CORRIDORS OF BLOOD

UK, 1958, 86 minutes, Black and white.
Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Finlay Currie, Frank Pettingell, Betta St. John, Francis Matthews, Adrienne Corri,
Marian Spencer.
Directed by Robert Day.

Corridors of Blood is a companion piece to Grip Of The Strangler (1958), with Boris Karloff, also directed by Robert Day. This is a low budget horror film but very effective in its way. It has a hospital background of the 19th. century - prior to anaesthetics when hospitals were in a gross condition. The screenplay exploits this potential horror situation and links it also with criminals and murderers. Boris Karloff in his old age brings his expertise to many decades of horror characters. There is an excellent British supporting cast including Christopher Lee and Finlay Currie. The type of British horror film of the '50s that they did so well. They were considered somewhat cheap in their time but have moved towards greater critical recognition.

1. The impact of this horror film, its interest in theme and in Boris Karloff?

2. The quality of this British production, black and white techniques, re-creation of 19th. century sets etc.?

3. The background of the 19th. century and audience interest, primitive hospitals, operations and surgery, the horror aspects of the use of bodies and of pain? How well did the film portray this, how tastefully?

4. The importance of the historical background, the pre-anaesthetic period, the pain of surgery, the theme of the pain and the knife?

5. The character of Dr. Bolton, the style in which Boris Karloff portrayed him, a sympathetic character with a potential for good and for evil? The detailed sequences in which he was shown to be a good man, the swiftness of his operations, his concern for the patient e.g. the confrontation with the lame man in the tavern, his concern for the poor and his practice amongst them, the idealist and his hope to find an anaesthetic? His involvement in his experimentation, the noble end, his experimentation on himself, his addiction and the effect on him, the fact that his good nature was able to be exploited by the criminals? How complex a character portrayal?

6. The presentation of the experimentation, the anaesthetic on himself and its strange effects, the laughing and going berserk in the laboratory, the growing addiction and his unwillingness to face this? The presentation of the of surgery, the failure when the patient lashed out at the watching doctors? Leading to the involvement with criminals? The stealing of the necessary chemicals, the involvement in death, violence and his own death?


7. The presentation of the other doctors. Bolton's friends and their sympathy, his enemies and their scoffing? The suspicion of these fashionable doctors on experimentation and advances?

8. The presentation of the low life of the city, the way that they exploited Dr. Bolton in selling corpses, the murderer and his sinister presence, smothering people for gain? The fact that this was the dream world for Dr. Bolton when he was under the influence of the drugs? The ultimate violence, the attempt to murder Bolton, the final chase and the deaths of those involved? A violent comment on what was happening in the medical world?

9. How well did the film build its various crises, in Bolton's own life and experiments, in his public practice, in the criminal world and the combining of all these? An atmosphere of suspense?

10. The build-up towards Bolton's final criminal involvement and his death. The pathos of his dying and bequeathing his book and his experimentation to his son?

11. How enjoyable a horror film, a moral fable about experimentation and the end and the mans?