THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET (1944)
Article #389 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-8-2002
Posting date: 9-1-2002

A man who has been kept youthful by gland transplants for sixty years finds that the surgeon who performs his operations can no longer operate, and he tries to find a way to preserve his youth.

In many ways, this should be standard mad scientist fare, but it takes a quite different route. The emphasis is on character and literacy; there are several scenes in this movie that are individually very finely written, and even minor characters are given a greater degree of dimension than you would usually expect in this type of movie. What you get ultimately is a series of very nice scenes, but when you string them together, the end result is a movie that is talky and somewhat slow, and with a little too much time spent on talking about themes you take for granted in other horror movies, and not from particularly fresh angles, either. Ultimately, it may be a little too refined for its subject matter; nonetheless, if you’re interested in character, relationships, and crisp, well-written dialogue, this movie certainly has a lot to offer, though I myself find it’s a little easier to take in small doses than in one sitting.