The Doctor(Hospital Massacre)

## Poster

**The Doctor**, also known as **Harold Rusk** or **Harry**, is the main slasher villain of the 1982 American slasher flick, Hospital Massacre(also known as **X-Ray**, **Be My Valentine, Or Else**, and **Ward 13**).

He is portrayed by **Charles Lucia**, while as a child he was portrayed by **Billy Jayne** and as The Doctor he was portrayed by **Don Grenough**.

## Personality

Harold Rusk is a love-crazed, psychotic who obsesses over Susan. He is shown to be a mastermind as he conducted a plan to keep Susan in the hospital by using his wits, but will not hesitate to kill whoever will get in the way of his plan.

## Background

As a young boy, Harold Rusk was in love with a girl named Susan Jeremy. However, when he leaves a her a Valentines card at her house when she was alone inside with her friend, David, they both mock the card and crumble it up, breaking his heart. As Susan grabs two slices of cake, Harry breaks into the house and kills David, leaving his body behind for Susan to find and discover Harold was behind it.

## Biography

19 years later, Harold is all grown up and he stalks Susan when she heads to a hospital to pick up some test results from her doctor, Doctor A. Jacobs. Planning to keep her in the hospital, Harold wears a surgical garb and strands her in the hospital elevator by switching the power off and grabs her test results as well as killing Jacobs. He then switches the power back on and tampers Susan’s test results.

Later, though, the hospital’s janitor finds Jacobs’ body in the closet of a vacant room, leading to Harold killing him as well. After that, Harold meets up with Susan in the Doctor’s lounge, under the alias of Harry, to give her the tampered test results and brings her to Dr. Saxon to get a check-up.

After the check-up, Harold places the bodies of his two victims on a gurney and heads to the office of a woman named Suzy, who was writing down the reports of Susan’s check-up. Harold kills Suzy and switches the reports with a fake one for Dr. Saxon to read, leading Susan to stay in the hospital much longer. Afterwards, Suzy’s co-worker, Nancy, discover’s Suzy’s body in her office and gets kill by Harold as well.

Under the alias of Harry again, Harold comes to Susan and looks up Dr. Jacobs’ files on her to gain her trust, admitting that someone is pulling a con-job on her. Later, Susan’s boyfriend, Jack, arrives at the hospital to pick her up only to get lured into an empty room by Harold. From behind a privacy screen, Harold asks personal questions of Jack and Susan’s sex life, leading to Jack to confront him behind the screen only to discover a dummy and gets killed by Harold. Harold then leaves a cake box in Susan’s room by her bed, where she discovers Jack’s severed head inside.

Once Dr. Saxon and a nurse look in the cake box, finding nothing but an ordinary cake, Dr. Saxon heads down to the hospital’s basement to check on the files after Susan’s claim that someone is trying to con her. Susan tries to escape the hospital but she ends up witnessing Harold killing Dr. Saxon.

Susan tries to warn the other doctors, but she ends up being deemed insane and is strapped to a gurney for an operation. Harold kills the nurse preparing for the operation, Nurse Dora Anders, and kills the doctor, Doctor Beam, afterwards when he was looking at Susan’s x-rays.

Harold then takes Susan to a downstairs vacant room and places her on an operating table to cut out the one thing he desires; her heart. Susan manages to pull the surgical garb off of Harold’s face, where he reveals his true identity to her. Fortunately, other patients of the hospital arrive in the room and interrupt Harold, allowing Susan to grab one of the operating tools to stab Harold and manages to make her escape. Despite getting stabbed in the stomach, Harold starts to chase after her.

This leads to a chase through the hospital’s storage room where Susan gets grabbed by Harold when she tries climbing up a ladder. Susan makes him lose his grip on her by pouring a jug of flammable liquid, which was on one of the shelves nearby her, all over him.

The two end up on top of the hospital’s roof where Susan beats him down with a lead pipe. Harold, however, grabs her before she could walk away and gets on top of her in order to stab her with the operating blade she stabbed him with. As the two struggle, Susan grabs a lighter and uses it to ignite the flammable liquid that Harold was covered in, setting him on fire. Despite being covered in flames, Harold tries to chase after Susan on top of the roof but when he runs toward her, he ends up running off the roof and plummets to his death.

## Murder Objects

### Handheld Weapons

* Knife
* Bone Cutter
* Hatchet
* Syringe filled with a lethal substance
* Saw

### Non-Weapons

* Coat Hanger
* Sink of Acid
* Stethoscope
* Sheet

## Kills

* **David**: Eye jammed onto a coat hanger.(Off-Screen)
* **Doctor A. Jacobs**: Stabbed four times with a knife.
* **The Janitor**: Strangled by hand and gets head shoved into a sink filled with acid, melting his face.
* **Suzy**: Stabbed three times with a knife.
* **Nancy Johnson**: Strangled with a stethoscope and gets neck broken in the process.
* **Jack**: Decapitated by a bone cutter.
* **Doctor Dan Saxon**: Hacked in the back of the head by a hatchet.
* **Nurse Dora Anders**: Gets covered by a sheet and is given a lethal injection with a syringe.
* **Doctor Beam**: Impaled through the back of the neck with a saw.

## Trivia

* Billy Jayne, the child actor who played as Young Harold Rusk, would continue playing the role of a killer child as Curtis Taylor from *Bloody Birthday*.
	+ Ironically, Elizabeth Hoy, who played as Young Susan, would star in the film with him as the other killer child, Debbie Brody.