Doctor X (film)
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| Doctor X | |
|---|---|
 Doctor X One-Sheet |
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| Directed by | Michael Curtiz |
| Written by | Robert Tasker (screenplay) Earl Baldwin(screenplay) |
| Starring | Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, Lionel Atwill |
| Music by | Bernard Kaun |
| Cinematography | Ray Rennahan |
| Editing by | George Amy |
| Distributed by | First National Pictures (through Warner Bros.) |
| Release date(s) | August 3, 1932 (New York Premier) |
| Running time | 76 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Doctor X is a First National/Warner Bros. horror and mystery film from 1932. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, and Lionel Atwill. The film is notable for having been shot in Technicolor and being produced before the motion picture production code. Thus, adult themes such as murder, rape, cannibalism and prostitution are interwoven into the story.
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[edit] Plot
Doctor X is a mystery-horror film with tongue-in-cheek comedic elements. It is considered by some to be of the "old dark house" genre of horror films, and takes place in 1932 New York City and Long Island, New York. Reporter Tracy investigates a series of cannibalistic murders.
Reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) is investigating a series of pathological murders that have taken place over a series of months in New York City. The murders always take place at night, under the light of a full moon (the newspapers dubbing them the "Moon Killer Murders"). Furthermore, each body has been cannibalized after the murder has taken place. Witnesses to the events describe a horribly disfigured "monster" as the killer.
Doctor Xavier (Lionel Atwill) is called in for his medical opinion, but it is learned through meeting with the police that the ulterior motive behind this is to begin an investigation of Xavier's medical academy, as the scalpel used to cannibalize the bodies of the victims was exclusive to that institution. Aside from Xavier, the other suspects are: Wells (Preston Foster), an amputee who has made a study of cannibalism; Haines (John Wray), who displays a sexual perversion with voyeurism; Duke (Harry Beresford), a cripple; and Rowitz (Arthur Edmund Carewe), who is conducting studies of the psychological effects of the moon (Rowitz also displays a notable scar on one side of his face). It is learned that Haines and Rowitz were stranded in a boat with another man, and that while they claimed he had died and they thew him overboard, it was suspected that they had, in fact, cannibalized him.
The police give Xavier 48 hours to apprehend the killer in his own way. During this time, Taylor investigates the doctor's intentions and in the process, meets Joan Xavier (Fay Wray), the doctor's daughter. Joan is exceedingly cold to Taylor, particularly after finding out that it was his story that pointed a finger at her father and ruined his first attempt at locating the killer. Taylor, however, manages to find a romantic interest in Joan before being escorted out.
The setting switches to Xavier's beach-side estate on Long Island. There, all of the suspects are brought in for an unorthodox examination of their guilt: each member (excluding Wells, because it is known that the killer has two hands and he has but one) is connected to an electrical system that records their heart rate. When a re-enactment of the murder of a cleaning woman appears before them, the detector will expose the guilty man who will have no choice but to confess. Dr. Xavier's butler and maid, Otto (George Rosener) and Mamie (Leila Bennett), carry out the reenactment.
Things go awry, however, when a number of events inhibit the experiment. First, Taylor breaks into the home and hides in a storage closet, but is rendered unconscious by gas that the killer puts in the room. During the experiment, a blackout occurs. Wells, in another room controlling the equipment, is knocked over the head and falls through a glass door. When power is regained, it is discovered that Rowitz, whose monitor supposedly revealed him as the guilty party just before the blackout, has been murdered, a victim of a scalpel to the base of the brain.
Taylor is discovered by the staff and Xavier has no choice but to keep him there until the investigation is over, lest he report back to his paper. Joan decides to be friendly to Taylor, as she sees that he is the only one with enough intuition to solve the crime. Later that night, it is discovered that during these hours, Rowitz's body has been cannibalized.
The following evening, the police allow Xavier an extension till midnight to apprehend the killer. Xavier again asks Otto and Mamie to re-enact another of the murders. Mamie is too frightened and ill to play her part, so Joan takes Mamie's place. All of the men, save for Wells, are this time handcuffed to their seats. It is during this that we find out that it is, in fact, Wells who is the killer. Through a "synthetic flesh" composition that he himself has created, Wells has been creating artificial limbs and a horrific mask to carry out his crimes in order to collect living samples of human flesh for his experiments. In order to collect his final victim, Wells sneaks up on Otto as the monster and strangles him. Then, Wells procedes to reveal himself and his intentions for collecting Joan as his specimen in front of the committee.
Just as Wells is about to strangle Joan, Taylor - who has been posing as one of a series of wax figures representing the killer's victims - jumps Wells and the two men get into a scuffle. As Wells lunges towards Taylor, Taylor grabs a kerosene lamp and hurls it at Wells. Set on fire, Wells stumbles and crashes out a window and falls down a cliff into the ocean. Reporting his story into the paper, Taylor tells his editor to make space in the marriage section for Joan and himself.
[edit] Background/Production
Shot initially as a programmer, Doctor X served a dual purpose for Warner Bros. to fulfill their contract with Technicolor who had at that point only licensed them for their two-color cameras and had just introduced their three-color unit. Thus, Doctor X's color scheme is limited to green and red, but director of photography Ray Rennahan uses this ethereal look to his advantage.
During production, an alternate black and white version was shot (to Technicolor's chagrin) and still exists, although side-by-side comparison shows that most takes between the two are the same. Differences in takes are minor, such as Tracy's ad lib with a skeleton in the closet, and Mae Busch's dialogue as a madam at a brothel. Despite this alternate version, the initial run of the film was exclusively in Technicolor.
The film also falls into the "pre-code" era of film making, and carries adult themes throughout. The situations of cannibalism and rape, although not unheard of, were rare and considered perverse in 1932-- not topics that were commonly explored in motion picture at that point.
Following the success of Doctor X at the box office, First National followed up with Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), which also starred Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill. Mystery was also shot in Technicolor, another film to try to complete Warner Brothers' contract with them.
The makeup was designed by Max Factor, who at that point had been associated with beauty makeup. Mystery of the Wax Museum also shared Factor's horror makeup design.
Doctor X was also the first in three films that co-starred Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Following this, they both starred in The Mystery of the Wax Museum and The Vampire Bat.
[edit] Reception
Doctor X was well received by both critics and at the box office. In fact, because of the popularity of the film, Warner Bros. followed up with Mystery of the Wax Museum. In 1939, a sequel with Humphrey Bogart was filmed, The Return of Doctor X, but the similarity between pictures ends at the title.
[edit] Preservation
By the late 1950s, when the film was being sold as a package on television, the Technicolor version was thought to be lost, since Technicolor discarded most of their 2-color negatives in the late 1940s. Upon the death of Jack Warner in 1978, a print was discovered in his personal collection, and the film was restored to its former Technicolor glory by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
[edit] References
- In the musical play The Rocky Horror Show, and its movie adaptation, the opening song Science Fiction/Double Feature references many classic movies and it does this one with the line: "Doctor X (oo,oo,oo) will build a creature"
[edit] External links
Doctor X at the Internet Movie Database
