Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Entertaining mad scientist flick directed by Reginald Le Borg, notable for its cast of horror vets. Basil Rathbone plays the lead character, a surgeon whose beautiful young wife is suffering from a brain tumor. To save her he will need to operate but first he wants to get plenty of practice in on the unsuspecting locals. Rathbone's assistant, played by Herbert Rudley, has some objections. Bela Lugosi (not looking well) plays a mute servant in his last completed film role. A waste of his talents but at least this movie isn't as bad as his Ed Wood dreck. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a lunatic brute, as he often did late in his career. Just like Bela, he has no lines. Also appearing are John Carradine, Akim Tamiroff, Tor Johnson, and Patricia Blair. No one in this has a good part except for Rathbone and Rudley. Still, it's a good B movie of the kind that was so prominent in the '30s and '40s but had died out by this point. Too bad they couldn't get Boris Karloff, though.

If I went for snark more often in my reviews, I might say that "The Black Sleep" will put *you* into a black sleep. But, in truth, it's not *that* bad. It's just somewhat disappointing, given the gathering of some of the shining lights of the horror genre. This is really more of a period drama (with precious little period recreation - this is mostly shot in interiors) with touches of horror. Its first three quarters are somewhat dull, and talky, and most unfortunate of all, NOT very atmospheric.The story mostly centers around the activities of a deranged doctor, Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone) who saves a former student, Gordon Ramsey (!) (Herbert Rudley) from the hangman. This he does with the assistance of a drug, the "Black Sleep" of the title, that can make people appear to be dead. Sir Joel intends to have Ramsey assist him in his radical research into the human brain. Ramsey meets such characters as Daphne (Phyllis Stanley), Sir Joels' loyal nurse, two mutes (Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi), and the very fetching young Laurie Monroe (Patricia Blair), while an annoying, talkative gypsy named Odo (Akim Tamiroff) provides Sir Joel with unwilling test subjects."The Black Sleep" is saved, to a degree, by its final quarter, which is good fun, as more characters come crawling out of the woodwork. Among them is a hirsute John Carradine. Don't be fooled; despite his prominent billing, his is little more than a cameo role. The same goes for the hulking Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, who doesn't show up for a long time. The reasonably likable Rudley does a decent job of carrying the story. He's a good man who claims to be innocent of a murder charge, and there's no reason to doubt him. He's also the moral centre, scoffing at the insanity perpetrated by Sir Joel. Mr. Rathbone is marvelous; his performance does ultimately transcend the material. But performers like Carradine, Lugosi, and Chaney end up rather under utilized.Directed without much style by Reginald Le Borg ("Weird Woman", "Diary of a Madman"), but the score by the talented Les Baxter is definitely worth a listen.Six out of 10.

I often wonder… Instead of receiving a salary, were horror icons paid per word that they said in the old days or something? The amount of old (1930s, '40s and '50s) horror movies in which great actors appear, and even receive top billing, but hardly have any lines or dialogs is enormous. Particularly Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. were specialists in this, although this probably had something to do with the fact that they were both very unreliable due to their alcoholism/drug addiction issues in the fall of their careers… The very first screen is perhaps the best thing about "The Black Sleep", because that's the opening image that lists the names of Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and John Carradine underneath each other. What an awesome line-up for a horror movie, you'd think, and we even get a little cherry on top of the cake when also the name of Tor Johnson appears on the second credits' screen! Yes, the line-up is definitely incredible at first sight, but I've rarely witnessed a bigger waste of talents. Basil Rathbone – history's greatest Sherlock Holmes – is the only one with a prominent role, whereas the others merely just serve as set decoration. Lugosi is a mute butler (again…), Chaney Jr is a mad-raving brute (again) and Carradine appears as a kind of wizard but I honestly don't understand who his character was and what his role added to the plot. Purely talking in terms of plotting "The Black Sleep" does form an interesting footnote in horror movie history, as it somewhat builds a bridge between the old-fashioned mad scientists from the Universal era (Victor Frankenstein and such…) and the more emotionally tormented mad scientists from the 1960s and onwards. The former group contains merely just megalomaniac geniuses, whereas the latter group is driven by severe personal problems, usually to cure their terminally ill wives or to save their daughters that got horribly deformed in accidents. The classic French masterpiece "Les Yeux Sans Visage" (1959) was officially the first and most famous of the 'tormented scientist' flicks, but perhaps "The Black Sleep" was really the first one. Physician Joel Cadman (Rathbone) is looking for a cure for his wife's brain tumor and therefore conducts unorthodox experiments in a remote old castle, primarily experiments that teach him how the human brain is mapped and structured. He uses an oriental drug, nicknamed black sleep, that puts the patient in a death-like coma and subsequently cuts open their skull to explore the brain functions. Unfortunately things usually go awry during this process and therefore the castle is full of failed experimental subjects. "The Black Sleep" benefices from the professional direction by Reginald LeBorg and strong performance of Basil Rathbone, but the screenplay is often boring and there disappointingly aren't any real Grand Guignol highlights. As stated already, the phenomenal cast is underused and it's a bit sad that Lugosi's very last role is such a pitiable one.

In 1956, the Universal horror series was a fading memory, and the Hammer horror series was just underway. The Black Sleep straddles the two eras very nicely, with a simple spooky plot set in an old castle with a mad scientist, and the cast is a real dream team.Basil Rathbone plays Sir Joel Cadman, a doctor of some repute, who has invented a medicine called nind andhera, which puts the patient into such a deep slumber that he or she appears to be dead. Sir Joel does this in order to claim the corpse and operate on the person's brain. With these experiments, he hopes to find out how to cure his comatose wife's brain tumor. Got all that? The story begins with Sir Joel slipping the medicine to a convicted murder, a Dr. Gordon Ramsey (Herbert Rudley); when the man is discovered dead in his cell, a shifty-looking gypsy (Akim Tamiroff) claims the body and brings it to Sir Joel. But he doesn't wish to operate on Ramsey - he wishes for Ramsey to assist him. Even mad scientists need some help, you know.Present at Sir Joel's castle/estate (complete with hidden entrances and staircases) are some interesting characters: Mungo (Lon Chaney, Jr.), who used to be a doctor but is now more of an Igor/Quasimodo hybrid; Casimir (Bela Lugosi), who's mute; Bohemond (John Carradine), who thinks he's a crusading knight; and a Mr. Curry (Tor Johnson), who has a connection of his own with Dr. Ramsey.Watching Tamiroff's character Odo, I couldn't help but think he exhibited mannerisms similar to Peter Lorre. Sure enough, Lorre had been offered the role first, but ultimately the filmmakers couldn't meet his price tag.Sure, there's no Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, or Christopher Lee, but that's still an impressive list. And the thing of it is, they all make this work. Rathbone is a great condescending, self-absorbed, driven science-type, and even though Lugosi and Chaney, Jr. don't speak (seriously), they own their scenes as well. This was actually Lugosi's final film, too; he was nominally in Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space, but since he died during filming, archive footage and a stand-in were used instead. He and Tor Johnson had been in Bride of the Monster (Wood again) the previous year, and Lugosi and Rathbone had been in Son of Frankenstein back in 1939.The Black Sleep is a terrific throwback to those dusty-castle movies, complete with monsters (hint - man is the real monster!), pseudo science, and a damsel in distress. See it for some old-school scares; see if for Tamiroff's comic relief; see it if you want to feel nostalgic for horror legends.