Dr. George Winson (George Macready), the famous physician, is on his death bed. His wife Ann (Jeanne Bates) is devastated. George’s physician and partner Dr. Roger Vance (Jim Bannon) and his pastor Fred Stevens (Erik Rolf) are also in attendance. Ann takes her grief out on the two men. She berates them for not being able to save George’s life. She prays for someone to help her.
A mysterious woman, Lilyan Gregg (Rose Hobart), comes to the door. She says she can save his life. She makes everyone leave the room. She begins to care for the dying man. After a while he begins to recover. Eventually he is well but he has changed. He is no longer the kind loving physician he used to be. Now he is heartless and cold.
Ann realizes that there is something wrong with her husband and so do others. She confides in Fred. She says that Lilyan has some kind of hold over George. Fred sees it too. Eventually so does Dr. Vance. Lilyan seems to have a psychic connection with George. With her mind she tells him to kill Fred. George follows Fred and is ready to stab him when Fred turns around. George sees a cross in Fred’s hand. It breaks the spell and George leaves.
One day George and Roger have an argument. Roger grabs George by the wrist to hold him off. He doesn’t feel a pulse. Later, with a patient, Roger becomes distracted and turns away accidentally getting cut with a pair of scissors. There is no blood. Roger tells Fred about the event. He then goes to confront George. Lilyan uses a rouse to get Roger out of the house. She runs him down. Roger is in critical condition. George is preparing to operate to save Roger’s life. George hears Lilyan in his head telling him to kill. George freezes and Roger dies. The nurse accuses him of murder. George is put on trial.
“The Soul of a Monster” was released in 1944 and was directed by Will Jason. It’s a rather obscure little “B” film from Columbia Pictures.
It is supposed to be a horror film and I suspect it was also supposed to be noir. There were noir aspects but that part was a little overdone. The noir part mostly consisted of low camera angles aimed at feet. Lots of feet walking. There were also some shadows that were nice but even the noir aspects weren’t enough to keep my attention.
It was a short film, only about an hour but it still seemed to drag a little. Some scenes were drawn out too long. I was very dissatisfied with this movie. A Faustian story can be entertaining if done right and it started out OK but it seemed to stall quickly. The ending was very disappointing and I sat mostly bored through it to get to that disappointing ending.
The screenwriter was Edward Dein. He did some of the additional dialogue for Val Lewton’s “The Leopard Man”. And although I liked that movie, here Dein seems to be trying to be Lewton-esque but it doesn’t totally work. I’m not sure if it was the directing or the acting or just that stupid ending that made this film miss the mark for me.
A lot of people liked it, and that’s fine. It just didn’t work for me.