Doctor X (1932)

not as good as all the hype

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It's certainly wonderful to see this hitherto lost work of director Michael Curtiz. True, it has been available in black-and-white, but who in their right senses would want to look at Doctor X without color? I agree the picture might still deliver a few odd thrills, but its obsessive mood, its genuinely spooky atmosphere — not to mention all its splendidly Gothic pictorial effects — are utterly lost. In monochrome, maybe a passable chiller. In color, a minor yet fascinating masterpiece of almost unbearably tingling horror.Take the cast. Thanks to her appearances in this one and "The Mystery of the Wax Museum", plus "The Most Dangerous Game" and "King Kong", Fay Wray is the only female film star of the early 1930s who has a greater reputation today than way back then. She looks lovely. And most attractively dressed too. The imperiled heroine par perfection.Lee Tracy is hardly our first choice for the role of comic newspaperman, but he handles that assignment with such skill that he ingratiatingly delivers thrills, laughs and romance in liberal yet almost equal measure. The ever-reliable Lionel Atwill is handed a made-to-order part as the suspicious doctor-in-charge. Few actors can deliver lines with such commendable speed and authority. Robert Warwick makes a game try here, but comes nowhere close. As for Preston Foster, his startling performance will have audiences cheering. Leila Bennett is also effective as a scared-witless maid. And A.E. Carewe has a small but vivid role to play.For me, however, there are two actors in "Doctor X" who truly excel way, way beyond the call of duty. The other is George Rosener. Admittedly, he's handed a colorful role as a sadistically servile Otto-of-all-work, but Rosener plays it with an edge that is absolutely riveting.It's a bit mean to single out a few players when Curtiz has drawn such vividly convincing portraits from the whole cast. Notice how he adds to the realism by sometimes causing one player to break in on someone else's dialogue, or cues a number of actors to all speak at once.Curtiz has also made fine use of Grot's magnificently atmospheric sets and — assisted by Amy's smoothly sharp editing — paced the picture to a really palm-sweating climax. Ray Rennahan's superb camera-work adds immeasurably to the bizarrely enthralling atmosphere of ultra- chilling suspense.Finally, I will mention that Atwill, Foster and company all rejoice in titles of both "doctors" and "professors"; that Miss Wray is usually called "Joanne" but that she is twice addressed as "Joan"; that Mae Busch is obviously the madam of a brothel, not a speak- easy; that Tom Dugan is best described as a plainclothesman outside the Mott Street Morgue; that Harry Holman of the exploding cigar (which plays a neat part in the cleverly menacing plot) is indeed Patrolman Mike; and yes, it is Selmer Jackson in the not-credited bit part as the Globe's night editor.The play opened on Broadway at the Hudson on 9 February 1931, running 80 performances. Howard Lang starred.

After a rash of murders in New York, a reporter's quest for the truth leads to the seaside mansion of a famed scientist are conducting a series of illegal experiments on the nature of evil, forcing him and his still-alive captors to stop their experiments before he can finish.This here was a pitiful and absolutely wretched effort. What makes this one so terrible is the fact that there's just no possible way the story to this one can mean anything when the large portion of what's going on here tends to fall into the rather ridiculous and lame comedy that's supposed to be down-right hilarious but truly isn't. Not only is the lead's constant bungling around his clothes for different objects at a given time or his thousand-words-a-minute smooth-talking to get out of sticky situations unbearably unfunny, but the film has the gall to believe that not just one or two but three separate scenes of him being trapped in a room with skeletons that manipulate themselves on their own are gut-busting hilarious enough to warrant that many repeat returns to that gag that this is a great example of the purposeful horror/comedy that's not funny. That each of these scenes last as long as they do not only makes this one a staggering chore to get into in the first half but also drowns out the horror to a bare minimum in these parts which is really only in the fact that the rampage is on-going and we get detailed explanations of the victims' remains in such a state that the technical jargon for these sequences is almost as bad as the boredom from the supposed laughs to come along. What tends to keep this one remaining as a horror film is the films' final half which is where this one really gets going with some admittedly decent and suspenseful times in their experiment chamber where the different attempts to provide the search for their mission manages to get pretty enjoyable by holding out the killer's identity quite well here in the first sequence as the chaos makes it quite chilling, while the second attempt is even better with the identity switch putting the killer with her while the others are helpless to watch culminating in a great brawl that ends this on a high note. Still, the massive flaws with this one really hold it down the most.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

There are Many Enjoyable Elements Incorporated in this Early Talkie/Technicolor Horror Movie. It is Directed with Flair and Style from One of Hollywood's Elite, Michael Curtiz and Shot in a Two-Strip Color Process that was Rare at the Time. It has Horror Icon's Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. The Exciting Climax Lovingly Displays some Fantastic Horror Makeup and is Filmed in Eerie Closeups and is Quite Impressive. The Sets are Mad-Lab Expressionistic and there is Pre-Code Nastiness and Lurid Inclusions.The Movie is Visually Stunning at Times and is Always Interesting, Using Pulp Magazine Style Art Representations that were Popular at the Time with Bondage and Women in Peril Themes. The Horror Elements may seem Dated but are Still Chilling in a Retro Kind of Way. Fay Wray is a Beauty and is Exploited in a Beach Scene right up to a Money Shot. Lionel Atwill and His Board of Scientists are Creepy and Eccentric with Physical and Mental Scars that are, Again, Pulp Inspired. The Pre-Code Stuff Includes a Whore-House, Cannibalism, a Drug Addict and More. This is a Great Example of Uncensored Hollywood and is Only Brought Down Today by a Heavy Dose of Slapstick Humor and Stilted Love Interest with the Never Appealing Lee Tracy (although He has His Fans).

Based on the previous reviews, Lee Tracy evidently is one of those actors that one either thoroughly enjoys or finds highly irritating – to me, he's entertaining and a joy to watch. I liked his wisecracking reporter character a lot – it was a pleasant relief from what was a rather dark and dreary movie. The plot of this early sound horror film is Dr. Xavier's search for which of his colleagues is the serial killer dubbed The Moon Rise Killer. Dr. Xavier runs a scientific research academy – all of the doctors working at the academy act odd including Xavier himself and the police have narrowed their search for the killer to the academy researchers and give Doctor Xavier 48 hours to uncover him. I'm not a big fan of early horror films (and no fan at all of contemporary horror films) but I must say that this one was particularly creepy due to, as others have noted, the wonderful sets, the excellent and scary make-up used at the end of the movie, and spot on acting by Atwill and Foster. The early Technicolor added to the spookiness. Lucky for Fay Wray that she was in King Kong for otherwise she would probably be virtually forgotten rather than fairly well known - at least among old movie buffs. As it is, Fay Wray is probably better known than Lee Tracy, which is a shame.