Atmospheric episode of "The Veil", directed by George Waggner (The Wolf Man), with an enigmatic twist towards the end that gives it an extra eerie potency, has Italian peasants needing their beloved country doctor, "El Doctore" Dr. Carlo Marcabienti (a delightful Karloff), to come at once as a little girl in the family is dying of diphtheria and could pass away at any moment. Carlo's son, Angelo(Tony Travis), a city surgeon who wishes his aging father, clearly worse for wear due to his busy duties always on call to help the peasants all over the countryside, would come to live with him, is visiting. Angelo, because Carlo is out attending to another sick local, decides to go to the peasant family but their insistence on El Doctore could cost them the young child's life. What gives the episode a nice spooky feel is the heavy winds depicting an ominous storm a brewing, but even more fascinating is the twist involving El Doctore, "arriving" almost too late as Angelo was unable to get the father of the sick child to agree to let him perform a much needed tracheotomy unless Carlo is present, which provides a definite feeling of surprise because it really comes out of nowhere and is unexpected. I like to think it says that even if a doctor is not necessarily "present" in body, he is in spirit, and that is able to work wonders. Just a sparkling performance from Karloff as a caring village doctor who looks at the locals who live on the countryside as if they were his children, depending on him not just as a physician but a friend and confidant, trusted and dependable, shunning the mere thought of leaving them as his son requests.
Review of The Doctors
