Hitchcoc Despite some silly religious symbolism, it was fun, as usual, to watch the painful expressions of the great Vincent Price. The poor guy sentences this guy to death. After he is dead, whatever was inside him that made him evil, goes into Price's body. From then on, this thing called the Horla becomes the driving force in Price's life. When he gets this cheesy green glow in his eyes, he becomes murderous. Price tries to find peace in his avocation, sculpture, but the cute little model he hires becomes his obsession. She is already married but Vincent has designs on her. But worse than the nasty mother of the girl is his Horla friend who makes the relationship impossible. Besides, she was indeed a fortune hunter. This is one of those fun 1960's horror films that I enjoyed when I was a kid. One shouldn't take it too seriously or analyze it too much. Just enjoy the story.

tomgillespie2002 The greatest of actors will always find themselves taking an unworthy role simply to pay the bills, but it is in their ability to carry these films on their own that truly establishes their greatness. Vincent Price, who starred in an endless array of crap (as well as the odd horror classic), had this ability. He was by no means the finest of actors, but his undeniable screen presence and often tongue-in-cheek approach has made him a gift to horror fans, and here he helps raise Diary of a Madman, one of his more obscure efforts, into the realms of the passable. Based on Guy de Maupassant's short story The Horla, Diary of a Madman is a very silly film indeed, but manages to retain a sort of camp charm.Beginning with the funeral of magistrate Simon Cordier (Price), his pastor begins to read out his diary to various friends and old acquaintances. Flashing back, he visits the cell of a doomed inmate who has killed a number of people without a motive, and who informs Cordier that he has been possessed by an evil and invisible entity named the Horla. He attacks Cordier, but is killed in the struggle, and the spirit of the Horla moves into Cordier's body. From then on, Corider experiences strange murderous urges, and is tormented by frequent visits by the mysterious being. He rediscovers his love for sculpting, and meets vain and selfish model Odette (Nancy Kovack), who appears to fall in love with him.The Horla itself is a ridiculous creation, flying in through Cordier's windows and announcing his presence in a voice reminiscent of the one you would put on when you have a bed sheet draped over your head. Better yet, the Horla's causes it's subjects eyes to glow green whenever they feel evil inside of them, here represented with some shoddy effects that looks like the director is simply flashing a light in the actor's eyes. But as previously stated, this raises some unintentional laughs and, with Price's presence, is quite charming. The Horla is a metaphor for the evil in every man, and the film at least manages to interpret de Maupassant's themes on a most basic level. I doubt it will ever get any home media release that will cause a cult rediscovery, but Madman is an enjoyable little oddity, and certainly a must-see for Price fans.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

IPreferEvidence Interestingly enough this is not based on Nikolai Gogol's short story Diary Of A Madman but on a short story by Guy de Maupassant called The Horla. The film is very different from the short story and takes a totally different direction with the plot while expanding on some things already established in the short story. The acting is decent(and of course there is Vincent Price who is awesome as always). The cinematography is pretty bland and there are some nice yet sparingly used special effects. The Horla is one of my favorite short stories so I just had to look this up but instead of being a study of a very deluded mind this adaptation was a cheesy 60s supernatural horror film with Vincent Price.Not terribly and not even that bad but it just could and should have been a lot better.

gavin6942 Simon Cordier (Vincent Price) is a well-respected magistrate who visits a condemned prisoner, Louis Girot (Harvey Stephens), just before the man's execution... and finds him to be possessed by a demon! The film's plot goes in directions one might not expect. The inmate has a very small role, and Price's character is shown to be dead at the beginning -- how far in the future is this? He spends much the time courting a woman and sculpting her bust. None of this is really in any way related to the demon-possessed prisoner.When the demon is free of a body, it may be less murderous, but no less influential, and I find that a nice twist. The demon is a "horla", whatever that is. The original story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", which also features an extraterrestrial being who influences minds and who is destined to conquer humanity. If this film is important to horror history in any way, it may be seen as an offshoot of Lovecraft.Mike Mayo calls the film "one of Vincent Price's best but least remembered efforts." While I consider Price's greatest but least known role to be "The Mad Magician", Mayo's point is still true. Going into this one with no expectations (having not heard of it), I was fairly impressed. It ranks much higher on my list than others would rank it on theirs, I think.On Scream Factory's excellent disc (part of the Vincent Price Collection, Volume 3) we have another Steve Haberman audio commentary. We must talk about Haberman's style. Rather than discuss anything happening on screen, Haberman goes on a long, passionless tangent about the story's author... but he does make up for this a bit by offering an amusing abbreviated history of Vincent Price's cinematic wives. Haberman is a person who is very smart, does very good research, but has not mastered the way to present it -- he essentially writes bios of people in the film's he is reviewing and reads their biographies. This is very dry and often does not offer much more than Wikipedia could, unfortunately.