The Man Who Turned to Stone - 1957

The Man Who Turned to Stone - Released March, 1957. Directed by Leslie Kardos

A girl's reformatory school is stocked with young women, which is exactly what is needed by a small group of 200-hundred year old scientists who have found a way to prolong their own lifespan (or else they slowly turn to stone) by strapping these girls to a device that transfers their life energy to whomever is attached on the other end. Quite certain that their important scientific research makes it okay to commit wholesale murder, their group has to work fast to cover things up when a new office employee (Charlotte Austin as Carol Adams) begins wondering why so many of the girls are turning up dead from "heart attacks" and "suicide."

William Hudson (he of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman fame) appears as an investigating doctor who begins to suspect all is not what it seems, only he can't prove that anything is amiss, which is that the reform school staff are using the young women as rechargeable batteries.

Hampered by staid writing and staid camera angles, the movie never exactly comes to life. Charlotte Austin, William Hudson and Jean Willes all handle their on screen tasks well enough, but director Kardos mostly just aims the camera at the low budget mundane sets (lots of curtains mask the backgrounds and corners) and lets the actors say their lines to one another without much feeling. What might have been the basis for a perfectly interesting episode of Outer Limits or Twilight Zone is given too much run time (more or less like our staff of killer doctors) and the idea, mixed with stoney presentation, isn't up to the task of 71 minutes.

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