The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957)

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Perhaps I've seen way too many overblown and pretentious would-be cult movies lately, but I really enjoyed "The Man Who Turned to Stone" a lot and therefore I reward it with a rating higher than it probably deserves… The plot of this modest '50s production – courtesy of the legendary Sam Katzman – is definitely interesting and compelling, albeit highly unoriginal and full of holes and illogicalness. Victor Jory leads a group of selfish scientists that discovered the secret to immortality and have been around since the 18th Century. In order to unnecessarily prolong their own precious lives, they need the life-extract of other human beings; preferably fertile young women. And what place is better to scout for fertile yet disposable young women than a women's prison? The administrative employee Carol Adams grows suspicious of all the sudden and unnatural deaths at the prison and receives help from an acclaimed state psychiatrist. Although close to getting caught the alchemists must continue their treatments, otherwise their skins literally petrify… The central idea is quite derivative, as the quest for immortality at the expense of innocent people is an often recurring horror movie theme, but the "turning to stone" aspect is a nifty little gimmick. The film also features the cool sub plot about one of the scientist group members – Eric – being a lot less resistant and in need of receiving the treatment more frequently than the others. It's Eric who often roams around the prison's dormitory at night with a half-stoned face and causing mayhem. The script naturally features many holes and dumb elements as well. Why aren't these alchemists relocating more frequently, for instance, or even more importantly, why aren't they sedating their victims in order to prevent them from screaming their lungs out? The filming location is very unconvincing, as the place doesn't look like a prison but merely resembles a campus college or an all-girls summer camp. At first I even assumed it was a summer camp because two of the leading ladies are talking about boxes of Girl Scout cookies… The acting performances are collectively wooden and uptight, but I admit that's also part of the '50s horror charm. The actor who depicts Eric, Friedrich von Ledebur, is menacing enough and the film never once bored me throughout its (short) running time of 70 minutes.

Even though I don't often use the term, this 1950s B horror has become a favorite "guilty pleasure" of mine. It's has an enjoyably weird and sordid premise, even if it's loaded with plot holes and requires a heaping suspension of disbelief. A detention center for women is experiencing an unusually high rate of random heart attack deaths by healthy young female inmates. It turns out that the newest staff of eccentric middle-agers now running the prison are actually centuries-old people who kidnap the girls, and then drain their life forces in order to keep themselves from aging further. The problem is, if they miss their latest energy boosts, they start to turn into stone. A kindly social worker (Charlotte Austin, later in FRANKENSTEIN 1970) and psychiatrist William Hudson (the bad hubby of ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FT. WOMAN) investigate the strange occurrences. Victor Jory is suitably creepy as the head villain. This has some disturbing moments considering its era, and is just offbeat enough to remain consistently interesting. **1/2 out of ****

People running a reformatory are actually centuries old people draining the life out of their charges...if they miss a a treatment they turn to stone...a doctor and the daughter of the governor investigate.Okay but way too talky horror science fiction story. Its the sort of thing thats been done to death before and since---and it kind of works this time but the pacing is so slack any tension is washed out....Not bad- but more something to induce sleep...Watching the film I kept thinking that perhaps had the film been cut down by 15 minutes it might have played better. on the other hand commercials might have helped as well since it wouldn't have seemed like there was nothing going on.

"Small Town Girl" director László Kardos' superficial horror chiller "The Man Who Turned to Stone" qualifies as nonsense from fade-in to fade-out. This inept, outlandish yarn about an ill-fated group of 18th century scientists that have learned to preserve themselves despite the passage of time resembles a vampire movie. Alas, these ordinary-looking evildoers here wind up being far less interesting than vampires. They have survived for 200 years and the secret of their longevity lies in renewing the life energy in themselves by draining it away from helpless, young women. Dr. Murdock (Victory Jory of "The Green Archer") and his associates, including Dr. Freneau (George Lynn of "The Werewolf"), Dr. Cooper (Paul Cavanagh of "The Scarlet Coat"), Dr. Myer (Victor Varconi of "The Hitler Gang"), Mrs. Ford (Ann Doran of "The Crimson Key"), and Eric (Frederick Ledebur of "The Blue Max") conduct unethical, illegal experiments on young ladies to keep themselves alive, but the poor girls perish each time.Writing under the pseudonym of Raymond T. Marcus, blacklisted scenarist Bernard Gordon has contrived a cretinous fright flick for undiscriminating audiences. "The Man Who Turned to Stone" is nothing like Gordon's better known scripts, among them: "The Battle of the Bulge," "Circus World," "Custer of the West," and "55 Days in Peking." Instead, this half-baked, lackluster horror effort recalls his work on "Zombies of Mora Tau" and "Earth Vs. Flying Saucers." Unfortunately, Gordon doesn't provide any back history for the villains and their success at maintaining a low profile after two centuries.Somehow, Dr. Murdock and his accomplices have taken over the administration at LaSalle Detention Home For Girls. Mysteriously, girls start screaming at night, disappear in the arms of tall lumbering Eric, and autopsies later reveal that the girls have died of heart failure. A young, idealistic social worker, Carol Adams (Charlotte Austin of "Gorilla At Large"), looks into the mysterious disappearances after her conspiracy theory inmate secretary Tracey (Jean Willes of "Ocean's Eleven") brings up the issue. Murdock and stern Mrs. Ford refuse to let Miss Adams review the death certificates. Things go awry for Murdock and company when they kill a young inmate, Anna Sherman (Barbara Wilson of "Teenage Doll"), to renew Eric's life energy, and then they hang Anna's body from the rafters of her dormitory while the rest of the girls are out watching a movie in another building. Tracey fumes with outrage about Anna's alleged suicide. "She could no more have committed suicide than she could have flown over the fence." Miss Adams finds it difficult to believe, too, but she finds Jean's claims just as inconceivable. "Tracy, will you stop plaguing me with your insane suspicions," she demands. "If a girl has a heart attack, it's a plot. If a girl hangs herself, it's a plot." Nevertheless, Tracy argues that Anna was not suicide inclined since she had a year to serve on her sentence, a baby awaiting her in the free world, and plans.At the inquest, Miss Adams questions the coroner's findings. Murdock tries to discredit Adams. After all, she has only been on the job for three months. Unexpectedly, Adams finds a friend in state department of mental health psychiatrist, Dr. Jess Rodgers (William Hudson of "Battle Hymn"), who decides to investigate her suspicions himself. Adams is packing her belongings when Rodgers convinces her that he will get to the bottom of this mystery that has resulted in the deaths of eleven inmates. Eventually, Dr. Rodgers receives help from the least expected person: Dr. Cooper. For a long time now, Cooper has wrestled with conscience about Murdock's skullduggery. Lately, they have been struggling to keep Eric from turning to stone, but each treatment has exerted less impact on his system. Dr. Cooper condemns Eric as 'a senseless brute' and argues that they should sacrifice him. Murdock and the others ostracize Cooper, and he dies by literally turning to stone. Before his death, however, Dr. Cooper has reveals to Dr. Rogers the location of his secret journal. Cooper's journal contains the complete and infamous exploits of Dr. Murdock and company.The villains in "The Man Who Turned to Stone" aren't very smart. They dispatch one of their own, Eric, to fetch the girls from the reformatory. Every time he abducts a girl, she screams at the top of her lungs and awakens half of the inmate population. Clearly, these sophisticated physicians have never considered giving these girls with a sedative so that they create fewer problems. Aside from the outdoor scenes where Dr. Rodgers uncovers Cooper's hidden journal, "The Man Who Turned to Stone" occurs largely inside the women's reformatory. The most gruesome scene is the suicide by hanging. Kardos shows Anna's body only from the legs down as she hangs from the rafters in a dormitory.Kardos and Gordon had the makings of good, grisly horror chiller, but they don't take advantage of those elements. The horror here lies primarily in Eric lurching about the premises looking for women for Murdock's experiments. The girls scream, but offer little resistance once Eric has them in his clutches. Although the prison is called a Detention Home for Girls, all of the girls look far too old to pass as teenagers. Of course, this is a convention that has plagued most movies about teenagers: namely, actors and actresses twice their age play these kids. The make-up looks spooky enough, but adequate make-up doesn't make a solid, scary movie. Veteran lenser Benjamin Kline's atmospheric black & white photography gives "The Man Who Turned to Stone" more credibility than the Gordon screenplay. Kline photographed over 324 movies and TV shows, so by the time that he did this movie, he could shoot in his sleep and make anything look credible. Unfortunately, a shortage of suspense, provocative villains, and anything remotely horrific—though it might have been considered horrific at the time—undermines this B-movie thriller. Only die-hard horror fans slumming for material will enjoy this forgettable movie.