After having waited years to see this film, I was surprised at how relatively tame it is, at least on the surface. Unlike, say, The Brain That Would Not Die, released the same year (1962), The Awful Dr. Orloff is free of any overt gore. Rather, this film disturbs on a more subtle level, in the attitude that director Jess Franco takes towards Dr. Orloff. Unlike its obvious role model, George Franju's extraordinary Eyes Without a Face, this film makes no excuse for its central character's sadism. Dr. Genessier in Eyes has forced himself to become immune to the sufferings of others through guilt at the role he played in the disfigurement of his beloved daughter. Like many a previous mad scientist, his base actions are a means to a noble end. Dr. Orloff, on the other hand, is something new. His actions are not reducible to traditional motivation; they are not explicable in the ordinary sense. Orloff is not doing evil for the greater good; he is not seeking revenge; he is not insane; he is not really conventionally evil. Orloff is operating under an entirely different moral system. Orloff genuinely enjoys himself, taking perverse pleasure in the horrible deeds that he perpetrates. This is most obvious during the film's one explicit moment, when Orloff begins operating on the * body of his still living victim. As he starts making the incision, the lewd expression on his face as he fondles the girls exposed breast shows where his true interests lie. Orloff's daughter's disfigurement is only the catalyst that enables him to fulfill his unspeakable desires, and explains why she dies, for no apparent reason, when Orloff is killed. She has no further purpose.
Another odd touch in this very odd film is that the only vaguely sympathetic character is Morpho, Orloff's twisted, child-like assistant. Blind and seemingly dumb, with bulging eyes and odd, twitching mannerisms, Morpho is a genuinely unsettling creation, as he lurches and bites in the shadows at Orloff's murderous command. Incongruous shots of Morpho lying in his bed, staring, make him appear wretched, lonely, and pitiable. A killer from an early age, instinctively, impulsively bad, Morpho is an automaton, incapable of acting otherwise, in contrast to Orloff, who, we are told, was once a good man, and who is now something very different by choice.
The Awful Dr. Orloff is atmospherically photographed, with the occasional evocative image, but Franco is no Mario Bava, and the film has zero poetry, again unlike Eyes Without a Face. The plot is tedious, without drive, mystery, or tension; the dialog is dully expository; and Franco takes no interest in the block-headed police or in the shrill, sluttish victims. Typically, for a Franco film, the ending is rushed and abrupt, as if the director cannot bear to kill off his most interesting characters, although custom dictates that he must. This is the first true spatter movie, albeit without the splatter. Although it looks like a Universal Horror, The Awful Dr. Orloff points the way directly to Blood Feast, which came a year later, and beyond, to the modern horror film, in which the killers are the de facto heroes. Morpho is Jason Vorhees without the hockey mask, and Dr. Orloff is a dry run for Dr. Lector. In The Awful Dr. Orloff, the age old moral landscape of the horror film is altered for the first time. That, for what it is worth, is its dubious achievement.
