Review of The Awful Dr. Orlof

This has its moments and there are some splendid b/w street scenes amid the torrential rain. Good use is also made of the interiors with excellent and strange accompanying music/sound. So its not 'awful' but just not as good as it might have been, indeed, of course, not anything like as good as the earlier and quite amazingly scary/poetic, Eyes Without a Face. Howard Vernon is okay and Diana Corys does well in the dual role. Mind you having had the great idea to have the same actress play Orlof's disfigured daughter and the inspector's fiancé, more could have been made of this. As it is you would be forgiven for not even realising it were the case, but for the portrait on the wall. This is not a terrible early effort from Franco and better than some of his more really awful ones, but he did also make some great Euro trash cinema and whilst I think it was always a struggle as to how much he should really let himself go, he often got it right, even if too lurid at times, for some. Worth a look.