User Reviews

This is a deceptive little film. First off, because it was made and sat for four years before release, you might be inclined to think it is a dud--but that's far from true. The film is very good--good enough to almost earn an 8. Second, while the film has some horrific scenes and features Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, it is not a horror film but more of a drama. So if you see it, don't expect monsters or madness--instead, there are just bad people and good people doing bad things.

The film is set in 1840 and Karloff plays an exceptionally skilled surgeon who is dismayed that there are no drugs to alleviate the suffering of patients during surgery. Basically, people were wide awake and felt EVERYTHING during surgery and amputations! This is true, as the first anesthesias didn't come about until around 1850. Despite his concerns, other doctors didn't share his enthusiasm for change, so Karloff foolishly begins experimenting on himself--inhaling a mixture of various chemicals (including opium). Not surprisingly, he becomes addicted and this once sweet man becomes an unwilling pawn in the seedy underworld.

The film gets very high marks for construction, writing, direction and the performance of Karloff. There isn't much I'd change about the film, though fans of Christopher Lee might be disappointed that his role isn't that big and his character isn't that interesting (despite the fact he's a cold-blooded murderer). Give this intelligent little film a watch--it's really very good.

Corridors of Blood (1962) is the story of a doctor trying to discover the secret of painless surgery. While less a horror film and more a study of the decline in an individual caused by drug addiction, it does have several creepy and frightening moments. Some of the surgery sequences are gruesome. And, any film with both Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee has got to have its share of horror moments.

The basic story - Karloff plays the doctor. He experiments on himself with the gas he is developing to be used in surgery. He becomes addicted to the narcotics he is using. Soon, he is unable to function and is released from his position as a surgeon. He meets up with a couple of baddies played by Lee and Francis De Wolff who agree to help him get the drugs he needs. All Karloff has to do is sign some blank death certificates. Revealing anymore of the story would be too much.

Karloff is terrific as the doctor. You can feel his anguish and pain as he realizes what the drugs have done to him. But, you can also see the underlying need he has for the gas. Lee is so incredibly ruthless. His character (Resurrection Joe) kills with no remorse or qualms. This is one character I would have liked to see more of in other films. Also present is an excellent supporting cast lead by De Wolff and Nigel Green.

Corridors of Blood excels at atmosphere. Even with the small budget, the director (Robert Day) is able to portray the seediness and depravity of the Seven Dials area. Perfect! Not a great film, Corridors of Blood is, however, good and very watchable. Karloff's performance alone is reason enough to see this film.

If Boris Karloff's character of a Victorian doctor looking for an anesthetic had the benefit of some scientific journals he might have read about Morton, Long, and Welles over in America experimenting on such a project. In Corridors Of Blood the lines of experimentation that Karloff was pursuing held a lot of danger for everyone concerned.

Corridors Of Blood casts Boris Karloff as a respected London surgeon of the early Victorian era who is seeking a method of painless surgery. But those Americans I cited were using a form of Nitrous Oxide and eventually developed Ether. Karloff has decided to use a concoction that has as its base Laudanum which is an Opium derivative.

The results are what you would expect, Karloff breathing in the fumes of his experiment becomes an addict and starts frequenting the seamier sides of London for Laudanum for his experiments and more for himself. A pair of cutthroats played by Francis DeWolff and Christopher Lee aid him in his search, for a price.

Corridors Of Blood is a moody atmospheric thriller set in Oliver Twist London. Look also for a good performance by Nigel Green as the police inspector looking to break up the den of vice and corruption that Karloff has fallen into. Definitely a must for Karloff fans.

Boris Karloff, as usual, is a joy to watch, as is Christopher Lee, who was right on the verge of becoming a big star in the Hammer films. This film is also notable for strongly evoking the grimy atmosphere of those out-of-the-way areas in 1800's England, worthy of comparison to David Lean's "Oliver Twist" (1948). Coincidentally, not long after seeing this film I happened to read the true life story of Horace Wells (1815-1848), a Connecticut dentist who experimented on himself with ether, chloroform, and laughing gas in an effort to discover a painless method of oral surgery. He succeeded, but became an addict in the process; his behavior subsequently became so violent that he was placed in prison, where he committed suicide. I wonder if Karloff's character in this film is at least partially based on Horace Wells.

Probably somewhat mistitled to sell movie tickets, this is really not a horror film. Karloff plays Dr. Thomas Bolton, a 19th century surgeon at a time before anesthesia, who is renowned for his speed and accuracy. This is needed as the patient must be strapped down and is screaming the entire time the operation is in progress.

Bolton wants to come up with a drug that will allow painless surgery, but his colleagues seem unmoved by the patients' pain, and even say weird puritanical things like the pain is necessary for healing. In a parallel plot, a group of blackguards who inhabit a filthy bawdy pub in a poor part of London have discovered that smothering very drunk people who will not be missed and selling their bodies to doctors is an easy way to make good money.

So, going it alone, Bolton concocts a potion that he thinks might work, trying it out on himself as he tweaks the formula. While he is under the influence of this potion he is in a dream like state, and when he regains full consciousness he feels that whatever he did was a dream. What he doesn't realize until it is too late is that he is becoming addicted to these drugs - it effects his mind and hands to the point where he is a danger in the operating room. The hospital suspends him, and cuts off his supply of drugs. This is where the doctor and the murderers find they can help each other out. Bolton HATES what he is doing - signing off on death certificates of murder victims saying they died of natural causes in return for the criminal gang stealing drugs for him- but his addiction is ruling him as it rules all addicts.

This is satisfying if you know what you are getting yourself into. It's how the noble pursuit of a humane physician goes completely awry. If you are literally looking for corridors of blood you will be disappointed. And apparently that was what happened when this film was released four years after its production, in 1962 on a B horror double bill. Made by MGM when it was in its downward spiral, for some reason it is not in the Turner Classic Movies library.

Karloff is great in this tale of a compassionate surgeon who is looking to relieve the pain and suffering that he inflicts through his life-saving surgery. In the process of developing an anesthetic, he becomes addicted to his formula and is used as a pawn of criminals.

This is not a horror film at all but a good story about the historical problems facing surgery before anesthetic. There are murders for profit, there is the suggestion of painful bloody surgery but they do not really show it. There are no real disturbing scenes. This movie was billed as horror but most horror fans would probably object to this classification. It is, however, a good solid movie about a very real problem, surgery before anesthetic and a man who looked to find the secret to painless surgery.

If you are looking for a horror movie, you wont find it here...but you will find a pretty good movie with the bonus of Christopher Lee as a ruthless criminal killer called Resurrection Joe.

Boris Karloff gives one of his best performances as a tormented doctor trying to invent anaesthesia. In the process he becomes addicted to the narcotics and begin associating with various London low-lifes - including grave-robber Christopher Lee in a rivetting performance.

This is less horror than an atmospheric character study - and it is really very good.

Dr. Thomas Bolton fights for the use of anesthetic in surgery and uses himself as a guinea pig but soon finds himself addicted.

After the success of "The Haunted Strangler", producer Richard Gordon looked at making a follow up with Boris Karloff. At one stage a color remake of Dracula was discussed as was an adaptation of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Eventually producer John Scott discovered a screenplay by Jean Scott Rogers based on the early days of anesthesia, originally called Doctor from Seven Dials.

From what I can gather, the film was put on hold for a few years between shooting and release, and ultimately made a very small profit. This is unfortunate, given the casting of Karloff and Lee, but there is no denying that this film is somewhat inferior to "Haunted Strangler". The fact it was marketed as terrifying seems a bit odd and false... it has some horror elements, but is definitely not scary in any sense.

Long before anesthesia, operations in London hospitals were wards of screaming patients in great pain and suffering. In 1840, Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff),a great humanitarian surgeon, tries to eliminate all the pain and suffering connected with surgery. Bolton tries out experiments on himself and as a result becomes addicted to the drugs which he is taking. Some of Dr. Bolton's pain-killing gas works against him and a patient revives and attacks employee's of the hospital, therefore, Dr. Bolton is dismissed. Bolton wanders into the Seven Dials, a disreputable tavern and is taken over by the innkeeper, Black Ben(Francis De Wolff) and his assistant, Resurrection Joe(Christopher Lee)(The Dracula of the 60's) This film was originally titled "Doctor from Seven Dials, and this film was produced back-to-back with "The Haunted Strangler" by the same director, Robert Day. This film is a great old gaslite melodrama of Old London in B&W and gives you the creeps with all the cries of pain, blood and pain. Karloff plays a very calm doctor in Wolf's clothing, ready to do his THING!

Despite the ominous title and the presence of horror heavyweights Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, I would be reluctant to slap the horror label on Corridors of Blood. Karloff, so often the monster in some shape or form, plays benevolent London surgeon Dr. Thomas Bolton, who is so dedicated to alleviating pain and suffering during his operations that he uses himself as a guinea pig for his experimental anaesthesia. As a result, he becomes addicted to his formula, which, amongst other things, contains tincture of opium and laudanum. Stoned out of his head, the surgeon is exploited by Black Ben, landlord of a seedy tavern with a sideline in selling bodies for medical purposes. The problem is that most of Ben's stiffs didn't die of natural causes, but at the hands of murderer Resurrection Joe (Lee), and a valid death certificate is required for each corpse before he can collect his cash. And that's where Dr. Bolton comes in...

Those looking for classic mad scientist shenanigans, with a crazed scalpel-wielding physician slicing up innocent wenches, will be sorely disappointed, for the true horror here is the horror of addiction, the once brilliant Dr. Bolton gradually becoming a shadow of his former self, unable to perform his medical duties thanks to his constant huffing of his mind-altering mixture. Resurrection Joe is certainly scary and could be viewed as a monster, but he's very much a secondary character, the focus being on the drama of the good doctor's fall from grace, all of which soon becomes repetitive and tedious The film also sees fit to include a sappy romance between Dr. Bolton's son (Francis Matthews) and Susan, the home help (Betta St. John), which adds nothing to the plot whatsoever.

As someone who was looking forward to some classic scary action courtesy of Karloff and Lee (who only made two films together, the other being Curse of the Crimson Altar), I found this historical medical drama (for that is what this really is) not particularly gripping and rather disappointing.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for Yvonne Romain as buxom bar wench Rosa, the dancing dwarf in a top hat (every film should have one), and for Black Ben's gory demise.

Boris Karloff gives a decidedly compassionate performance as a London surgeon madly trying to develop a gas of some kind to use in operations to relieve his patients of the inevitable pain that comes with surgery. The film chronicles much of the trial and error, ridicule from colleagues, and unfortunate reliance on opium based gas that surrounds Dr. Bolton, Karloff's character. Karloff walks in two circles: the first is at the hospital where he works with his son and is surrounded by other doctors and students - the second is a very poor part of the city where he helps the poor and is taken advantage of by a section of thieves and killers led by Black Ben(nice performance by Mr. De Wolf) and Resurrection Joe(played in a characteristically eerie fashion by Christopher Lee). Lee and De Wolf have a side business of killing wayward drunks and selling their bodies to the hospital. All they need is a signature from a doctor...that is where Karloff comes in. Although the film is not a "horror" film, it has some horror elements. Karloff really gives a nice, in-depth portrayal of a man destined to find a new way. The film has a great cast of British stalwarts such as De Wolf, Lee, Finlay Currie and Nigel Green. Production values are low, but the quality of film based on the budget used is exceedingly good.

Dr. Thomas Bolton is one of London's top surgeons, brilliant and fast, he is however constantly troubled by the amount of pain his patients go through, for this be a time before anaesthesia. Painstakingly working on a formula to put patients to sleep during surgery, Bolton is convinced he has found a breakthrough, but upon trialling it in front of the board it goes terribly wrong. He continues undaunted, but as he keeps testing the formula out on himself he becomes badly addicted, unable to get the hospital board to sanction his research, he gets involved with a dastardly group of murderers who kill and then sell off corpse's to a suspect doctor.

Make no (saw) bones about it, this is a wonderful Boris Karloff performance, the amount of sympathy and earthy fortitude he puts into Dr. Bolton is very impressive. The plot isn't up to much and fans of staple horror requirements will hardly get any titillation from it, but as a crime picture and a character study it comes out smiling and delivers the goods. The sets are very good, check out the frontal entry into the Seven Dials area, and now with better digital transfers the picture's black and white texture ripens the watching experience. It's a film that I suppose is easily forgotten quickly after the viewing, but it's well worth watching for Karloff's turn and an ending that is strangely sad but uplifting at the same time. 6/10

Nice and amazing movie stars Boris Karloff who's awesome as the philantropic doctor investigating with good purports , but resulting in fateful results . Set in 1940 , London , surgeon Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff plays his usual threatening doctor to perfection) fights for the use of anesthetic in surgery and uses himself as a guinea pig , but soon , accidentally , finds himself addicted . Thomas is a good-nature and caring man and even runs a free clinic for the unfortunate and underprivileged people . In an effort to relieve the suffering of surgery patients , kindly surgeon Dr. Thomas Bolton attempts to perfect an anesthesia and while becoming an addicted to narcotics , then turns to heinous thieves to support his habit . In a mental fog , he is blackmailed by grave robbers (Christopher Lee , Francis De Wolff) so that he provides his signature to justify the murdered corpses executed by the vicious gang . Bolton accepts in order to continue his experiments and support his addiction and a continual supply of chemicals . Then , a series of grisly killings happening and an intelligent Police Inspector (Nigel Greene) investigates the strange events and eventually unravelling the mystery . Tops in Terror! . Karloff King of Monsters in his new picture of 1000 Horrors ! Karloff King of the Monsters in his new Horror Hit !

A surpringly effective horror/thriller set in nineteeth-century London and originally withheld from release in the USA for five years . A pretty good and gripping picture dealing with scientific experiments to get better the pain on sick people and patients to operate , adding the ¨Burke and Hare grave-robbers¨ theme with a den of murderers to sell cadavers to the local hospital . Eeerie and frightening story from a story and script written by Jean Scott Rogers who contributed efficiently to deliver a really riveting tale . An entertaining and horrifying fare in which the veteran Boris Karloff plays masterfully a scientist who develops grisly tendencies when he's drugged and with terrible , unexpected consequences. Boris Karloff gives one of the best interpretations as a scientist doctor who painstakingly develops an opium-based anesthetic , to which he gradually becomes submitted. This splendid film brought Karloff back to British films after 20 years away , from now on , Boris to play several English horror movies : ¨The haunted strangler¨, "The Sorcerers" , "Curse of Red Altar" and other countries as Italy : "Black Sabbath" , Spain : " Cauldron of Bood" and Mexico : " Cult of the Dead" , : The Incredible Invasion" , "Fear Chamber" . For the ocassion Karloff , without makeup , puts weird faces , twisted gestures and terrific manners , causing a deeply creepy impression . Karloff is very well accompanied by a good support cast , such as : Francis Matthews as his son , Betta St. John as the girlfriend , Nigel Green as a tough Police Detective , Finlay Currie , Adrienne Corri , Francis De Wolff , Yvonne Romain and the great Christopher Lee and an ominous series killer.

There's a magnificently atmospheric cinematography , heightened by professional cameraman Geoffrey Faithfull providing vivid black and white photography . As well as thrilling and stirring musical score by Buxton Orr . This literate terror thriller was fascinating competently directed by Robert Day . This British director was a good artisan who made all kinds of genres as adventures , thriller , terror , such as : "The Big Game" , " Corridors of Blood" , " Click and the dead" , "Initiation of Sarah" , "Man with Bogart's Face" , " Grass is always Greener over the Septic Tank", "She" , "The Way Stretch" . Furthermore , he made TV series episodes from Dallas, Disleyland , The Sixth Sense , Ghost story , Sam Cade , Matt Lincoln , The Bold ones , Ironside, FBI , The Invaders The avengers , among others . Rating : 7.5/10 . Better than average . Essential and indispensable watiching for horror aficionados . The yarn will appeal to Boris Karloff fans . Worthwhile seeing .

In the end I was a little surprised there weren't corridors of blood as the title implies. In fact it wasn't campy or as horror-filled as I was anticipating. I was pleasantly surprised to find this to be a more serious, if a little chilling, story of a Victorian England surgical doctor who is tired of performing surgeries without anesthesia.

"Pain and the knife are inseparable."

This hard working doctor not only works at a hospital, teaches in a medical school and has a free clinic he volunteers at weekly. Frustrated and desperate, Dr. Thomas Bolton starts using himself as a guinea pig testing his own concoctions in the worst scientific experiments I have ever seen. He subsequently becomes addicted as he has finally found a working anesthetic, putting both his surgical patients at risk and compromising his ethics.

Wonderfully acted, I recommend this to fans of early medicine, Bella Legosi and horror alike.

Any film featuring both Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff is an instant must-see for any horror fan. Alone, either one of these can carry a film; but together they make a force to be reckoned with indeed!

Karloff stars as the central character; a doctor who, through trying to find a way to separate pain from the knife (create an anaesthetic), becomes addicted to the chemicals he is working with. The character that Karloff portrays here is a world away from his most famous role; that of Frankenstein's Monster, but Karloff has proved time and time again throughout his illustrious career that he can handle all sorts of different roles, and he handles this one brilliantly. Karloff draws you into his character and really makes you believe that his ultimate, and only goal is to create something to ease the pain of his patients. When his character takes a more sinister turn after becoming addicted to his chemicals, Karloff impresses more. The way his eyes look and the atmosphere of weakness that he portrays is fantastic and just by looking at the man you can tell that he is extremely unwell. Karloff is one of horror's finest assets, and he more than proves himself with his role here. Of course, he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody; it's well known that he is one of the masters of the genre. As mentioned, starring alongside Karloff is another horror master; Christopher Lee. Lee doesn't have a great deal of screentime in the movie; but, as Lee would go on to show time and time again in his later career; with just his presence, Lee can create a foreboding atmosphere about his character that is unmatched by almost every other actor out there.

The film isn't so much a horror as a thriller charting a man's decent into addiction, but the movie still features a lot of horror moments; most notably the screams of the patients on the operating table and every scene with Christopher Lee in it. Director Robert Day manages to create a foreboding atmosphere that firmly places the viewer in 1860's London. I didn't doubt it for a second, and that is very admirable; especially when the budget is considered. Corridors of Blood isn't a very well distributed film, and that is a shame as there is much to enjoy about it. However, if you do ever get the chance to see it; be sure to take it. You'll be glad you did.

Well, as it turned out, I needn't have worried that I would eventually regret my purchase of the Criterion set "Monsters And Madmen" - as this film proved superior to THE HAUNTED STRANGLER (1958).

Featuring literate dialogue and a more realistic story (incidentally, inspired by the book "Triumph Over Pain" on which Preston Sturges also based his THE GREAT MOMENT [1944]!), the film was made for something like twice the budget of THE HAUNTED STRANGLER and had the advantage of being shot on existing sets at the MGM-British studios. All of this allowed for an evocative and meticulous recreation of mid-19th century London, highlighting Geoffrey Faithful's cinematography and Anthony Masters' production design. The film's opening sequence creates an admirable mood of mystery and dread, which is generally sustained throughout - propelled considerably by Buxton Orr's powerful score. Besides, here we have a truly remarkable cast - in my opinion, one of the best ever assembled for a horror film: Boris Karloff, Betta St. John, Francis Matthews, Christopher Lee (impressive as the quietly-spoken black-clad resurrectionist), Francis de Wolff, Adrienne Corri, Yvonne Romain, Frank Pettingell, Finlay Currie, Basil Dignam and Nigel Green.

While the film has some thematic points of reference with the Jekyll & Hyde story (already dealt with in THE HAUNTED STRANGLER!), Karloff's mad doctor cycle over at Columbia during the early 40s (though all of these had contemporary settings), as well as THE BODY SNATCHER (1945), it manages to hold its own perfectly well - and, as such, succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls of cinematic convention into which THE HAUNTED STRANGLER falls (rather than physically turn into a monster, here Karloff becomes addicted to chloroform). The film has been much criticized for its supposed gore, but it's really quite tame (perhaps it's the intensity of the operation scenes that does the trick, suggesting a lot more than it actually shows); I know the present version is slightly incomplete, but even the few seconds of deleted footage found among the supplements isn't all that graphic! Even so, I really liked the way in which slow motion is utilized for the climax when acid is thrown into a character's face.

The accompanying Audio Commentary is just as entertaining as all the Tom Weaver/Richard Gordon tracks I've heard: most fascinating here is the discussion centering around the film's chequered history - CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (by the way, though also known as DOCTOR FROM SEVEN DIALS, it was never shown under that title) was released in the U.S. as part of a double-bill with the low-brow Italian horror WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY (1961), which I watched a few months back (on the other hand, THE HAUNTED STRANGLER was paired with another Gordon production, the maligned but quite effective sci-fi FIEND WITHOUT A FACE [1958], also available as a "Special Edition" from Criterion). Just as informative are the separate interviews featuring director Day and co-star Francis Matthews (he hates his performance and, amusingly, implores the audience not to watch the film merely for his sake!) and the audio-only career overview with starlet Yvonne Romain (I was surprised to learn that she's half-Maltese and, apart from enjoying her recollections of the various distinguished leading men throughout her career, I was especially glad that she mentioned the ironic fact that Oliver Reed - with whom she appeared four times in film and TV - died in Malta).

Finally, I didn't generally mind the fact that both this and THE HAUNTED STRANGLER were presented full-frame rather than being slightly matted so as to duplicate their theatrical exhibition - but there was quite a bit of overscan during the credit sequence of CORRIDORS OF BLOOD...

An interesting film that blends a Jekyll & Hyde type of theme with a Burke & Hare body stealing plot, and ties them together with a medical plot involving the discovery of anesthesia. Boris Karloff stars as a respected surgeon in Victorian London who is committed to finding a way to perform surgery without inflicting pain on his patients. He develops a gas mixture that seems to work, but finds nobody in the medical establishment willing to believe him. He experiments with the formula on himself, and through a mixture of overwork and increasing addiction to the narcotic gas, wanders around London at night with no memory of what happened. He falls in with a criminal gang at an unsavory pub that want to use him to get fake death certificates for the bodies they sell to the hospital. A really classy horror outing that features one of the only pairings of Karloff and Christopher Lee (as the body snatching, murderer Resurrection Joe).

This finely-crafted minimalist film stars two of the most legendary horror stars of all time, yet it is without any supernatural elements. I suppose it is classified as horror because it is steeped in the creepy atmosphere of a 19th century operating theater and clinic for the poor, and because Christopher Lee plays a serial killer.

Into the final decade of his career and life, Boris Karloff gives a typically excellent performance of a good and compassionate man who defies the conventional wisdom of his time, such wisdom being the belief that since god intended humans to suffer to administer pain-killing drugs for surgery is to defy god's will.

The creepy, claustrophobic, impoverished world of this film is an appropriate setting for the business of a horror film, as well as a peak into the vast inequities between the upper and lower strata of society. Karloff is an upper-class doctor who once a week operates a free clinic for the poor.

While being thoroughly satisfying as a psychological horror film in its own right, this picture also provides a realistic portrayal of drug addiction and other issues of social relevancy.

Can you imagine a time when amputations were done without anesthetic - and that was considered completely normal?

While there may be some doubt about the accuracy of this story - I believe it was an American dentist that discovered anesthesia - there is no doubt that it is a fine performance by Boris Karloff.

To see him descend into madness as he pursues his dream was thrilling. Using an opium-based formula, he obviously didn't know the danger. He did this while his colleagues were mocking him for the idea that pain and the knife can be separated.

Whomever discovered this, whether Bolton or another, I am truly thankful.