The Black Sleep

The Black Sleep
Directed by	Reginald Le Borg
Produced by	Howard W. Koch executive Aubrey Schenck
Written by	John C. Higgins
Based on	story by Gerald Drayson Adams
Starring	Basil Rathbone Akim Tamiroff Lon Chaney, Jr. John Carradine Bela Lugosi Herbert Rudley Tor Johnson
Narrated by	Basil Rathbone
Music by	Les Baxter
Cinematography	Gordon Avil
Edited by	John Schreyer
Production company	Bel-Air Productions (Prospect Productions)
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	June 1956
Running time	82 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$225,000[1]

The Black Sleep (1956) is an American black-and-white horror film, scripted by John C. Higgins from a story by Gerald Drayson Adams developed for producers Aubrey Schenck and Howard W. Koch, who had a four-picture finance-for-distribution arrangement with United Artists. The film was re-released in 1962 as Dr. Cadman's Secret.

The film was directed by Reginald LeBorg and included in its starring cast Bela Lugosi. Also featured were Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Akim Tamiroff in a role originally written for Peter Lorre. In a "prominent" supporting role was Ed Wood regular Tor Johnson.

Plot

Set in England in 1872, the story concerned a prominent, knighted surgeon whose wife has fallen into a coma caused by a deep-seated brain tumor. Due to medicine's state of the art at the time, he does not know how to reach the tumor without risking brain damage or death to the woman he loves, so he undertakes to secretly experiment on the brains of living, but involuntary, human subjects who are under the influence of a powerful Indian anesthetic, Nind Andhera, which he calls the "Black Sleep". Once he has finished his experiment, surviving subjects are revived and placed, in seriously degenerated and mutilated states, in a hidden cellar in the gloomy, abandoned country abbey where he conducts his experiments.

Cast

• Basil Rathbone as Sir Joel Cadman
• Akim Tamiroff as Udu the Gypsy
• Lon Chaney Jr. as Dr. Monroe aka Mungo
• John Carradine as "Bohemund"
• Bela Lugosi as Casimir
• Herbert Rudley as Dr. Gordon Ramsay
• Patricia Blake as Laurie Munroe
• Phyllis Stanley as Daphnae
• Tor Johnson as Curry
• George Sawaya as Sailor Subject
• Sally Yarnell as Female Subject
• Peter Gordon as Det. Sgt. Steele
• Claire Carleton as Carmoda Daily
• John Sheffield as Det. Redford
• Clive Morgan as Roundsman Blevins
• Louanna Gardner as Angelina Cadman
• Aubrey Schenck as Prison Coroner's Aide (uncredited)

Release

Produced during 1955, the film went into theaters in the early summer of 1956, just ahead of the TV syndication by Universal Pictures of its two decades of "monster movies" through Screen Gems, under the package title of Shock Theater. Writer Higgins, director LeBorg, and stars Rathbone, Chaney, Carradine, and Lugosi had all been significantly associated with Universal "horror films" or related B movies. It is similar to the two "houseful of monster" films of Universal in the mid-40s, House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, only relying on a completely new cadre of human monsters.

United Artists released The Black Sleep out as the A-film in a double feature with The Creeping Unknown. In 2016 it was released on Blu-ray by Kino with an audio commentary by Tom Weaver and David Schecter.

See also

• List of American films of 1956

References

1. Tom Weaver, Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup McFarland, 1 Jan 2006 p 211

External links

• The Black Sleep at the Internet Movie Database
• The Black Sleep at AllMovie
• The Black Sleep at Basilrathbone.net
• The Black Sleep at the TCM Movie Database