The film was made right at the start of the horror cycle and ventures into areas almost untouched for decades afterwards. Lionel Atwill is menacing as the leading surgeon amongst a group pushing back the bounds of science. Each of the members is strange and secretive, guarding their possibly unholy secrets. A series of brutal knife murders is taking place on the full moon with flesh eaten and the bodies mutilated. Like many films of the era this has the annoying wise cracking newspaper reported who in a lesser film would ruin it. Here though with gothic laboratory sets and a brooding sinister feeling, the film rises above the palid jokes to explore the fevered mind of science. From the start we suspect Atwill, he is furtive but then he had a habit being used as a decoy. The prowling camera work, following the full moon along the docks portrays the murderous atmosphere with dialogue that details the perverse horror unfolding with each murder. For 1932 it's strong stuff and at the end as the killer is revealed, having transformed themselves using synthetic flesh into a monsterous fiend, the film reaches a genuinely dramatic peak.
In colour the film has even more atmosphere and the make-up looks brilliant, creepy and repulsive even now. Occasionally talky, often annoying due to the news reported, this film is delerious in its portrayal of madness with it's demented cries of "synthetic flesh!". Now many decades later, the fact that it still unsettles rather than merely charming says something of it's dark power. 9/10.
Special Thanks to Mark Coyle for this Movie Review.