'THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH'..... DOESN'T LOOK A DAY OVER 100.....

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)   While we all sit at home, contemplating our fragile mortality........what a perfect time to watch a movie about a guy who's turning 104.....

              It's 1890 Paris, but given it's a Hammer film, everyone's speaking like uppercrust Brits, even the gendarmes......

               A doctor-sculptor (Anton Diffring, taking a break from playing nasty Nazis in big budget war movies), holds on to his literally eternal lifestyle with the help of a bubbly mad-scientist brew and an occasional gland operation......

               Without the brew and the gland, the young-looking ancient doc tends to glow green and starts to decompose, which puts a real crimp in his wooing of an aristocratic beauty (the decorously courtly Hazel Court)........

               None of this sits well with Diffring's cohort-colleague (Arnold Marle) who's been aging so normally, he's too crippled to help out Diffring with an update operation........hence the desperate immortal doc must appeal to a fellow doctor who's also a rival for Hazel's affections. (Christopher Lee, taking a rare non-villainous role in his lengthy Hammer career)

                You can already safely predict that Diffring's medical and artistic career will come to a horrific, melodramatic close........after decades of bumping off babes who pose for him so he can swipe  their glands and then covet the statues he's made of them.

                It's a typical slick, well crafted outing for the Hammer gang (those in front of the camera and behind it).......so polished and literate and stylized, you'd barely notice how cheaply it's put together.......

                And a special shout-out to Delphi Lawrence, playing one of Diffring's unlucky exes, who goes stark bonkers at the sight of him crumbling, ending up as an imprisoned, giggling loon during the film's fiery climax......

                 As for the ever reliable, malignant Diffring, he meets his Dorian Grey doom right on schedule.......and it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy......(except maybe Donald Trump, whose demise could only help the rest of us live longer....)

                 Altogether, fun stuff for fans of vintage Hammer horror.....3 stars (***) for yet another movie Medico unfettered by the FDA.......who needs morality when you've scored immortality.....