"Pain and the knife, they're inseparable!"

If you look at the above poster, then you think "Aha! Corridors of Blood (1958) is a horror movie and Karloff is playing yet another mad scientist and/or mad killer!"

But the poster is lying to you--or at least showing Karloff without sufficient context. He's not the bad guy. He's the tragic hero.

I had never seen this one. I ran across it while looking through a streaming service the library at which I work is trying out for a month. When I noticed that it stared Karloff and that Christopher Lee was in it--playing a henchman to the main villain named Resurrection Joe--then I realized I had to watch it. Resurrection Joe is one of the best henchmen names ever.





The movie is set in 1840s London, with Karloff playing a skilled surgeon. What makes him skilled is his speed. There is no such thing as anesthetic, so you have to operate quickly to minimize a possibly fatal level of pain and shock.

Dr. Bolton (Karloff) isn't just good with a knife. He's also compassionate, running a free clinic for the city's poor and experimenting with different drugs in an attempt to make an effective anesthetic. His peers at the hospital are skeptical of this last goal. "Pain and the knife," pontificates one of them, "they're inseparable."

Bolton refuses to accept this. But, while his intentions are good, but his methodology is a bit lacking. He experiments on himself and, before long, he's addicted to the drugs he's using.


Karloff's performance is nuanced and heartfelt--a man desperate to find a way to operate without causing pain and to simply help people in need. As he grows more and more addicted and this affects his ability as a surgeon, we feel nothing by sympathy for him. We've watched a good man--with at first the most noble intentions--gradually destroy himself.

Circumstances bring Dr. Bolton into the circle of Black Ben (Francis De Wolff). Ben owns a seedy tavern, but makes his real money luring indigent drunks inside and then having Resurrection Joe smother them with a pillow. The bodies are then sold to the hospital for medical training. 

The glitch in this business is that he needs a doctor to sign a death certificate for each body. When Bolton's deteriorating condition gets him removed from his post at the hospital and leaves him without access to the hospital pharmacy, he cuts a deal with Ben. He'll sign a stack of blank death certificates. In exchange, Ben will send Joe to help Bolton break into the pharmacy and get what he needs--primarily a bottle of opium.

Joe ends up killing the night watchmen. To his horror, Bolton finds himself trapped in the company of villains and quickly becoming useless to them.

Karloff's brilliant performance is the lynch pin for the whole movie, but the supporting cast is also excellent. The sets, costumes and dialogue effectively recreates the time period. I also like the Dickensian attitude towards class structure--the movie condemns an attitude we see among the the upper class when it is indifferent to the suffering of the poor. But there is no excuse given for those among the poor (Big Ben and Resurrection Joe) who have turned to crime. There is a moral balance here that I find admirable and ethically healthy.

So this isn't really a horror movie, though there are elements of that genre present. It's a combination of thriller and historical drama that is well-acted and tells a strong story. That darn poster is a big, fat liar. For that matter, so's the movie's trailer: