Bonnet who, in 1890 Paris (Problem #2), hosts a soirée at his home (risibly addressed 13 Rue Noire) to unveil his latest nude sculpture for a small group of admiring colleagues and neighbors. This is already inter- esting: Bonnet shares with Dr. Rossiter, Diffring’s character in the following year’s CIRCUS OF HORRORS, characteristics of sociopathic narcissism and a pronounced beauty fetish; he cannot bear to part with his statuary once it is finished, so he collects it in a hay-strewn hideout analogous in a strange downmarket way to CIRCUS’ “Temple of Beauty.” Also in Bonnet’s collection is the first sculpture he ever did, a dog dated 1798, which proves that his collection is as much a trib- ute to himself as to the many models he knew and seduced, and also that the artist, who sculpted it at the age of 12, is 104 years old. He has been able


to sustain not only his youth, but also maintain perfect health, with glandular replacement sur- gery conducted once every ten years—a secret that he no longer wishes to share with mankind. Womankind is another story; even a very old man like Bonnet encounters one great love in his lifetime, other than himself, and his—an old flame named Janine Dubois (Hazel Court)—a woman he abandoned abruptly some time earlier to preserve his dark secret, re-enters his life at the party on the arm of invited guest Dr. Pierre Gerard (Christopher Lee). They resume their ro- mance, but at a precarious time: Bonnet is due for his next operation and now requires doses, every six hours, of a bub- bling green potion distilled from the glands of people he has murdered.


While entertaining enough on the first pass, this is not one of director Terence Fisher’s most


durable efforts. Basing his script on Barre Lyndon’s play THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET (previ- ously filmed in 1945), Jimmy Sangster does nothing to open the stagebound story up; with the exception of a misplaced JACK THE RIPPER-like pre-credit se- quence of a nighttime knifing in some curiously unParisian fog, the film moves from one small wallpapered room to another— all splendidly photographed by Jack Asher to evoke an era when night gatherings were made pos- sible by gas, candle and fireplace. Perversely, the film’s best-written dialogue scenes (such as those featuring Arnold Marlé, who plays Bonnet’s much older-looking former apprentice with appropri- ate Old World gravitas) are filmed blandly, while its more animated scenes give voice only to florid melodrama clichés, which Diffring’s vainglorious manner only serves to exacerbate. Watch- ing him swan through the film—


Anton Diffring is a medical immortal faced with sharing his secret with beloved Hazel Court in Terence Fisher’s THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH.


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