“We dare you to look into… Doctor Blood’s Coffin!”

There is a school of thought which suggests that the sheer audience for films, books and music is so vast that it is entirely possible that everything ever produced is someone’s favourite. That means every obscure b-side by Ollie Murs, every tune only committed to a couple of scratchy old wax cylinders and then lost down a well after a couple of playings, every a-side by Ollie Murs, is someone, somewhere’s favourite song ever. As astonishing as that may sound. 
Whether the same could be said of films… well. You might think it could possibly be the case, but if I did subscribe to such a belief, it would have been sorely tested as a ploughed through some of the films I’ve watched to review for this website.
Dr Blood’s Coffin is a case in point. Somehow, I’d managed to miss this “classic” until it popped up in its entirety on YouTube billed as British and a horror film. I’m almost ashamed to say that beforehand, I don’t think it had even registered as a British horror film I needed to see to complete the set. Which is peculiar as I’m usually pretty hot at remembering the films I need to see, even if the actual watching of them can be a bit hit-and-miss.
I’m assuming that at some point between being released in 1961 and now, it must even have been shown on the telly, late night, back when there were only three channels and everything shut down shortly after midnight. I can only imagine the kind of thing the announcer might have said:
“And now on late night BBC1, a tale of something-or-other going on in Cornwall. To be honest, given the choice between this or the creepy little girl with the doll and the blackboard, I’d suggest you’d be better off going with the test card for chills and excitement. I’m serious. Don’t watch it, you’ll only get all annoyed about the licence fee all over again. In fact, I’m getting annoyed myself. Wouldn’t we be better off sticking a repeat of something half decent on, instead? Or just running Ceefax? Anyway, and I’m seriously not advising you to do this, but it is my job to tell you, it’s time to take a peek at what’s inside Dr Blood’s Coffin…”
As you can probably tell, I won’t be adding Dr Blood’s Coffin to my favourite films list, as it is not great. Clearly intended to be a Frankenstein rip-off without the need for expensive things like the rights to the name, a period setting or a coherent plot with sensible motivation for its characters, it fails on practically every level. If I tell you that there’s definitely a suggestion that the plot is leading us towards a big reveal until the film makers thought “Ah, sod it, the audience must have all cottoned on to what’s happening by now” and they just fudge it, and that’s the best bit purely from a modern “wtf?” reaction, I think you get the picture.
Pre credits, we see a surgeon at work, until another doctor wanders into the theatre and berates him for his poorly thought-out antics. The (unseen) surgeon’s retort that the person on the operating table “would have died anyway” cuts no ice, and he is asked to leave, which he does. Meekly. Then the credits start. Hardly an auspicious start to a cheesy horror film (whither the correct reaction in such circumstances, to stab the interloper through the eyeball with a scalpel and then skedaddle through the window? He could have at least SLAMMED THE FLIPPIN’ DOOR, surely?)
Later, people are disappearing from the Cornish village of Porthcarron. No-one seems overly bothered, although they’re all keen to jump to the huge conclusion that the nearby disused tin mines have got something to do with it. It turns out they’re absolutely right to jump to these conclusions, though - as deep in the mines an (unseen) medical type is up to no good with the chloroform and the test tubes and the clamp stands and the bodies of the missing villagers.
Into all this good-natured apathy roars Peter Blood, the village doctor’s son, in his open-topped car. Peter’s just back from college and isn’t acting suspiciously at all. He immediately destroys the evidence left at the scene of the last disappearance (“oi - there could have been fingerprints on that!” the local police sergeant berates him), then continues his bid to be the most obvious killer in film history by offering to guide the police around the tin mines as he ‘knows them pretty well’.
As the search starts, with Peter making sure they don’t check out that bit of the mine where the chloroform, test tubes, clamp stands and bodies are kept, the latest kidnapee manages to crawl away. Peter, having given his companions the slip, finds the underground lab, but - shock, horror - he’s clearly not surprised by it. (Film makers: “Ah, sod it, the audience must have all cottoned on to what’s happening by now”)
What does surprise him is the disappearance of his last victim. As poor George (for tis his name), crawls away through the tunnels, Peter frantically tries to track him down but keeps missing him. Eventually the grey-faced, half paralysed George is discovered on a clifftop by the rest of the searchers, who call for help from Peter, as a medical man. He calmly walks up and injects George with something, then declares him dead and wanders off again.
After a brief date with his dad’s nurse, Linda (Hammer’s Hazel Court) where he starts ranting about how no-one understands him, Peter breaks into the funeral parlour where George’s body has been taken, and cuts out his still-beating heart. It turns out that our nutty doctor is experimenting with curare, and wants to take living hearts out of paralysed people and put them into dead people. Which is clearly a sensible plan and entirely scientifically plausible.
All of a sudden, after just a mere 45 minutes of plodding mundanity, we’re awash with blood (and, as it happens, coffins).
Peter goes curare crazy (curarazy?) and eventually gets caught by Linda, who gives him what-for in a strangely evangelical way and with much use of eyebrows. Peter’s now a wanted man, but has decided to show Linda who’s boss by resurrecting her dead husband, with predictable results.
If anything, Dr Blood’s Coffin, with its uber exploitative title, galloping lack of sense and idiotic science, probably does shine a light on other, better made films that are built on similar lines. But it’s so unremittingly awful that it simply isn’t possible to offer it the willing suspension of disbelief that you’re prepared to give something along similar lines, but better. Of which there are many…