DOCTOR X (First National, 1932), directed by Michael Curtiz, capitalizes on the current horror trend made popular by Universal's 1931 releases of Dracula and FRANKENSTEIN. What makes DOCTOR X stand apart with similar products distributed by other studios was its two-strip Technicolor process, considering how color was a rarity and quite costly for its time. Equally rare was the use of color for one categorized as a horror film instead of a musical. 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. An scrub woman is the latest victim. 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. Because the murders were committed by a maniac with powerful hands near the vicinity of Xavier's Medical Academy of Surgical Research, all evidence points to Xavier's staff. Hoping to clear his academy of a scandal, Xavier asks Stevens for 48 hours to conduct his own investigation. 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. In one of the briefings by TCM's host, Bob Osborne, he mentioned that Technicolor prints of DOCTOR X were few, having circulated in big cities like New York and Chicago, while black and white prints played at smaller theaters in other areas. 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). Seven years later, Warners turned out a sequel in name only titled THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (Warners, 1939). 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. A missed opportunity for Lionel Atwill, the one and only Doctor X, or was it? (***)
