Scream through the night

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Movie
German title Scream through the night
Original title Gritos en la noche
Country of production Spain
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1962
length 93 minutes
Rod
Director Jess Franco
script Jess Franco
production Leo Lax ,
Marius Lesoeur ,
Serge Newman
music José Pagán ,
Antonio Ramírez Ángel
camera Godofredo Pacheco
cut Alfonso Santacana
occupation

Screams through the night (Original title: Gritos en la noche ), also called The terrible Dr. Orloff (L'horrible Dr. Orlof), is a Spanish black and white horror film filmed in cooperation with France and directed by Jess Franco from 1962 . The surgeon Dr. Orloff used singers and prostitutes after the accident of his daughter Melissa in order to transplant the faces of his daughter, who was disfigured by the accident. The case is assigned to a young inspector named Tanner.

action

A woman comes home late at night drunk and wants to go to sleep. She is surprised by the deaf, dumb and blind servant Orloff named Morpho, who is waiting for her in her closet. He overpowers her and carries her away. Your screams wake up some neighbors. One of them, Estelle Schneyder, a 22-year-old, very excited-looking person, reports to the newly engaged inspector, who has just been assigned the case, what happened that night.

The next evening you see a singer who is invited to his table by Orloff after her performance and is made drunk. He gives her a necklace, after which she is driven in a carriage to a house for sale and locked in. The servant Morpho is waiting there again and kills this woman too. Then he follows the knocking of Orloff's stick to the carriage, they put the woman in a coffin and drive to a boathouse, from there across the river and up a hill to a castle. The woman's chain is lost at the pier.

The new information and an idea from his fiancée Wanda lead Inspector Tanner to invite all the eyewitnesses to a room and ask them questions. The discussion shows that there must be two perpetrators and they create phantom images. Wanda meets Orloff, unnoticed by Tanner. He is enthusiastic about her skin and the similarity to his daughter Melissa. When Tanner returns, the doctor has disappeared and the inspector brings his fiancée home. Then he makes his way to a trader who had received the dead woman's chain from an unemployed fisherman named Jennot. This in turn reports of strange events during the night upstream of his fishing spot.

After Tanner declared a state of emergency in the village and thus received a lot of new information, even if only poorly qualified, his fiancée has another plan. She wants to make herself available as a decoy, but doesn't tell anyone about it. In the house where the last woman disappeared, she meets Orloff, but escapes him. The next day, angry, Orloff accidentally kills his housekeeper and lies to Morpho, who had feelings for her. During a theater appearance by Wanda, Tanner receives fingerprints from Morpho that match those of a person who had been sentenced to death seven years earlier but who died of a heart attack prior to the scheduled execution. The prison doctor who has gone into hiding since then is Orloff. Tanner and his team plan to open Morpho's tomb to verify his death.

After the performance, Wanda goes to the bar where she had already met the doctor and is immediately asked into a private room. There the doctor introduces herself and she drinks with him under a false name. He pours something into her champagne, but she notices. In an unobserved moment, she writes a message to Tanner. At first he ignores her, assuming misinformation, and goes to the cemetery. Meanwhile, Orloff brings Wanda, who is pretending to be drunk, to a room in his castle.

When Tanner opens the grave, there are no bones in it. So it is clear that Morpho is still alive and involved.

Wanda, who was left alone in the room, takes a candlestick and starts to explore the castle, but is caught by Morpho. She faints from shock and is prepared for the operation by Morpho. Only now does the inspector read the message from his fiancée and immediately set off with Jennot to the castle. In the meantime, Morpho finds his mistress dead, looks for Orloff and stabs him. Melissa also dies shortly afterwards. The inspector climbs over the wall into the courtyard with Jennot. There they see Morpho carrying Wanda up the tower. Tanner aims the gun and hits Morpho. He falls down the tower and dies, but Wanda remains unharmed. In the end, Orloff sees his dead daughter Melissa and dies.

criticism

Carlos Aguilar writes in his article about the film:

“The director succeeds in transforming the diversity of sources and influences, different archetypes and paradigms of the genre with his own artistic vision into an innovative horror style à la Jesús Franco. The focus for him is a pathological appreciation of the erotic, a humor that shimmers between grotesque and parodic, the dramatic and melodic use of jazz music and certain characteristics of melodrama up to and including sensational novels. "

Remarks

The film is available on DVD with German subtitles; a German-language dubbed version does not exist. An alternative French version runs 82 minutes.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carlos Aguilar: The Terrible Dr. Orloff. In: Ursula Vossen (ed.): Film genres. Horror movie. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-018406-1 , p. 166.