Rating: B
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Star: Lionel Atwill, Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, Robert Warwick
By coincidence, we reviewed another Curtiz film, Noah’s Ark, not long ago, when looking at early disaster movies. This sees him working in horror, and I found this significantly more enjoyable. It’s in that sweet spot for the genre, before the Hays Code effectively knee-capped it through censorship, but after technological advances like sound. This is even in colour, though an alternate version was shot simultaneously in black and white, for exhibitors who didn’t want newfangled gimmicks. The colour print was considered lost for decades, until showing up in Jack Warner’s personal collection. Also of note, it gets name-checked in the opening song of Rocky Horror: contrary to the claim there, Doctor X does not, in fact, build a creature.
X is for Xavier (Atwill), the head of the Academy for Surgical Research in New York. Its faculty seems almost entirely comprised of suspicious individuals: nervous tics, dark histories and sweaty furtiveness abounds. Which is what attracts the attention of the police, as a serial murderer has been operating in the area. The killer has not just been cutting up people with a scalpel used only at the Academy, they have been gnawing chunks off the victim. The press, represented by dogged Daily World reporter, Lee Taylor (Tracy), have nicknamed the perpetrator the Moon Killer, because the crimes take place during the full moon. To avoid a scandal, Dr. Xavier agrees to look into whether any of his colleagues could be behind the murders.
I’m not sure his approach would pass legal scrutiny in a court of law. For it involves strapping them into chairs (top – I wonder if it influenced John Carpenter in The Thing), then getting his servants to re-enact the last killing. Whoever reacts most is guilty, because science! Mind you this was a time when nobody was bothered that Taylor’s journalism involves repeatedly breaking into places and harassing people like the Doctor’s daughter, Joanne (Wray). When he’s trying to convince her to go swimming, and asks, “What will you do if I start to sink and yell for help?”, her pithy reply is, “Throw you an anvil.” I liked Joanne. She’s feisty and takes no shit, having already pulled a gun on Taylor.
The whole thing gallops along without a dull moment, and the Doctor’s laboratory is a particularly well-executed piece of design. Though I admit, you may be able to figure out who is the killer before the movie reveals it. The eventual logic behind his action is certainly an unusual premise, and might have been inspired by the success of Frankenstein the previous year. It does feel as if Taylor might have wandered in from another genre, perpetually cracking wise and hitting on Joanne. It’s not a bad performance, just one which doesn’t fit anyone else, who all clearly think these events are Srs Bsns. This does somewhat dilute what is often a remarkably dark piece of atmospheric horror. Not too badly, however.