Six years before the world's first human heart transplant, Dr. Blood's Coffin saw Kieron Moore star as Dr. Peter Blood, a biochemist determined to bring a man back to life by giving him a new heart. Of course, this being a horror flick, Blood is seriously deranged, his procedure requiring the donor to be still alive while the transplant takes place.

In order to carry out his plans, Blood returns to his rural home village in Cornwall (where absolutely no-one has a West Country accent),and proceeds to drug and abduct locals, taking them down to the tunnels of a nearby disused tin mine where he has set up a rudimentary operating theatre using medical supplies half-inched from the local surgery run by his unsuspecting father.

When he's not injecting victims with curare (which causes paralysis) and playing God in the mine, Peter spends his time wooing his father's curvaceous widowed nurse Linda (Hammer babe Hazel Court). As time goes on, Linda becomes suspicious of Peter, leading to a shocking climax that sees the demented doctor reanimating the nurse's decomposing husband.

While all of the above sounds like a lot of ghoulish fun, Dr. Blood's Coffin is less entertaining than it might have been, suffering from too many dialogue-heavy scenes and a lack of genuine horror, the only slightly disturbing scenes being the hasty removal of organs by a flustered Peter (he's a fast worker, completing the surgical procedure in minutes). The finale, in which Linda's mouldy husband comes back to life is incredibly silly, but easily the most enjoyable part of the film, director Sidney J. Furie finally delivering on the movie's macabre premise.

While there are some slow moments of this science fiction medical drama with a bit of a horror element, it is the type of film that begins to make you think as the ideals of the various people involved in the medical profession are revealed. Kieron Moore is seen at the opening of the film being terminated from a research hospital where he uses a live human as a part of his experiment. He returns to Cornwall, his home, reunited with father Ian Hunter and falling in love with nurse Hazel Court. Before he has made his grand return, people are missing from the village, and doctor Hunter and nurse Court are certain that something evil is afoot. Thanks to the caves on the coast, more is able to continue his experiments, but how long before his secrets come to light?

This is a great villain role for the handsome Moore, seemingly noble but secretly nefarious, breaking into a man's room in the middle of the night, chloroforming him and dragging him to the caves to perform his experiments. He even takes one of the local officials there in an effort to get suspicion off the caves, and the shot of one of the victims crawling around it's pretty shocking. As bodies begin to turn up, Moore begins to slip up, and there's a great confrontation between him and Court over the evils of scientists playing God.

The lack of blood and guts make this a non-traditional horror film, although there are some quick shots of body parts as more continues his bloody experiments. Veteran actor Hunter (a Hollywood leading man of the 1930's) is commanding as his very noble father, and Court is both beautiful and radiant as the nurse. She brings out what little humanity in Moore has left. Those expecting exploitive type science fiction and horror will be surely disappointed, but if you want something thought provoking and even spiritual, this one's for you.

This is an ultra-cheap movie made in the UK with little in the budget to allow for big name stars. So it's left to Kieron Moore to play the young and severely misguided Dr. Blood. It seems that the young doctor has been away in college conducting experiments but he's now returned home to assist his father in his practice. What exactly his previous experiments were is unknown to everyone--they just know he's a nice guy and they can trust him to look after the good people of this small town. The only "big name" in the film is Ian Hunter, as the Sr. Dr. Blood.

Unfortunately for the town, the young doctor's experiments have to do with reviving the dead--a practice frowned upon in most municipalities. And, when he starts killing people to do this research, people eventually realize he is at the heart of the murders. Poor guy, as he sounded so sure of himself and sincere! The movie is much better than the low rating on IMDb. It's not a great film, but very watchable.