Doctor Bloods Coffin (1961)

[Scott]

FLIX played DOCTOR BLOODS COFFIN this afternoon. It was made in 1961 and stars Hazel Court (from Devil Girl from Mars) I don't remember the name of the actor that played the Doctor.

The film has some nice location scenes along England or Ireland coast and its in well preserved color. A young doctor returns home from a Vienna Medical school. The guy has nothing better on his mind than to make the dead live so it seems at first. The doctor needs a working heart to put into a corpse. They never really tell you his motivation for doing this. He has a hard time securing a heart. He kills off 3 people before he is sucessful. He injects his living victims with some kind of tranquillizer that keeps them awake while he removes their heart. The pumping heart looks like something from Spencer Gifts novelty store. While the heart is pumping with arteries still attatched the victim is watching everything with attentive eye movements and very much conscious. Now the doctor puts the heart into a corpse and it comes to life. He does a whole heart transplant by himself. The corpse (which is a great looking zombie) has moss growing on it. I guess this doctor didn't consider replacing the rest of the organs as well.

This movie is wacky at time and they seem to be just killing time
during parts of the film. Like having the doctor running along the coast looking for one of his escaped victims. After 1 minute I would have gotten the idea, but they have to show him running around for about 5 minutes. Before that they have to show him playing around with scientific equipment for longer than nessesarry. The best part is the 2 minute death struggle of the doctor and the corpse. By the way is the only corpse he brings to life in this film.

If it wasn't for the nice scenery, a funny scene involving the mortician of the town, and the death struggle at the end. It would have been a total waste of time. I'll give it 2 out of 5 stars.