The Mad Doctor of Market Street

This very minor Universal horror film from 1942 is significant for it was the last time Lionel Atwill received a starring role in a film. He was on the outs after this due to the sex scandal that ruined his career and health. He played only minor roles after this and died 4 years later of cancer.

The film is very easy to be hard on and Universal has obviously regarded it so low, that it has never made it to video, despite the millions they still make off their classic horror films. What kills the film is a lack of mood or suspense. It is super-pedestrianly directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

What makes the film are the change-of-pace settings including a doomed cruise ship and an exotic island. The actors are all excellent too, even if Nat Pendelton and Una Merkel get a little tired with their comic relief act.

Ultimately, Atwill rules and is as menacing and sinister as ever. He revives a dead native and is revered as a god by the island tribe. He very selfishly dictates how the other ship survivors will live as only Atwill so slimily could (Sounds like a reality show plot). The other standout is Noble Johnson as the village leader. He is given more dialogue than he ever had in his many previous horror films and he ultimately gives Atwill a run for his money. It was nice to see him in a larger role.

Don't expect too much - this is a B film. Atwill fans will delight in seeing his last great lead performance. Atwill may have never had a definitive mad doctor film, but I've always regarded him as the maddest doctor of them all.

Mad Doctor of Market Street, The (1942)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent Universal horror film has a mad doctor (Lionel Atwill) experimenting with bringing the dead by to life through frozen animation. Your entertainment level will depend on whether or not you like comedy mixed in with your horror. I think the two genres can go together in certain cases and I found the comedy here to be pretty good. Nothing great but nothing bad either. The film's story certainly isn't original but it is fun enough to keep the short film going strong until the end. Atwill, in his final lead role, turns in a fun performance, which is something we've all come to expect out of him.

Lionel Atwill plays Br Benson a scientist experimenting with suspended animation. Atwill has found a way of putting animals in to suspended animation, then curing their disease and then bringing them back to life. Unfortunately when he tries to move to people the good doctor finds that he can not revive his subjects thus provoking the police to look for the murderer. Fleeing he boards a ship and heads for the south seas. When the ship catches fire, Atwill and several other survivors end up on an island where Atwill uses his medical tricks to enslave the natives.

B movie or not this is a mess of a movie. The film starts okay, with Atwill trying his experiment on a man trying to get money for his family. The police burst in and he's forced to flee. After that comedy sets in and the film doesn't know what it wants to be. Once the ship sinks and the survivors end up on the island things become a mixed bag.

Its it suppose to be serious or a comedy? First billed Una Merkel makes me think it was a comedy. Merkel as a crazy woman going to New Zealand for the fifth time to find love would usually be in the background to Atwill's craziness, but here she's often front and center. The problem is that the comedy is very heavy handed and not very funny. As a drama it isn't much better. Its natives in sarongs bowing before the mad Atwill, who looks bored and distracted. It reminded me of some of the dreadful jungle monster pictures from the 1950's where the mad scientist goes to the jungle and sets some creature loose like in From Hell it Came, except those movies were fun.

I don't think that it helps that this film has something resembling a budget. Certainly the use of stock footage helped, but the fact that Universal spent probably twice what something like Republic, Monogram or a Poverty Row studio made me think that this would be something more than a really cheesy film. I know the reasonable look of the film made it hard to forgive the dopey script.

To be honest this is a hard film to really discuss. Its a light weight B movie that is not bad enough to make one want to spend time commenting on it. Its a bad movie that makes you want to forget it after you've seen it, with a "well that was a waste of an hour" before moving on to something else. Its a misfire and not worth saying anything bad about simply because the movie inflicts enough damage on itself.

Not worth bothering with except as a footnote in Lionel Atwill's career, his last starring role, and possibly his worst performance.

Mad scientist Lionel Atwill is at it again. This time he's run out of San Francisco for performing experiments that involve killing people so he can bring them back to life. He eventually makes his way to a tropical island where he uses his scientific abilities to fool the natives into thinking he has the power of resurrection. Minor Universal horror film is still enjoyable. Lionel Atwill is great as always. He's got some nice support from the likes of Noble Johnson, Claire Dodd, and John Eldredge. Nat Pendleton and cutie Una Merkel provide the comic relief. It's not a classic but any movie where Atwill plays a villain, especially a mad scientist, is worth checking out.

A textbook example of Universal's streamlined approach to churning out quickie "horror" products in the early 1940s is The Mad Doctor of Market Street: backlot sets, truncated run time, a script that disintegrates upon scrutiny, familiar contract players, and recycled musical cues. It is also a wonderfully entertaining movie that merrily skips about disregarding logic while stitching together two popular topics of the day: mad scientists and South Seas jungle adventures. What separates the wheat from the chaff in this case is a delicious performance by Lionel Atwill, sometimes dubbed the "maddest doctor of them all", who provides one of his most flamboyant turns in this guise.

Dr. Ralph Benson (Atwill) is an unhinged medico who longs to perfect suspended animation as a means to prolong life indefinitely and establish himself before the world as a God-like being. Following uninterrupted success with animals his first attempt on a human fails forcing Benson to take it on the lam. He boards a passenger steamer for New Zealand but his bad luck continues: the ship suffers a fatal fire and sinks. Benson and a handful of survivors wind up on a pacific island inhabited by superstitious natives eager to burn them alive. Fate intervenes when Benson saves the life of Tanao (Rosina Galli), the wife of the chief Elon (Noble Johnson), and is proclaimed the "God of Life". Reveling in his celebrity status Benson plans on continuing his experiments using his fellow castaways as unwitting subjects.

The original screenplay is credited to Al Martin who provides Atwill with a plethora of scenery-chewing opportunities. The narrative glosses over obvious questions like how Benson eludes the city wide dragnet out to get him, how people know the Mad Doctor of Market Street is on the boat yet have no idea what he looks like, how Benson's group escapes the burning ship and arrives unscathed on a beautiful beach, and so on. Martin is content to focus on the crazed Doctor and expects viewers to do the same while ignoring the Flash Gordon aspects of the plot. Atwill enjoys several well-written speeches detailing his all-consuming mania to become immortal in the eyes of man while demonstrating how completely unhinged he is. Meanwhile the rest of the cast must grapple with inane dialogue, unfunny comedy bits, and, in the case of the natives, a particularly degrading portrayal.

Director Joseph H. Lewis keeps events moving at a rapid pace to compensate for the logistical potholes in the story. Clearly hamstrung by a limited budget he employs abundant stock footage to portray the burning ship at sea and the rescue planes hunting for survivors while saddled with a laughably obvious toy boat in a studio tank for establishing shots. He does avoid the pitfall of ersatz indoor studio jungle sets by filming outside which adds immeasurably to the suspension of disbelief (such as it is). The opening sequence in Benson's darkened office, detailing the setup for his first human experiment, is impressively done with low lighting and a film noirish atmosphere. Lionel Atwill benefits from a career's worth of tight closeups accentuating his eyes and devilish countenance while Lewis perhaps goes to the well too often with undeniably impressive subjective shots of Atwill menacingly holding out a chloroformed object as he slowly advances towards the camera lense. Lewis also makes wonderful use of HJ Salter's familiar musical cues from Son of Frankenstein and Black Friday to assist in putting over the melodramatics. Perhaps the most chilling moment in the film is a shot of Benson's test tubes that dissolves into a roaring fire indicating what is about to happen to the man when his luck runs out.

Mad Doctor affords Lionel Atwill a field day for his unique talents. Rarely one to restrain himself the actor swings for the fences with outrageously flamboyant line readings and vivid depiction of a man with an insatiable ego who only wants to benefit mankind so he can be exalted as a deity. Whether smooth talking test subjects, reveling in his God of Life title, puffing on a cigar while watching ship passengers make fools of themselves, nonchalantly dumping nosy private investigators overboard, or fiendishly enjoying succulent native fruits while contemplating his next unholy act Atwill thoroughly dominates the film. It is an absolute crime that Universal deprived him of top billing (for Una Merkel of all people) not to mention having the script take shots at his doughy physique. Such disrespect was usually reserved for Bela Lugosi but apparently the studio had plenty to go around. This film would be unwatchable today if not for Atwill's bombastic performance.

The rest of the cast struggles in vain to remain buoyant in Atwill's wake. Beautiful Claire Dodd looks especially gorgeous as the love interest and registers well with her emoting; unfortunately onscreen boyfriend Richard Davies is endlessly bland. As the purveyors of the alleged comedy relief the aforementioned Una Merkel grates on the nerves with her screechy voice while Nat Pendleton also strikes out as a dumbbell boxer. Reduced to a bit role is Anne Nagel, who costarred with Atwill in Man Made Monster and acquitted herself quite well less than a year earlier, as the weepy wife of Atwill's first victim. Finally there is Noble Johnson, once the chief of Skull Island in King Kong, reduced to the kingpin of this tropical destination who is all too eager to put trespassers into the fire (and after what the white folks did to Skull Island who can blame him?).

While it will never be confused with any of the more noteworthy Universal chillers from the War Years The Mad Doctor of Market Street is a harmless bit of fun with delightful illogic and a familiar feel from the studio. Most of all it has a superior turn by genre icon Lionel Atwill who appears to be enjoying the time of his life in a superbly written role. Definitely worth a watch for fans of both the actor and the studio.