The Soul of a Monster (1944)

Thanks for the memories!

Masterful Movie

A Disappointing Continuation

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Soul of a Monster, The (1944) * (out of 4) Forgotten horror film from Columbia about a doctor on his deathbed whose wife prays, to good or evil, that he lives. He gets better thanks to a mysterious woman but what they don't know is that this woman put the soul of a monster into the doctor's body. There's a very good reason Columbia hasn't released this sucker on any home video format and that's because it's pretty damn bad. I took me three viewings before I could watch the entire film without falling asleep. The film tries very hard to recapture the mood and feel of a Val Lewton film but it fails on all levels.

**SPOILERS** Very esoteric and little know film about "Good" an "Evil" that has to do with a man on his deathbed within moment of leaving the world that he gave, in saving the lives of hundreds of people, so much of himself to.Dr. George Winson,George Macready, has done so much and asked so little in helping those who needed his help as a brilliant surgeon and psychologist. Infected by an incurable disease, from one of the patients that he saved, George is now in the hands of the Almighty waiting for his final curtain call. It's then that George's bereaved wife Ann, Jeanne Bates, goes a bit off her noodle, mind, begging for anyone, in this world or the next, to please save her husband from the faith, death, that's now waiting for him.Ann should have known better and left things the way they were but her love for George and wanting him to live turned the man into a monster. Not the kind and caring saint that he was before he fell into the deadly coma that's slowly taking his life away from him. It turns out that Ann summoned this "Evil Spirit" in the form of Lilyan Gregg, Rose Hobart, who despite giving her husband back his life forgot, on purpose of course, to give him his soul back with it. Now fully recovered and in excellent health George was not exactly the person that his friends family and patients knew him as. Stuck up and irritable as well as rude to everyone, including his loving wife Ann, he came in contact with it's obvious that George just isn't himself. It's George's best friend Fred Stevens, Eric Rolf, who soon sees the metamorphose that he went through and in an effort to save George's soul tries to get the poor and confused man help. It's then that Lilyan trying to keep George under her evil control turns George,like a guided missile, on Fred only to be stymied when Fred who happened to find a crucifix, lying there in front of him on the sidewalk, in just the nick of time to stop the crazed and icepick waving George in his tracks.It soon become a struggle between George who's Godly goodness, despite him having no soul, is slowly getting the upper hand over the evil Lilyan. It's then when Lilyan really goes all out to get George to murder his loyal and admiring assistant Dr. Vance,Jim Bannon, and then have him sent straight to the hot seat, the electric chair, for it. It's this way that Lilyan can have George by being sent to the place where the sun don't shine, and where it's hot as blazes all the time, all for herself for eternity.*****MAJOR SPOILERS****The surprise ending is a bit uneven in that it left you up in the air to just what exactly it's trying to tell you. Not in George's mental state but in the condition he finds himself in as the movie ends. Still "Soul of a Monster" is by far one of the best, as well as one of the most unknown, movies about the struggle between "Good" and "Evil" ever to come out of Hollywood. The film is surprisingly nowhere as corny or predictable as you would have imagined, before you saw it knowing it's storyline, it to be and that by far is the biggest surprise, together with the surprise ending, in the movie.

This movie is a treat: a beautifully-shot, well-acted little horror film in the tradition of Val Lewton. Admittedly, it's very preachy and didactic with a load of pretentious spiritual dialogue, but it's far more advanced than any of the "Monsters jumping out at you" brand of horror that most studios were doing in the 40's. George Macready (always great) is a dying surgeon whose wife pleads with the forces of darkness, or any forces, to save him. Enter Rose Hobart, a mysterious woman who somehow brings him back from death's door. But Macready is now a changed man: moody, vicious, mean, distracted. He eventually leaves his wife and goes to live with Hobart. His friends try to save him, but he nearly kills one of them, then allows another to die when he could easily have saved him. This is all shot in a dreamlike style that takes place in a nightmarish night-world where every action seems to be a choice between life and death, every thought is about salvation and damnation. It's not perfect, but it's very unusual and very worth catching. Wish it were out on DVD.

This little-seen Colombia horror film from 1944 is a pretentious, but still interesting film.It stars George Macready, in one of his first films, as a good doctor who is on his deathbed. His wife, played by a solid Jeanne Bates, wishes at the family fireplace for any force from heaven or hell to save him as she has lost faith with her god. Her wish is instantly granted by an unseen Satan as Rose Hobart plays a sort of 'Soul Master' who coldly arrives on the scene and saves Macready. Her action, of course, has a price.Without revealing too much, this seems to have tried to copy the Val Lewton formula, which was popular at the time. The film opens and closes with a narrative quote. The direction is adequate. There is a long "chase" scene in the middle that seems to go on forever. The two characters walk as if elderly people on prozac. It is meant to be suspenseful, but it's just too darned long to keep up the suspense.The film has very few "horror" moments, but some nice cinematic ones. There are shadows aplenty, but the best touch is the arrival and departure of Rose Hobart's character. The film changes to a negative image and then back to positive. I hadn't seen that technique used before in a classic horror film and there were some effective dutch angles that did a good job of building the suspense.A decent film that unfortunately is just never too interesting, it's worth viewing for hard core classic horror buffs only. 5/10