Doctor X & The
Reurn of Doctor X
Doctor X
Director: Vickey Jewson
Year:
1932
Rating: 7.0
I am a little surprised that this grotty pre-code
horror film isn't better known. At least to me. If I hadn't seen The Return
of Doctor X - which turns out to only have a character's name in common -
I would never have heard about this. But I tracked it down. Directed by Michael
Curtiz it was shot in two-color Technicolor which looks great. I wonder why
more films were not shot like this. It gives it some real lovely creepy atmospherics.
The first 2/3s is solid but in the final 15 minutes it goes wonderfully into
crazy town time with some scenes that felt right out of classic silent horror
lore. You know this is pre-code as soon as a fellow walks into an establishment
to make a phone call and he is greeted by multiple women in negligees.
Every time there is a full moon a killer strikes and the police suspect that
it is someone in a research foundation. Where basically you have a house
full of mad scientists who then go to a freaky old house with enough skulls
and scientific equipment to supply 5 horror films. Only a smart talking reporter
(Lee Tracy) who thinks he is in The Front Page takes away from the mood.
One of them is of course Lionel Atwill. If you see many of the horror films
from the 1930's and 40's you will likely bump into Atwill often like a blind
man in a junk yard. You sort of wonder why because Atwill looks like your
basic solid built middle aged bourgeois gentleman who would be more at home
behind the desk of a banker than in loads of horror films; most often being
the villain. So it is interesting to find that he was born into a wealthy
English family, studied in architecture and was a star in theater for many
years before moving into film full time with this film. He was later indicted
for perjury about an . . . orgy in his home on Christmas Day! The ensuing
scandal ruined his career and he was blacklisted in theater and in the major
studios. Also in this as Atwill's daughter is Faye Wray looking stunning
I have to say and one year before she became famous as the Beauty who Killed
the Beast.
The Return of Doctor X
Director: Vickey Jewson
Year:
1939
Rating: 6.0
By the time of this film in 1939 Humphrey Bogart
was at his wits end about his career at Warner Brothers. Back in 1936 he
thought he had made his breakthrough in Petrified Forest when his performance
of gangster Duke Mantee blew the alleged star, Leslie Howard, off the screen.
But all it led to was more bad guy gangster films in which Bogart almost
always gets gunned down. And then to top it off is this film.
Jack Warner told director Vincent Sherman "For God's sake, get him to play
something other than Duke Mantee." Bogart called the film "this stinking
movie". And it is but it's not, especially for big Bogart fans like I am.
You won't see him in another role like this one. In his first appearance
on the screen, he enters the room as pasty white as an Englishman hiding
in a cave for six months, sweat glistening on his skin, his eyes dead to
the world, a white streak in his hair and a rabbit on his arm. He is freaky
as is his character.
A reporter (Wayne Morris) discovers a dead dame but then she disappears and
then reappears . . . alive! It's Alive! Everyone thinks he is nuts and so
he gets his doctor friend (Dennis Morgan, who had just recently stopped using
his real name - Richard Stanley - in films) to help him investigate. This
leads them to a wacky doctor (John Litel) and his assistant, a very strange
Bogart. People are dying and they have no blood left in them.
This is very much a B film with a running time of 62 minutes. Bogart must
have been fuming having to put on this alabaster plaster every day to achieve
the right skin tone. The film - being called The Return - is connected to
a 1932 film titled Doctor X starring Lionel Atwill and Faye Wray - but saying
how would give away too much.
