The System Of Doctor Goudron And Professor Plume: A Grand Guignol Classic

By Andre De Lorde

THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR GOUDRON AND PROFESSOR PLUME, staged at the legendary Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris in 1903, was the first sensational horror play by Andre de Lorde, the prolific author who went to produce dozens more works in the vein of "medical horror-- claustrophobic, gore-splattered scenarios played out in hospitals, bizarre experiment labs, and madhouses. Here, a lunatic asylum is taken over by its inmates, resulting in scenes of terror, suspense and human butchery. This new translation of de Lorde's classic is augmented by an extensive introduction on the author's work in theatre, fiction and cinema, and also includes the bonus text of Edgar Allan Poe's original story "The System Of Dr. Tarr And Professor Fether" of 1845.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elektron Ebooks
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781908694393

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THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR GOUDRON AND PROFESSOR PLUME

BY ANDRÉ DE LORDE, JACK HUNTER (INTRODUCTION), EDGAR ALLAN POE

AN EBOOK

ISBN 978-1-908694-39-3

PUBLISHED BY ELEKTRON EBOOKS

COPYRIGHT 2011 ELEKTRON EBOOKS

www.elektron-ebooks.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a database or retrieval system, posted on any internet site, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders. Any such copyright infringement of this publication may result in civil prosecution

INTRODUCTION: THE WORKS OF ANDRÉ DE LORDE

THEATRE

It was theatre director Max Maurey (1866-1947) who, from 1899 to 1914, established the Grand Guignol as a world-renowned house of horror. His publicity gimmicks included hiring an in-house doctor in case of fainting spectators – a trick which would be duplicated many years later by the master showman of cinematic horror, William Castle. But mots importantly, it was also Maurey who unleashed the writer who would go on to become the literary figurehead of Grand Guignol horror – André de Lorde (1871-1942).

Although de Lorde’s first piece for the theatre, Post Scriptum (1900) was relatively inocuous, two years later he produced the work which would set him on a path of notoriety. It was during a violent night-time thunderstorm that de Lorde, unable to sleep, seized upon a volume of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, his literary idol. Taking one of Poe’s original tales – The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether – he reshaped it into a short theatre-piece of extraordinary horror, set in a lunatic asylum. Returning to Paris, he showed it to André Antione, by then director of his own, newly-formed Theatre Antoine. Antoine was horrified, declaring that de Lorde’s work was sick and dangerous. And so, Le Système de Dr. Goudron et Pr. Plume was eventually staged at the Grand Guignol, on April 3rd, 1903.[1]

The Grand Guignol’s reputation as a chapel of gore and psychosis rested largely on the continuing output of Andre de Lorde. It’s estimated that between 1903 and 1926, de Lorde wrote at least one hundred plays of psychological and/or visceral horror, many of which were also staged at other theatres, including the Theatre Antoine, successor to the Theatre Libre. It was the asylum setting of Le Système Du Dr. Goudron Et Pr. Plume which indicated the future direction of de Lorde’s morbid output – obsessed with death and medical matters since childhood, he now forged a genre of medical and surgical horror, psycho-dramas staged in the claustophobic confines of hospitals, covert experiment labs, or the madhouse.[2]

Perhaps the most significant factor in the development of de Lorde’s surgical horror was his meeting, in 1900, with Alfred Binet (1857-1911), creator of the laboratory of physiological pathology at the Sorbonne, editor of the revue L’Année Psychologique, and director of an institute of experimental psychology, Grange-aux-Belles. Binet, a remorseless investigator into human behavioral psychology, saw a chance to collaborate with de Lorde, who was himself visiting asylums like Biçêtre in order to study insanity. This recreational collaboration between scientist and author resulted in six plays for the Grand Guignol and other venues, as follows: L’Obsession (The Obsession, May 1905), a critique of doctors and their lack of intuition. The story revolves around a man obsessed with the idea of killing his young son, who is advised by a psychiatrist to commit himself to an asylum. He declines, and ends up fulfilling his urges by strangling the boy to death. Un Leçon A Salpêtrière (A Lesson At Salpetriere, May 1908): an investigation into medical experimentation within a lunatic asylum, with insane people used as guinea pigs in drastic surgical and electro-shock therapies; it ends with vengeance and disfigurement, as a female patient hurls acid into the face of one of her tormentors. L’Horrible Expérience (The Horrible Experiment, November 1909): another psycho-drama of medical experimentation, this time involving the resuscitation of the dead. Charrier, a deranged physician, has devised a way to bring corpses back to life by cardiac electro-stimulation; he is given a chance to demonstrate his theory by an executioner, but a fatal car accident to his own daughter drives him to use her as his first experiment. In gruesome scenes, he revives her body but she, apparently ill-pleased at finding herself a zombie, strangles him to death. L’Homme Mystérieux (The Mystery Man, 1910, first presented at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre): this invocation of homicidal insanity concerns an industrialist afflicted by violent paranoiac episodes. Although he is confined in an asylum, his brother manages to have him released by order of a judge, despite severe warnings by the head psychiatrist. The man duly