Doctor X

Plot synopsis:
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 grouchy loudmouth 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 had thrown 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. He is then walking out of the house as the maid dumps ice water on him.
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, appears to fall 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. As his "guests" are all handcuffed and helpless, he is free to explain. 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. It turns out at first for years he had been searching for a secret manufactured flesh and eventually finds it; so, he went to Africa one time, not to study cannibalism, but to get samples of the human flesh the natives eat. To collect his final victim, Wells sneaks up on Otto and strangles him. Then, he proceeds to reveal himself and his intentions for collecting Joan as his specimen in front of everyone.
Just as Wells is about to strangle Joan, Taylor — 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.

Tags: murder, atmospheric

Review:
Doctor X combines a spooky old house with a mad scientist horror story, and as directed by Michael Curtiz in early two-strip Technicolor, it's a quite good show even by today's standards.Lionel Atwill's Doctor X is a scientist who runs a medical research institute in New York City near where a series of grisly murders have recently occurred.
Well, sort of......only two colors, but they look great.I only got this because I saw it at the library as part of a two-pack with "The Return Of Dr. X." It is part of a Hollywood "Legends Of Horror" package that includes several other films I am familiar with and think highly of, so I can see a possible future purchase.Anyway, the first thing that struck me watching this was that fantastic two-strip Technicolor.
DOCTOR X is one of those heartbreaking films to watch for a fan of old horror movies, because it has so many wonderful things going for it yet just narrowly misses the mark of being really good due to a liability or two which could have been avoided.
Dr. Xavier (the always enjoyable Lionel Atwill) heads a group of doctors who are all suspects up for scrutiny, and though we have to deal with the frequent lapses into silliness from Mr. Tracy, this old chestnut is interesting and gripping a fair amount of its running time.
There's a completely out of place beach scene with Wray and Tracy that will leave you wondering who thought it shouldn't be left on the cutting room floor (perhaps it was an excuse to get a pantie shot of Fay as she sunbathes under her big beach umbrella).The film's strongest moment comes in a revelation sequence late in the movie where we finally get to see who the crazed murderer is, and it's still chilling even now to watch him go through his insane routine.
When you think of it, everything about this film is strictly synthetic...the plot, the hokey comic relief, the occasional ham acting--but the atmosphere photographed in crisp looking two-strip Technicolor is fully charged and the taut direction of Michael Curtiz (long before he did another more polished noir called THE UNSUSPECTED), makes this a very watchable early horror film from Warner Bros.The Anton Grot sets in early color will keep the viewer totally enhanced even when the plot holes become too obvious.
The storyline concerns a killer known for striking when there's a full moon and Lionel Atwill is the doctor who thinks he can solve the crime by some scientific detective work of his own.It's the sort of film that became a staple of the "old dark house" mysteries audiences loved in the '20s and '30s--and even into the '40s with films like THE CAT AND THE CANARY.
None of it seems quite as compelling as some of the better known fright films (including MURDER IN THE WAX MUSEUM), but we do get a chance to hear some first rate screams from Fay Wray (who looks very attractive in close-ups even though the Max Factor make-up is a little too extreme), and the capable cast includes such sturdy performers as Lionel Atwill and Preston Foster.Trivia note: The killer's synthetic flesh make-up is very effective when he's in full mode on the kill.
Xavier's daughter Joan teams up with annoying reporter Lee Taylor to find clues to the murders, but they have to act quickly when one of the doctors is killed and the next victim will be Joan, and no one in the academy will be able to stop him.
And both elements are enhanced because this was one of the first movies to be shot in two-strip Technicolor.Lee Tracy, one of the most enjoyable actors of the early 1930's, plays another in his long line of fast-talking wise-crackers - this time a newspaperman out to get a big story.
Among those films was the 1932 tale of horror and mystery, "Doctor X", directed by Michael Curtiz, who in those years was still one of the many studio directors at Warner.
The Academy's director, Dr. Jerry Xavier (Lionel Atwill), decides that in order to avoid any bad reputation for the Academy, he must find who the killer is among the suspects, and asks the Police Commisoner for time to carry on an experiment.
At the same time, a wisecracking reporter named Lee (Lee Tracy) finds himself trying to discover what's the mystery at Xavier's Mansion.The screenplay for "Doctor X" was written by Robert Tasker and Earl Baldwin as an adaptation of a moderately successful three-act play by Howard W.
While the plot is indeed more focused on horror (including detailed, although not graphic, descriptions of rape and cannibalism), the story remains true to its origins as a play with the inclusion of lighthearted comedy in the shape of Lee, the wisecracking reporter, whose comedic exploits serve to break the tension at several points of the film.
While nothing really amazing by today's standards, the story still works very well, with some cleverly written twists and unexpected surprises that spice up the plot.While the plot sounds definitely like another of those "old dark house" thrillers that were so popular in the 30s, the execution of the film is what truly sets it apart from the rest.
As a director, Curtiz was still far from becoming the master who directed "Casablanca", but his classy style can already be seen raw in this movie.Another of the high points in the film is the casting, starting with Lionel Atwill as Dr. Xavier.
Preston Foster, John Wray, Harry Beresford and Edmund Carewe are pleasant surprises, each giving their own quirky character a distinct look, and like Atwill, make very believable suspects of the heinous crimes.
Finally, George Rosener and Leila Bennett have small, yet very funny scenes that add a lot to the black comedy aspect of the film, and personally, I found them infinitely better than Fay Wray and Lee Tracy."Doctor X" is a film that has aged badly, showing a style of mystery stories that is not popular anymore after countless of imitations and variations on the same subject.
Lee Tracy's comedic performance is also another of the film's details that nowadays look silly and out of place ( Glenda Farrell would do a better work in a similar role in "Mystery of the Wax Museum", the following year), although then again, this kind of over-the-top performances were the standard of comedy/horrors of those years.
Rather than use older, more costly period piece backdrops for their horror movie stories, Warner Brothers innovatively(and frugally I might add) decided to use modern settings and modern "monsters." Doctor X is a fast-paced thriller about a moon killer that strangles his victims and uses a very sharp surgical instrument to dissect them for...let's just say its seems for a late midnight snack.
Lionel Atwill, the oily/suave-British-character actor stalwart, plays Doctor X, a man who tries to find the moon killer from his scientific institution rather than have the police bring the school's name in the mud.
He meets up with Fay Wray who is Atwill's daughter, but even she doesn't deter him from his mission.Horror stories were not the Warner Brothers specialty and when you consider what was coming out of Universal at the time, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy, Doctor X looks pretty second rate besides them.
While the title DOCTOR X indicates a "mad doctor" theme, especially with Lionel Atwill heading the cast, in true essence is a mystery-comedy with horror elements and science fiction thrown in along with Fay Wray belting out a few screams for good measure.Plot summary: Six brutal killings have taken place at night only when the moon is full.
Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy), an inquisitive reporter for New York's Daily Record, enters the scene on the waterfront where he witnesses Doctor Xavier (Lionel Atwill), escorted by O'Halloran (Willard Robertson) and Police Commissioner Stevens (Robert Warwick), entering the Mott Street Morgue to examine the body.
With Taylor constantly snooping around Long Island's Blackstone Shoals estate where the investigations are to take place, Xavier has his beautiful daughter, Joanne (Fay Wray) attract his attention while having his medical staff handcuffed on chairs bound to the floor while staging a re-enactment of the crimes in hope that the mechanism they are connected to (an early indication of a lie detector) will reveal the killer through his heart beat reactions.
It is soon discovered there is a killer among them when one of the members participating in the reenactment was murdered during a sudden blackout.In the supporting cast are Preston Foster (Professor Ben Welles, a one-armed medical student); John Wray (Doctor Haines); Arthur Edmund Carewe (Doctor Rowitz); Harry Beresford (the wheelchair bound Professor Duke); Leila Bennett (Mamie, the frightful maid); George Rosener (Otto, the mysterious butler); Mae Busch (appearing briefly as a boarding house Madame); and Thomas E.
Jackson (The Newspaper Editor).The weakness of DOCTOR X is often accredited to the silly antics provided by Lee Tracy, typically cast as a wisecracking reporter who uses a buzzer placed onto his palm to shock an unsuspecting victims as Mike the Cop (Harry Holman) and Xavier's daughter (Wray) by placing the buzzard onto her bottom; along with he hiding in a slab of the morgue with a name tag placed on his toe, followed by him roaming the laboratory surrounded with dangling skeletons.
The strong point of the story, however, is the way the mystery and suspense is handled, from hideous figure lurking about in a dark cloak with hands with long finger nails seen slowly clutching the throat of intended victims to a mysterious eye peeking through the hole on the door; climaxed by the killer's horrific transformation through the use of "synthetic flesh," one of the greatest, yet gruesome moments captured on film, even more effective in color.During the days of commercial television, DOCTOR X aired in black and white.
A perennial favorite on New York City's "Chiller Theater" on WPIX, Channel 11, from the 1960s to 1977, it would be another decade before DOCTOR X turned up on the airwaves again, this time with early Technicolor prints acquired from UCLA Film Archives, on cable TV's Turner Network Television (1988-1993), Turner Classic Movies (1994-present), and further availability on video cassette in the 1990s and then DVD.
Fortunately, DOCTOR X has survived in Technicolor, make this a worth while event, thanks to interesting make-up effects by the Max Factor Corporation, lavish sets by Anton Grot, a chance seeing classic film actors usually not associated in Technicolor, notably Fay Wray and her reddish brown hair.With the obvious success by 1932 standards of DOCTOR X, Atwill and Wray would work together again in more of the same with 1933 releases of THE VAMPIRE BAT (Majestic) and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (Warner Brothers).
Instead of bringing back Tracy, Wray and Atwill, the new leads were enacted by Wayne Morris as the comical reporter, Rosemary Lane the heroine, and Humphrey Bogart (!) as a zombie, formerly Doctor Maurice Xavier brought back to life not through the use of synthetic flesh, but by synthetic blood.
James Whale took this concept as far as possible with Bride of Frankenstein; but Dr. X goes a little farther than it should, and so you have this uneven feel, with one foot in the world of comedy, and one foot in the world of horror.On the plus side, there is Lionel Atwill, one of the greatest villains of the classic period of the movies, and you have Fay Wray, who was always a pleasure to watch.
"Doctor X" is probably best remembered as an early two strip Technicolor movie (it was also filmed simultaneously in B & W) rather than as the horror/comedy its supposed to be.
One is identified as an expert in the the area of cannibalism so its not too difficult to identify the killer early on.Thrown in with the horror element is comedy relief, provided by Lee Tracy as Reporter Lee Taylor and Leila Bennet as the Xavier's maid.
But Lionel Atwill got a solid presence as Doctor Xavier, Fay Wray (before King Kong fame) as his daughter is delicious, and the rest of the cast is in top form.
The actors are all on top form, with Atwill (MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM) giving a super-duper performance as a distinguished yet slightly mad doctor, while all of the suspects are slightly weird and fun to watch, especially the banter between them.Typically with these sort of films, there's a wisecracking journalist involved in the proceedings, whose repeated use of a hand buzzer soon becomes tiring and makes one wish he would just buzz off.
A wisecracking New York reporter (Lee Tracy) intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.This film has it all: a monster composed of "synthetic flesh", a murder mystery, an investigative reporter who could be Abbott or Costello.
Lionel Atwill stars as Dr. Jerry Xavier, head of a surgical academy that has come under suspicion when a gruesome series of murders committed by the "moon killer" are traced there.
Just a year later, she and Lionel Atwill (who is always excellent) once again appeared in a horror film together (THE MYSTERY OF THE HOUSE OF WAX).
Lionel Atwill,Fay Wray and Lee Tracy are Dr X ,Joanne Xavier and Lee Taylor are the main characters who really show that a movie released in 1932 has a good as acting as now.
Since Universal's horror movies were great hits at the time, they decided to make their color movie a horror movie as well; but not the good old-fashioned vampire superstition Gothic horror, but a NEW kind of horror in every sense of the word: the 'scientific' horror - and of course, there's a big potential of horror in that field as well...For some time, dreadful "Moon Murders" have been going on, where the victims are all literally being cannibalized and pieces of flesh cut out of their bodies with surgery instruments - and they all happen near the isolated house of Dr. Xavier, who has turned it into a laboratory where he and his colleagues work on various strange experiments...
And cheeky (or at least, seemingly cheeky) young reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy, who's setting the standards here for the typical 30s' movie reporters whom we all know and love so well) is determined to investigate in that curious 'lion's den' with skeletons, bubbling chemical substances and a bunch of weird scientists...At the same time, he still finds an opportunity to flirt with Xavier's pretty daughter Joanne (Fay Wray, who would co-star with her 'father' Lionel Atwill in another two very successful horror movies, "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" and "The Vampire Bat") - and eventually, when during a criminological experiment that Doctor X.
arranges in order to find the murderer she gets into mortal danger, he gets the chance to prove his 'heroism'; but will he really be able to do so??This 'new' kind of horror proved VERY successful as a movie, highly suspenseful and yet at the same time entertaining, particularly well directed by Michael Curtiz, with a superb cast - and of course those fantastic colors that must have seemed like a miracle to the audience back then.
A series of grisly killings that take place in the full moon(which may or, may not involve cannibalism) which the police determine could have only been committed using a certain kind of scalpel found exclusively at a currently closed university run by Doctor Xavier(Lionel Atwill); it seems all the doctors are likely suspects, but at the same time each has a plausible alibi, Xavier is given 48 hours to determine which of his faculty is the killer.
Meanwhile, a wisecracking reporter(Lee Tracy)is hot on the trail not only of the killer, but of Xavier's daughter(Fay Wray, a year away from the role that would make her famous in 'King Kong').
His role is intended to be comic relief anyway.Doctor X has an excellent cast with horror regulars Lionel Atwill (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula) as Doctor Xavier and a pre King Kong Fay Wray as his daughter.
The cast also includes Preston Foster, John Wray (no relation to Fay as I am aware of) and Lee Tracy as the journalist.Doctor X is a must for all horror collectors.
Legendary director Michael Curtiz, responsible for such classics as Casablanca and Angels With Dirty Faces, never lets the action stop and gives us a marvellous experiment scene, with Xavier trying to uncover the murderer's identity by having the chief suspects watch a re-enactment of the killer's crimes.Of course the solution to the mystery is absurd, but this is a fantasy-horror and it works well within the context of the film.
This bizarre horror film is best seen in the original two strip Technicolor if only to see how effective that early foray into color worked at the time.
Yet, he can not overcome a very slow-moving plot, Fay Wray's annoying screaming for no reason, Lee Tracy's very dated and boring comic interludes, and hammy overacting.I think the most intriguing and chilling portion of the film come at the end when we are introduced to the killer for the first time when shapes himself as a beast through synthetic flesh..
This movie was the archetype for the dark old house films of this era, with classic horror actors Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill in the starring roles.
Either way, the creepiness factor is evident enough in this tale of murder and cannibalism, a subject I thought would have been taboo this early in film history.The always reliable Lionel Atwill is the Dr. X of the title, short for Xavier, and head of the Academy of Surgical Research.
Fay Wray is on hand as Madame X, that is, Dr. Xavier's daughter, getting a chance to audition her scream for the following year's memorable "King Kong".What I like the most about these period horror films is the great use of pseudo-scientific jargon that supports the story line.