The Mad Doctor of Market Street
       
Director: Joseph Lewis
Year: 1942
Rating: 5.0
Here is another Mad Scientist film from Universal. It was a popular genre in the B film market after Frankenstein. Director Joseph Lewis packs a fair amount of nuttiness into this 60-minute B film. Lewis is best known for Gun Crazy and The Big Combo but he mainly directed now obscure B films. The Mad Doctor is of course played by Lionel Atwill who played more crazy people in his career than peanuts in a Cracker Jack box. He and George Zucco seem to have had a monopoly on those roles back then. Here he has a noble idea. Put people with fatal diseases into suspended animation until a cure is found. The problem is they keep dying and society doesn’t understand his great goal for humanity.

 

When he kills one more man and is discovered by the law, he goes on the lam. On board a passenger ship where people just think he is a harmless man – but he tosses one person overboard and when the ship catches fire, he ends up with a few passengers on a small deserted island. The other folks are Claire Dodd (who I know as Della Street in a few films) who is traveling with her aunt Una Merkel,  the wonderful Nat Pendelton, Richard Davies as the romantic hunk and John Eldredge as the louse. Turns out a Southeast Asian tribe is nearby and they think the idea of setting a bunch of white folks on fire on a Saturday night would be fun. Then Atwill pulls a Kutrz.