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The Man Who Could Cheat Death
[Legend]
1959; color
Directed by Terence Fisher
Starring: Anton Diffring, Hazel Court & Christopher Lee
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While the Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy pictures kicked off Hammer's golden age of horror in the late '50s the venerable studio also continued to make other non-monster horror / thrillers, some of which have been forgotten or lost and some, like The Man Who Could Cheat Death, are only now being released for the first time for home viewing. (As in they never were issued on VHS in the '80s or '90s.) Just prior to this film Christopher Lee played The Mummy; this time around he got a change of pace, playing the hero in a Victorian period piece. His character, Dr. Gerard, is enamored with a woman named Janine (Hazel Court). She, however, is secretly in love with the mysterious Dr. Bonnet. Bonnet, who secretly pines for Janine, runs a clinic in Paris and is also an accomplished sculptor. He seems fairly normal, but is hiding a terrible secret - he's actually 104 years old! Fortunately, he has discovered the secret of eternal life so he looks about 40. Unfortunately, he needs a pituitary gland transplant every ten years to stay alive. If he can't get the gland by a certain time, he can sustain himself for another four weeks by talking a weird potion every six hours. If he doesn't take those meds in time, his skin begins to glow a weird greenish tint and he begins to age rapidly and act all crazy and unpredictable. Seeing as how this type of existence must be cloaked in secrecy, Bonnet moves every ten years and in every town he's been in, a girl has gone missing without a trace just before he's relocated. In Paris one of his models, who's of course in love with him and reluctant to break off their relationship now that he's done sculpting her, "accidentally" dies during a shouting match as the meds are wearing off. Bonnet's colleague through all of this is another doctor (Prof. Weiss), who's now in his 80s but continues to do the special surgery once every ten years. When Weiss arrives for their decade-annual procedure he arrives days late, and Bonnet's already starting to freak out a bit. To make matters worse, Weiss has suffered a stroke and one of his hands now shakes uncontrollably, making surgery an impossibility. (He can instruct and direct but can't do the actual work.) Since Gerard is in the same social circle as Bonnet, Weiss tries to convince him to do the operation (under his guidance of course), which he reluctantly agrees to do. Meanwhile, the police are investigating the disappearance of his recent model but are baffled. Feeling the heat, as well as guilt over tampering with the laws of nature and essentially playing god - not to mention that he quickly susses out the latest pituitary replacement came from a living human rather than a corpse - Weiss has a change of heart and decides he no longer wants to be a party to the proceedings, resulting in his imminent demise. When Gerard gets wind that Weiss has suddenly "left town", he refuses to do the operation. He also goes to the police. Bonnet, playing his trump card, lures Janine to his sculpting studio where he locks her away. He tells Gerard that since only he knows where she is, if he doesn't do the operation he'll die without revealing her hiding place. (Therefore she will presumably die as well.) Gerard finally agrees and operates… or so Bonnet thinks. After the procedure, Bonnet runs off without telling Gerard where Janine is, leading to Gerard and the police to find a paper trial which eventually turns to the secret hiding place. As you might expect from a Hammer film, good wins out over evil in the nick of time but the twisted road the story travels is definitely different for Hammer and a nice change of pace from the big-time monsters.
—the Kommandant
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