Corridors of Blood (1963)

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Viewers are duly warned before CORRIDORS OF BLOOD that the movie is set in a time "before anesthesia." Having just recently watched WITCHFINDER GENERAL with Vincent Price (which reminded me of the vomitorium classic MARK OF THE DEVIL), I felt a twinge of trepidation. Had filmmakers as far back as 1958 pushed the cinematic envelope to uncomfortable extremes? Would I be able to sit through this one if they had...? Not to worry: despite its lurid title, CORRIDORS OF BLOOD is a fairly palatable little tale with yet another good performance from Boris Karloff. But "You can't have operations without screams," offers the blustering Blount: "Pain and the knife are inseparable." In an Age when there are upwards of 500,000 cases of malpractice every year in the U.$. alone, the efforts of Karloff's Bolton seem almost feckless. Adds Blount: "Ever since surgery began, man's destiny has been to suffer..." And so it goes.

(Credit IMDb) In an effort to relieve the suffering of surgery patients, Dr. Thomas Bolton painstakingly develops an opium-based anesthetic, to which he gradually becomes addicted. In order to provide a continual supply of chemicals to continue his experiments and support his addiction, he falls in with a den of murderers who use his signature to sell cadavers to the local hospital. I found this online the other day, and decided to watch it. I'm a big Boris Karloff fan, and will watch almost anything he stars in. Apparently, this wasn't released until 1962, and I can see why. It has a heavy message going for it. It was back around the time where surgery wasn't nearly as advanced as it is these days, so they did some pretty ballsy stuff. Back then, you didn't have anesthesia like you do now. It was not only painful, but often frightening. The thought of surgery is scary enough as it is, even with anesthesia, but it's even more terrifying without it. My problem with this movie is that it failed to maintain my interest. In fact, it's almost lifeless at times. Boris Karloff's drug addiction was somewhat riveting at certain points, don't get me wrong. But it was a bit too bland, despite how deeply they delved into it. Boris Karloff gives a bravura performance. He is by far the best thing about this movie. I felt for him. I just wish they gave him more to work with. Many of the films he made as he got older, didn't deserve a man of his talents. This movie is one of them. Christopher Lee is quite chilling as well, I just wished he and Karloff had more screen time together. Overall, I don't grasp why this movie is well liked. It's boring, rather depressing, and hard to get into. I respect people's opinions, so maybe you'll get more out of it than I did4.6/10

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.

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