The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)

People are voting emotionally.

The acting in this movie is really good.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Recently picking up the DVD/Blu-Ray of Dracula,I started looking out for other Hammer Horror films. Taking a look to see what was on the Horror section of Netflix UK,I was surprised to spot a lesser-known Hammer title,which led to me cheating death.The plot-Paris 1890:Looking for ways to make life eternal, scientist Georges Bonnet makes the discovery but also finds one catch,that one ingredient for eternal life is the parathyroid glands of a women. Over the next decades,Bonnet kills one women every 10 years and continues to live. Moving to Paris in order to get his next locals, curious locals soon discover that Bonnet has no past. View on the film:Rushed into the movie just days before production due to Peter Cushing suddenly quitting, Anton Diffring (the only one to put on a French accent!) gives a good performance as Bonnet,with Diffring getting an easy feel of the "Hammer Gentlemen" side of Bonnet,and displaying a clear delight in leaping into the wide-eyed madness of the everlasting scientist. Despite pretty much being limited to screaming on the sidelines looking pretty, Hazel Court gives the title a quality touch of beauty as Janine Du Bois,whilst Christopher Lee gives Dr. Pierre Gerrard a considerate edge.Cut onto screens a year before the "Mad Scientist" epic Eyes Without a Face,the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster gets Hammer Horror into first place in some parts,via openly revealing the body parts Bonnet needs to survive. Based on Barré Lyndon's play, Sangster is unable to break from the stage roots,from the dialogue having a dusty atmosphere,to the limited locations draining the movie of any real shots of menace.Finding room for style in the uncompromising stage roots,directing auteur Terence Fisher and cinematographer Jack Asher heat Bonnet's madness up in a blaze of primary colours,where lines of ultra- stylised lime green dash across the screen and get under the ageing skin. Stuck in limited locations,Fisher pushes the movie open with creepy,tightly-held close-ups pulling out the deranged ideas of the man who cheated death

The Man Who Could Cheat Death is a carefully presented and decently crafted movie from Hammer Films; and while for the most part it lacks the gusto of Curse Of Frankenstein and Dracula it's a decent enough addition to Hammer Horror.The movie does take quite a while to get going, though. The first 45 minutes or so are bogged down in over-talky scenes that occasionally tell the viewer plot details that are already known - or at least strongly guessable - and the film suffers from some quite bad overacting from Anton Diffring in the set up stages of the plot. Like the film, though he improves as things develop and ceases to look as if he's acting, which is the biggest fault in his performance in the early part of the movie.Diffring plays Georges Bonnet, both a surgeon and noted amateur sculptor, well respected by the art fraternity. Bonnet hides a ghastly secret, however: this 35 year-oldish handsome man is actually 104 (about the same age as Cliff Richard) and through means of a glandular operation has been able to prolong his life, banishing sickness and ageing to boot. Every 10 years the effect wears off, and Bonnet must find a new unwilling donor to increase his already unnatural life span.Diffring is lent sterling support from Hazel Court and Christopher Lee - this is one of Lee's most relaxed early performances and he does well in the role of a young surgeon coerced into performing the operation on Bonnet - and Hammer's production design is as usual impeccable.The movie also ends on a neat twist which you will probably see coming, but is effective anyway. All in all a neatly done, not quite top draw Hammer offering. It just needed more pace during the first half.

Without even knowing anything about the story or themes of "The Man Who Could Cheat Death", you can already rest assured for 100% that the film will be a worthwhile, adequate and highly competent viewing experience. How so? Because this is a horror/Sci-Fi thriller produced by Hammer Studios during their absolute booming years (late 50's – early 60's) and involving a handful of their elite frequent collaborators. "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" is directed by no less then Terence Fisher, scripted by Jimmy Sangster and starring Christopher Lee and muse Hazel Court. In fact, the only one skipping this Hammer party is Peter Cushing, but apparently he didn't like the principal role and dropped out in favor of the underrated Anton Diffring ("Circus of Horror", "The Beast Must Die"). But even without Hammer and all the prominent names involved, this film was guaranteed to entertain. Horror stories centering on mad scientists desperately trying to obtain eternal life are always great fun, especially if their experiment require the lives of innocent others. Georges Bonner is such a brilliant mind who found immortality through a series of gland transplants from very reluctant donors. Immortality has its disadvantages, however, as Dr. Bonner is forced to start a whole new life somewhere else every ten years, and therefore must avoid falling in love with his model victims, and on top of everything he turns green and psychopathic near the end of the ten year period. At 104 years of age, he's currently in the year 1890 in Paris and time is running out for him. Additional troubles arise when his loyal friend and surgeon Dr. Weiss has become too old and ill to perform another operation and Dr. Bonner bumps back into a past love interest. "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" opens very atmospheric, morbidly Victorian and very Hammer-like. The opening sequence is in fact another reference towards the contemporary Jack The Ripper murders, even though immediately after the action moves to Paris. Sadly, in spite of the very promising intro, it takes an awful long time before anything significantly happens after that. What follows is a lot of overlong and talkative sequences between Bonner and his long lost love interest, his new rival, his collaborator and even the police. The only truly horrific and tense moments occur when Dr. Bonner is in dire need of his life pro- longing serum. Whenever that happens, his face and hand turn bright green and he goes completely bonkers, killing victims through melting their skins by the bare touch of his hand. Despite the rather slow and uneventful first hour, "The Man Who Could Cheat Death" benefices from an exciting finale with a few gruesome moments and provocative make-up effects for the time. I've always thought of Anton Diffring as a very underrated horror actor, so I'm glad he appeared in the lead role of this Hammer production. Admittedly his performance is over-the-top occasionally, but at other times he's definitely menacing and creepy. Christopher Lee is terrific as always, though this time in a seldom heroic and eloquent role. Around that time, he was mainly portraying monsters of all sorts in Hammer films. My personal favorite performance comes from Arnold Marlé as the intelligent but aging Dr. Ludwig Weiss.

Not an uninteresting story, though it's familiar enough in its broad outlines. Anton Diffring is a doctor who is 104 years old, though he looks about 35. He manages to stay young by killing young women and snipping out their parathyroids, which are then transplanted. The glands of cadavers will do as well but they're not always available. The transplant lasts ten years.Paris, 1889, and Diffring's last transplant is winding down. He's forced do take hits off a jar of blue liquid bubbling with dry ice, which has the effect of keeping him young for a few hours. As usual, he needs the help of his old colleague, Arnold Marle, to perform the operation.Marle is late arriving in Paris and Diffring is desperate. When Marle realizes the gland he is about to transplant is from a living person, not a cadaver, he refuses to go through with the operation and Diffring, in a rage, strangles him.It's a little confusing, granted. Why, for instance, is it difficult to get parathyroid glands from cadavers now? And when Marle performed those several earlier transplants of glands from living humans, didn't he recognize them for what they were? How stupid can you get? There's also a subplot involving Diffring's having young women model for him -- he's a sculptor on the side -- then killing his models, presumably for their glands, and hiding the finished busts. It has nothing to do with the story. Anatomists will be interested in knowing that, according to this movie, the parathyroid is evidently located in the upper left quadrant of the patient's abdomen.And early on, Diffring attacks a young woman and she appears dead, only to show up in the climactic scene, crazy, so that she can throw on lantern on the rapidly deteriorating Diffring and burn his murderous arse to death. I don't know how she survived the first attack or what drove her mad or why Diffring keeps her locked in his basement.The play from which this is derived might have been better than the film. At one point, another upright surgeon, the elegant Christopher Lee, asks Diffring why he and Marle didn't publish their work when they first discovered the secret of eternal life seventy years ago, and Diffring comes up with two thoughtful reasons why.No outdoor locations are used. There are only a handful of well-dressed indoor sets but they're reasonably effective. Diffring is, I suppose, handsome in a way but he's a terribly wooden actor. With his every move, his every utterance, it's as if he's following the director's orders and doesn't want to get them wrong. On those rare occasions when he tries to smile, one can almost hear the agonized creak of wood.The ladies' performances are perfunctory. The best performances come from Lee, a steady hand at the helm there, and Arnold Marle, who over acts outrageously but engagingly. He looks an aged wreck but his voice is a delight.The only thing I'll probably remember from the film is not the final holocaust but Diffring's giving those reasons why eternal life will lead to catastrophe for the human race. If nobody dies, for example, then the world will become impossibly crowded as humans multiply like rabbits. He was right about that. It's following that trajectory despite our mortality. In 1900, the world's population was about one billion. In 1950 it was about two billion. Now it's approaching seven billion. In other words, it's more than doubled over each of the past two half centuries. That's known as a logarithmic curve. And nobody is addressing the problem.As for the film as a whole, it should please those who enjoy these sorts of things -- the mad doctor, spilling over with hubris, strangling people for their glands, the shoddy lighting and neon colors on Chunking film stock. For me, once was enough.