Alraune (1952)
In the 1800s, a stormy love relationship develops quickly between a young medical student and a woman believing herself to be the daughter of his scientist uncle, the student having never heard of her before their chance encounter and both unaware that she is the result of the scientist's illegal experiments with artificial insemination..
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Truly Dreadful Film
Too much of everything
Overrated and overhyped
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
The fifth and - to date - last film version of Hanns Heinz Ewers' 1911 bestseller is handsomely mounted, interestingly cast and far too talky. It worked far better as a silent film, with Brigitte Helm much more convincing than dear Hildegard Knef as the soulless product of artificial insemination. By bestowing such inauspicious parenthood upon his creation Professor ten Brinken (Erich von Stroheim!) explicitly states that it's his desire that a bit of depravity in her genes will create a more exotic bloom than two upstanding citizens could have produced; although real life is constantly demonstrating that Mother Nature can be depended upon to regularly create plenty of young women with more conventional antecedents capable of wreaking just as much havoc among the male sex.Although Ewers was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the New Order and joined the NSDAP in 1931 - and 'Alraune' clearly reflected the eugenics debate that Hitler brought into disrepute - it wasn't filmed during the Nazi era. The director of this postwar version, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, had been an enthusiastic propagandist for the Nazi regime, which makes him an ironic choice for such potentially touchy subject matter.
The title refers to the German word for Mandrake root. A disturbing and noir-like horror movie that viewers will either love or hate, it has a queasy quality with elements of camp that will either annoy or delight.Charismatic actor and director Erich von Stroheim, who held his own in Sunset Boulevard, doesn't disappoint here. Karl Boehm, the wide-eyed, eerily handsome actor who rose to stardom in the British cult horror classic Peeping Tom, is also very watchable.Context is everything. This is an intriguing horror film that will reward a second viewing.
Unnatural: Fruit of Evil/Alraune/Mandragore - I have not seen 1918, nor the 1928 or the 1930 versions of this film, so I have nothing to compare this 1952 with.A scientist has taken the 'seed' of murderer and impregnated a prostitute by artificial insemination. The scientist thought the results would make for a more interesting study from bad people, because good people are so boring - as he explains.It seems that artificial insemination sparked fears and ideas in people of the early 1900s... but a fairly interesting film came from it. There are better sci-fi horror films of the 1950s but this one is still worth a one time watch.6.5/10
I saw this on Amazon Prime under the title UNNATURAL: FRUIT OF EVIL. It's a slow-moving little potboiler in which a scientist manages to create an artificial woman with no sense of morality. Inevitably the woman gets loose in the world and causes calamity due to various men falling in love with her. While there are shades of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN in the premise and the film explores some intriguingly muddy moral ground, generally it's cheap and listless, never really sparking when it should. The best thing about it is the cast, including Karl Boehm (later of PEEPING TOM infamy), Hildegard Knef, and the barnstorming Erich von Stroheim.