This is a strange little horror film from 1935. I was first drawn to it because of a famous still in which Peter Lorre looks like some kind of techno-mutant out of a Mad Max film (albeit stylishly dressed in a snappy overcoat.)

When I finally saw “Mad Love,” I was a little underwhelmed and couldn’t find the mojo to pen a review.

But it’s stuck with me, so here I am months later trying to recall enough to pass judgement.

I just refreshed my brain on the plot from Wikipedia and will summarize it here: Master surgeon Dr. Gogol (there’s a great mad scientist name) becomes so fixated on opera singer Yvonne Orlac that he buys a wax figure of her. When Yvonne’s husband, a concert pianist, suffers a mutilating injury that destroys his career, Yvonne turns to Gogol for help, and the surgeon grafts the hands of a killer onto the musician’s arms.

Pretty standard stuff, though there are some clever turns. I’m reminded of a 1990s Jeff Fahey movie, “Body Parts” that operated in similar territory.

The movie seemed unusually ghoulish for its time, replete with weirdo sexual fixations, body horror, etc. The content reviewing Hays Code was in effect in Hollywood at the time, and I would imagine “Mad Love” ran up against it.

But maybe that’s the problem right there. For all its debauchery, I found the movie a bit slow moving. Some more explicit grotesquerie would have spliced things up.

But maybe my brain has just been ruined by 80s horror that delighted in naked teenagers being literally bisected by a chainsaw maniac. That’s high art!

All that said, Lorre was great here, as usual. (I probably first saw him in the 1930s Charlie Chan rip off series called Mr. Moto, about a Japanese detective.)

Just for the oddball imagery alone, this is worth a watch. Maybe have a martini beforehand.