdown. Frankly, I wanted hideous death scenes for Jory, Doran and von Ledebur (whom I hoped would suddenly break into a million pieces with his stony face) but even that didn't occur. The film is so overloaded with ridiculous dialog that didn't even have the decency to be unintentionally unfunny. Whoever approved this piece of garbage being made should have been instantly canned by Columbia and the film immediately shelved. At least this probably did have the good taste into playing at a drive-in where at least the teen-aged audience was forewarned so they could make out through the showing.