Antidote (2021)
Nightmare Hospital
Horror film where Ashlyn Yennie wakes up in a hospital filled with sinister happenings including people being maimed and then regenerated
Mad Surgeons
Mad Surgeons refer to doctors who have abandoned medical ethics in favour of conducting rogue and illicit operations and are in effect the surgical equivalent of Mad Scientists. Also included are doctors that are outrightly deranged and psychopathic in their behaviour.
The mad surgeon genre began with the French classic Eyes Without a Face (1959) about a doctor abducting women to remove their faces and transplant onto his facially disfigured daughter. This created a small spate of films about surgeons obsessed with facial transplants for their lovers or daughters. Other mad surgeons have engaged in enforced body modification, gender reassignment, experimental treatments and the like. Many of these also exist as Medical Horrors.
The Assignment (2016)
Hitman Seeks Revenge After Enforced Gender Reassignment Surgery
From Walter Hill, one of the legendary action directors, comes what is either the most edgy or tasteless concepts for a revenge film – Michelle Rodriguez is a hitman who seeks revenge after having gender reassignment surgery forced on him
Asylum of Fear (2018)
Haunted Abandoned Asylum
A crew of reality tv paranormal investigators are hired to investigate a haunted abandoned asylum. This sort of film has been done numerous time before.
Autopsy (2008)
Hospital of Horrors
Horror film conceived around having creepy things happening around a hospital, less so in terms of any rationale. What the film does have in its favour is that it is exxxtremely gory
The Awful Dr Orloff (1962)
Killer Surgeon
The first film from prolific horror and exploitation director Jesus Franco to which he would later make four sequels. This is a blatant copy of the French Eyes Without a Face served up with little directorial flair
The Black Sleep (1956)
Mad Scientist
The very last gasp of the 1930s/40s mad scientist film, a swansong that brings together an amazing cast from the era including Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Basil Rathbone and Tor Johnson. Slightly better produced than most of the era’s cheapies
The Blood Rose (1970)
Continental Gothic/Mad Surgery
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
Boxing Helena (1993)
Sexual Obsession and Amputation
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer directs a film about a surgeon who abducts a woman and amputates her limbs to make her love him. A critical bomb, it is a not uninteresting work about woman’s desire handled with more taste than you would think
Circus of Horrors (1960)
Psycho Surgeon-Circus Master
Fascinatingly sordid film from the early days of the English horror cycle in which Anton Diffring is a mad surgeon obsessed with facial disfiguration hiding as a circus master and arranging a series of circus-themed deaths for his failed experiments
The Climax (1944)
Mad Doctor Fixates on an Opera Singer
Made to exploit leftover sets from the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, this is a magnificent colour production that has Boris Karloff as an obsessive surgeon who fixates on a beautiful young opera singer
Corruption (1968)
Mad Surgeon
Peter Cushing plays a surgeon who devises an advanced technique to restore his wife’s burn-disfigured face – only to find he must kill to maintain it. An Anglo-horror effort that borrows the basics of Eyes Without a Face/Les Yeux Sans Visage
Creep (2004)
Deformed Creature in the London Underground
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
Dead Ringers (1988)
Disturbed Twin Psychology
David Cronenberg’s absolute masterpiece of the perverse with Jeremy Irons giving a tour-de-force performance(s) as twin gynaecologists who descend into drug addiction, obsession and madness
The Dentist (1996)
Psycho Dentist
Brian Yuzna plays on everybody’s fear of the dentist in this outrageously nasty film top-lining Corbin Bernsen in wildly over-the-top mode as a psychopathic dentist amid a series of imaginatively sadistic dental-themed dispatches
The Dentist 2 (1998)
Psycho Dentist
In this sequel to their earlier film, director Brian Yuzna and star Corbin Bernsen return to the role of the psychopathic dentist and successfully tap the same outrageously sadistic nastiness and black humour once again
The Diabolical Dr Z (1966)
Mind-Controlled Femme Fatale
An early film from Jess Franco in which an exotic dancer is turned into a mind-controlled assassin who lures and kills victims with her six-inch long fingernails as part of a revenge scheme
Dr Giggles (1992)
Psycho Medic
A darkly funny take on the slasher film with Larry Drake standing out in a memorable performance as the title mad doctor. This delivers more medical novelty deaths and bad puns than one believed possible
Dr Petiot (1990)
True Life French Serial Killer
French film about true-life serial killer Marcel Petiot, a respectable doctor who operated a lifeline for Jewish refugees during WWII only to kill them
Exquisite Tenderness (1995)
Psycho Surgeon
A medical horror film concerning a disfigured surgeon killing his way through a hospital as he seeks revenge. This is notable for its degree of gore-drenched sadism
Eyes Without a Face (1959)
Mad Killer Surgeon
Classic French thriller about a mad surgeon who abducts women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. The film has a rare visual poetry combined with moments of horror that are still effective decades later
Faceless (1987)
Mad Surgeon
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival – North (1999)
Festival of H.P. Lovecraft Short Films
A festival of H.P. Lovecraft short films held in Vancouver, which display a quality and faithfulness to the original texts that far outstrips the professional efforts being made elsewhere
Homunculus (2021)
Man Can See Inner Traumas
Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression
Hostel Part III (2011)
Sadism and Torture
Third in the Hostel series, an indifferent piece of formula hackwork minus Eli Roth where suspension of disbelief is constantly being disrupted by absurdly contrived scenes
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Backroads Brutality
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)
Madman Surgically Connects Human Bodies
Sequel to the original that pushes into even more perverse territory. This throws some amusing spins on the original, creating a unique protagonist, while also contriving to exist inside an extremely disturbed headspace
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
Mad Surgeon Connects Human Bodies
An astonishingly perverse work where a mad surgeon abducts three people intending to connect their bodies as a single digestive tract. This is a work that pushes itself into truly warped territory
I, Madman (1989)
Killer Emerges from a Book
A rather interesting horror film in which both the heroine and the heroine of the story she is reading are stalked by a disfigured madman, as the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve
The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)
Two-Headed Transplant/Mad Scientist
Mad scientist Bruce Dern creates a two-headed transplant. Unlike The Thing with Two Heads from the same company, this lacks an appreciable sense of its own absurdity
Jack the Ripper (1959)
Jack the Ripper Killings
Dramatisation of the Jack the Ripper murders that resembles a cheap British quota quickie but musters some okay gaslit atmosphere. Alas, the film has done little research on the details of Ripper casefile
Little Bone Lodge (2023)
Home Invasion/House of Secrets
A thriller in which two brothers fleeing police take refuge at a farmhouse where it becomes increasingly apparent that there are secrets and sinister goings-on
Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
Mad Surgeon
This first film from B-budget producer Charles Band, a blatant copy of Eyes Without a Face with mad surgeon Richard Basehart abducting women and transplanting their eyeballs into his blind daughter
Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)
Nazis Under the Polar Icecap/Hitler with a Robot Body/Mad Science
Hands down the best film ever produced by The Asylum. How could one not like an entertainingly madcap concoction that features mad scientists, zombie stormtroopers, Nazi UFOs and Adolf Hitler preserved as a head in a jar attached to a robot body?
The Price We Pay (2022)
Getaway Thriller/Mad Surgeon
This has the flavour of From Dusk Till Dawn, a getaway thriller that does a mid-film morph into full horror territory as a gang of fleeing petty criminals stray into the lair of mad surgeon
The Raven (1935)
Demented Edgar Allan Poe Fan
An entertainingly madcap screen pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi with the latter as a Poe-obsessed surgeon who has built a house of Poe-inspired torture devices
Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008)
Future Organ Repossession/Rock Musical
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman conducts a futuristic Gothic rock opera. A film of constant posturings where Bousman demonstrates remarkably little affinity for either music or sf … a musical that feels made by people who are tone deaf
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Mad Surgeon and His Woman Prisoner
Pedro Almodovar’s exquisitely lush homage to the mad surgeon fiilm Eyes Without a Face features a superb left field twist to become an extraordinary meditation on gender and identity
Spare Parts (2020)
Girl Punk Band Become Gladiators with Weapons Attachments
I was sold from the point of reading the premise where an all-girl punk band is abducted, surgically given weapons attachments and forced to fight in an arena
Stay Out of the Fucking Attic (2020)
Nazi Mad Scientist
A team of house movers find they are working for infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who has an attic full of deformed mutations
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018)
Animation/Team-Up of DC Comics Super-Villains
A DC Universe Original Animated Movie given over to Suicide Squad. Clearly inspired by the live-action film, this goes overboard on the super-villains present, having three entire teams running around to general confusion, while striking a very odd tone in its pitch for an R-rating
The Terror of Dr Hichcock (1962)
Italian Gothic
Influential if possibly overrated work in the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s. There’s the haunted figure of Barbara Steele and rich atmosphere, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense
Tusk (2014)
Man Surgically Transformed Into a Walrus
Really, Kevin Smith?!? A film wherein a mad lunatic transforms another man into a walrus? While you can applaud Smith’s completely out there leap off into Human Centipede territory, you feel unsure whether you should be reacting in shock or laughter at the absurdity of the premise
X-Ray (1982)
Hospital Slasher Film
An early Cannon Films offering among the 80s slasher fad premised around a hospital setting and seeing the phenomenally well-stacked former Playmate Barbi Benton undressed. Most of the paper thin plot seems to have been made up on set and the direction is ridiculously overwrought