THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE 1957
The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957) is the kind of B-movie that seems to have crawled straight out of a late-night TV marathon, dripping with the sort of earnest absurdity only the 1950s could conjure. Directed by László Kardos—a journeyman of Hollywood’s lower rungs whose credits span everything from musicals to monster flicks—the film is a delightfully creaky relic, equal parts horror, sci-fi, and accidental camp.
The premise is as gloriously goofy as the title promises: a group of immortal 18th-century scientists, led by the stone-faced Dr. Murdock (played with a granite glare by Victor Jory), have been siphoning the life force from young women at a reform school to stave off their own transformation into literal stone statues.
The supporting cast is a roll call of B-movie regulars, with William Hudson and Charlotte Austin gamely navigating a plot that lurches between mad science and melodrama, their performances as earnest as serious as a lunch lady guarding the Jell-O. There’s Ann Doran as Mrs. Ford, Paul Cavanagh as Cooper, Tina Carver as Big Marge Collins, George Lynn as Dr. Freneau, Barbara Wilson as Anna Sherman, and Pierre Watkin as the Coroner Griffin. Jean Willes as Tracy. Willes had a prolific career in both film and television, often playing brassy, tough, or alluring characters. Some of her most notable roles and appearances include: Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 as Nurse Sally Withers and Oceans Eleven 1960.
Cinematographer Benjamin H. Kline whose work was prominent in low-budget films, westerns and serials (The Man They Could Not Hang 1939, film noir Detour 1945, Zombies of Mora Tau 1957, The Giant Claw 1957), bathes the film in the shadowy, utilitarian black-and-white that was the bread and butter of Columbia’s B-unit, giving the reform school’s corridors a vaguely haunted, institutional chill. However, the real chills come from the stiff line readings and the villain’s petrified expressions.
Every frame seems to beg for a fog machine and a theremin, and the special effects—mostly actors holding very still while painted gray—are less terrifying transformations and more community theater statue contest gone wrong.
The imposing, stone-faced brute in The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957) is played by Friedrich von Ledebur (credited as Frederick Ledebur in the film), who portrays the character named Eric. Eric is a hulking, nearly mindless enforcer whose menacing presence and granite-like demeanor stalk the helpless girls at the reformatory.
Carol Adams is a staff social worker at the La Salle Detention Home for Girls. New to her position, she quickly becomes concerned by the suspiciously high number of otherwise healthy young inmates who died of heart attacks.
When one of the girls, Tracy, voices her suspicions about the home’s death rate, Carol takes her seriously and begins to investigate, despite warnings from the administration to stop snooping around. Carol reviews the institution’s death records, questions official explanations, and challenges the coroner’s findings, especially when a supposed suicide seems suspicious.
Facing pressure from the home’s management, Carol is nearly replaced, but Dr. Jess Rogers (William Hudson who starred in The She-Creature 1956, The Amazing Colossal Man as the lecherous louse Harry Archer, the beleaguered husband in this cult classic about Allison Hayes who grows to gigantic proportions in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman 1958), a newly assigned psychiatrist, believes her and asks her to stay on and assist with the investigation. Together, Carol and Dr. Rogers uncover the truth: the medical staff, led by Dr. Murdock, are centuries-old scientists using the girls’ life force to prolong their own lives, and Carol’s persistence is crucial in exposing their crimes and saving future victims from the petrifying clutches of these 200-year-old vampiric fossils.
The film has a parade of monster movie staples, each one begging for a wisecrack. There’s the life-draining machine, infamous rejeivenation devise – a sizable, industrial-looking steel bathtub— the young women from the detention home are sedated and placed into the tub, where the rejuvenation procedure takes place. The process involves not just the tub but also an array of pseudo-scientific equipment. It is absurd in its simplicity, including electrical headbands, blood transfusions, and wiring and dials, which are attached to facilitate the transfer of their “life force.” It all looks like something the prop department threw together after a trip to the local hardware store. The inevitable showdown in the basement laboratory, where the villains’ plot crumbles faster than their own craggy skin and pounding hearts trapped in their hardening bodies; their petrification the final nail in their stone coffins. Meanwhile, in the end, the reform school girls race out of the prison with wide-eyed panic as the bizarre events unfold around them, with science goes mad.
The dialogue is peppered with the kind of earnest warnings and pseudo-scientific jargon that makes you want to shout back at the screen. Yet for all its campiness and cheese, The Man Who Turned to Stone has a certain rock-solid charm. It’s a film that takes its own nonsense seriously, and in doing so, becomes a time capsule of mid-century anxieties—fear of aging, distrust of authority, and the ever-present threat of being turned into a garden ornament by a group of mad doctors on a mission.
Watching it is like stumbling on a forgotten relic in the attic: a little dusty, a little silly, but oddly endearing in its sincerity. In the end, Kardos’s film stands as a monument (pun fully intended) to the era’s B-movie spirit—a place where the monsters are men in pancake makeup, the science is pure baloney, and the only thing harder than the villain’s heart is his jawline.
