Condemned to Live starts off promisingly. A bedridden woman and two men are trapped in a cave with some freaky drumming going on outside. The woman is clearly very fearful and in a lot of pain, and tells the man (her husband) "I can't stand it... If you love me, kill me. Kill me now." Wow. To which he responds "remember Martha - you have another life to think of besides your own," implying she's pregnant! Heavy by today's standards - even more so in the 1930's, I'm sure. They are hiding from "the natives," although they feel they'll be safe in the cave, as it is rumored to be home to vampire bats. On queue, a big bat swoops (i.e. gently lowers into the frame) and attacks her. I'm always partial to old bat-related special effects, but this scene is legitimately the best part of the film. From this point on, it's just a kind of talky and pretty bland murder mystery, although it does end up going to a bit darker places than I was expecting in the finale.
After the bat attack, we flash forward many years later, where a village (maybe the same one from the prologue? Who can say?) is experiencing a rash of vicious murders. There are rumors of vampire bat attacks, but the villagers seem to be split between bats or a random fiend being responsible the crimes. One thing they can all agree on is that the Professor will help. The Professor Paul Kristan (Ralph Morgan) is a well-respected 50-ish gentleman who lives in town - he seems to be the main guy people go to when they need help, medical, personal, or otherwise. He is engaged to be married to the much younger Marguerite (Maxine Doyle), who really respects him but whose heart belongs to David (Russell Gleason), a younger man in town. The professor tries to get to the bottom of the heinous crimes, while also ensuring his betrothed is safe from the fiend.
And seriously, if you like the idea of people asking "Who is the Fiend," this is the movie for you. That would be the marketing tagline if it came out today. Instead of FATE DAMNED HIM WITH A THOUSAND DEATHS! (per imdb) Which is pretty good - although maybe a bit melodramatic.
*SPOILER FOR AN 80 YEAR OLD MOVIE AHEAD*
The fiend turns out to be the professor. It seems that he was the little baby being born in the prologue, and the vampire-bat attack on his mother just before his birth has made him randomly black out and kill people whenever it gets totally dark. This is revealed at maybe the 20 minute mark. The only reason I mention it is because it legitimately surprised me. I felt a little silly at having the wool pulled over my eyes from a movie this old, but so it goes.
But other than that surprise, I just wasn't too into Condemned to Live. Obviously, it's really old, so the cinematic conventions are different than what I'm used to (see the quotation marks in the title screen above). For instance, other than some creepy drumming in the opening scene, I don't know if there is any music in the movie at all. Some of the scenes are pretty atmospheric (since the fiend only strikes in darkness), but without any sort of music they are just kind of boring. The dialogue is far too formal and stilted... sometimes they read as much like stage directions as real people talking ("let us go to our homes.") And there's lots of swooning. Several women just pass out from the overwhelming fear they have of the fiend. There's something you don't see enough of in the movies nowadays.
Ultimately, it wasn't offensively bad... it's just kind of there. As far as old movies go, it had more going for it than Beast from Haunted Cave from earlier this week, but I'd still be hard pressed to recommend it to anyone.
I would not recommend this film.
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