MAD LOVE **

"Mad Love" was the film that launched Peter Lorre on his Hollywood career and he is wonderfully over-the-top as indeed is the whole film, just one of a number of versions of that grand guignol classic "The Hands of Orlac". Orlac is the concert pianist who loses his hands in an accident and then has the hands of a murderer grafted on by Lorre's mad surgical genius. Unfortunately Orlac is played by that most wooden and unlikely of thirties' stars, Colin Clive, whose alcoholism resulted in his early death at the age of 37 only two years after making this. Clive was a terrible actor and director Karl Freund surrounds him with a host of terrible actors which means this short film, (68 minutes), really does have a B-Movie feel to it but it is superbly photographed, (Gregg Toland was one of the two credited cinematographers), and Lorre gives an A-plus performance which more than redeems it.