Doctor Without Scruples

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• 1959
• 1 hr 35 mins
• Horror

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• Watchlist

Dr. Robert Westorp had once been an assistant for Professor Lund for five years. On his way to start a vacation with his wife, he stops to hear a lecture from Lund about his current research on heart transplants. Afterwards, Lund asks him to stop by his office. Once there, Lund pleads for him to take a look at some X-rays of a diseased heart. Lund is anxious to have Westorp assist him in a heart transplant to the patient who is the famous singer Harriet Owens. He introduces Westorp to the other members of his surgical team, Dr. Marianne Cordt and the former Nazi, Dr. Stein. What he does not disclose is the source of the donor hearts. In this instance, the donor is Birke Sawaski, a woman whom he treated after she attempted suicide with sleeping pills. She has been discharged, but Lund has his cronies offer her a ride during a rainstorm in their ambulance. She is drugged and taken to his facility outside of town. She is kept sedated and will be treated with curare to simulate death just before the transplant procedure will take place. Her aunt becomes worried when she goes missing and reports it to the police. A complication arises when another of Lund's transplant patients, Paolo, escapes from his care. Unaware that he needs frequent injects of a serum to keep his body from reject the new heart, he sneaks aboard a milk truck and gets to the nearby town. He collapses and eventually dies. The combination of the missing Birke and the dead Paolo raise Inspector Nobis's suspicions. He goes to see Lund just as the transplant surgery is about to take place. Lund's assistant Habib brings in the drugged Birke a little too soon. Cordt recognizes her and Westorp discovers she is still alive. He was told the donor was a recent suicide death. Lund has much to do in the way of explanations.