Mad Surgeons - Doctor X & Mad Love

I watched "The Vampire Bat" Sunday night, and with "Doctor X" (1932), Turner  Classics showing it here recently, I thought it was great timing. Atwill, this time, is a suspect ultimately proven innocent among a collection of scientist peers at a vast castle estate overlooking a sun-kissed beach, the true Full Moon killer without a hand behind synthetic flesh that allows him to create a hand, along with a hideous "mask".

Also "Mad Love" (1935) came on this morning on Turner Classics, a film I really had no intention of watching this year necessarily. Gogol, what a concoction by Lorre, loves watching torture theater at the Grand Guignol, executions by guillotine, and harbors such lust for retired performance artist, Drake, he keeps a wax statue of her. I'll include user comments from my old IMDb account for "Doctor X" below and finish with a fresh epilogue for both films.

Dead-on-Arrival pacing and excessive attempts at unsuccessful humor plague what could've been a very satisfying psychological character study about a serial killer who preys on victims during the Full Moon cutting into their skulls while also cannibalizing them. Lionel Atwill portrays Doctor Xavier..called on by police to find the killer amongst his staff of colleagues working at his institution. Fay Wray portrays Xavier's daughter, who will be the female in danger, and Lee Tracy is the wisecracking reporter. To snuff out the psychopath, Xavier will gather his scientists together at his château for the next 48 hours(the police gave him a time-line to find the killer or they would all be under arrest).

While at times a trial to sit through, director Curtiz is a marvelous artist who frames stunning shots utilizing the two-strip Technicolor and terrific sets to maximum effect. 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. November 2006; Doctor X

Obviously, I feel much differently now for "Doctor X" than I did then. Revisits in the right frame of mind helped as well as when I rewatched it. Tuesday's viewing was quite a different viewing experience. I was tired from work but in the right mood for it. It sort of was like comfort food. And my disdain for its pacing wasn't a factor at all this go-around.

Thank goodness that the Technicolor print of “Doctor X” was found after Warner died. I shudder at the horrible thought that horror classics of historical significance are no longer available, just destroyed without thought of generations in the future not given the same opportunity to see them as those who lived during that time. We’ll never know if some early films featuring the likes of Lugosi and Karloff, much less the great Lon Chaney, who had plenty of silents that are lost to time, could perhaps sit in some warehouse, maybe moved there by some studio hand, or basement of a hospital (“The Passion of Joan of Arc”, my favorite film discovered in one, unavailable, knowing just how masterful it is, would be a tragedy). I try not to dwell on that too much because to do so doesn’t change the fact that hard work, with inferior equipment, committed by some serious talents, will never be seen as they should by not just audiences in the 20s or 30s but by future audiences. But lucky for us, “Doctor X” has survived what tragically befell the likes of “London After Midnight” so we can at least take solace in that. Seeing Fay Wray in color, her hair and features, as well as, Curtis’ moody urban nights of New York, and later atmospheric castle with the Frye-like butler, Otto (George Rosener), ribbing the scared maid, Mamie (Leila Bennett); Technicolor gives this and the other Atwill/Wray Wax Museum (1933) a special veneer of distinctive aesthetic, a visual texture to accompany the ghoulish plot of a surgeon (later determined to be John Wray’s Dr. Haines, fooling his scientist peers with the loss of a hand, later proven through a special flesh he perfected, to be “substituted” so he could kill) using a surgical knife to the skull of victims, biting from them, nearly even attacking Lee Tracy’s “intrepid reporter” (or is that “tepid” reporter) when he was looking in the other direction. The brothel visit to use the telephone, as Tracy’s Taylor needs to contact his editor, shows us also how the lack of a “morals code” helped to give the film a little edge. The hand buzzer and skeleton closet gag (and attempting to take the pictures of Atwill’s Dr. Xavier and Wray’s Joanne from their home, a home he snuck into), as well as, the “sneak visit” to the morgue (complete with sheet and toe tag) dates the film, but I admit that this wasn’t even remotely as annoying as it was to me back in 2006. In 14 years pacing, as I balk and bitch about intensely in user comments included in this write-up, isn’t as much an issue as it was in the past. These films gave casts time on screen “room to breathe”, while today pacing is everything. Holding the camera on people longer than seconds seems unthinkable. So the audience for “Doctor X” will brave the “old style”, lacking that score to move you, not jump scaring you with manipulative sound effects. The Max Factor makeup and Anton Grot style sets that you see mentioned a lot with this film’s history further add to Curtis’ chiller theater stylistics, adding his old stamp to the old dark house/sinister city streets with the full moon above theme. Because we typically see Atwill in B&W Universal B-movie horror, his early 30s run was seemingly much more lucrative, really establishing him as the star of the Curtis double header (and to a lesser degree, “The Vampire Bat”), along with Wray. Wray identifies her screen queen moniker in “Doctor X”, seemingly shrieking unnecessarily just so she gets it on screen. The makeup on Wray when he goes all in as Full Moon killer is quite hideous, seemingly a physical description of his inner psychosis, a personal depiction of the monster apparently “ignited” when the moon is full. The faces of the scientists Atwill gathers at his castle to “test” to determine who the killer would be is such a memorable gallery, where any of them could very well fit the bill. I liked when the lead detective on the cases in the city is taken through Atwill’s school, with each scientist colored as quite capable if just going by first sight. Tracy and Wray as an eventual couple maybe was a bit far-fetched to me, but Atwill actually not being the killer was a change of pace considering he would be in the other two with Wray. Curtis was quite prolific…there wasn’t a genre he wouldn’t direct. 3.5/5

 

Drake as Lorre’s obsession just has eyes for the tragic Colin Clive (the famous Frankenstein reduced to third credit, seemingly always billed as a “good hand”), a concert pianist and composer with a cough before his performances in front of a packed house devoted to her. Lorre is an actual master surgeon of serious renown, brilliant but too clingy, eerie, and upfront. He attends all the guillotine executions, enjoys the Grand Guignol performances of Drake (who is tortured for information, “stretched” and burned for information by her husband in regards to a lover), and is so smitten with Drake he purchases a wax statute in her exact likeness (the character in the stage show) for his own home. Lorre is so commanding with the pouty eyes, pitiable stature, sloth-like movements, gradual tone, the German/Hungarian accent fitted to English, and this creepy presence (when he approaches the screen, drawing towards Drake, I wonder how many pull back at home watching the film as Drake does) where the surgeon, willing to commit to Drake in however he can, including attaching a killer’s hands to her pianist husband after a train crash (incredibly realized with cars steaming and off track, briefly seen from a slight distance), is regarded as perhaps the best in his field. Still, he sits in his box at the theater watching Drake, as if aroused by what he sees happen to her when tortured on stage (a shot of the closed in crowd is also quite absorbed by the goings-on of the macabre story unfolding), intensely gripped by the show. These feelings for his “Galatea” are often overwhelming for Gogol (Lorre), so dedicated to her you can see how she’s always present in his mind, body, and soul…when she rejects him, Gogol can’t even perform surgery on a little girl in desperate need of the procedure. Lorre is so great as Gogol, his body flounders, his face wearies, the physical toll and anxiety is visible…he’s shaken by her rejection of him. We are watching a genius in this film and Freund’s work with faces and his camera capturing specifics to tell quite a love triangle story (the hands of the knife-thrower, the montage involving the cost and toll of the surgery and how saving Clive’s Stephen Orlac from amputation, Gogol committed to Yvonne (Drake), came with its complications, the Grand Guigol theater itself, the variety of shots directly on Gogol or following him) so impeccable. At the time, “Mad Love” wasn’t as highly regarded or a success with audiences, so I shiver at the thought of what we might have been deprived of if the studio had decided to just bury this in a vault and forgot about it just based on what was felt in 1935, because the reevaluation later was far more favorable. I personally LOVE this film, and it’s definitely high up my second tier of the genre in the 30s, but this decade is such a embarrassment of riches, “Mad Love” yet another example of what was produced in the golden age of horror. Lorre unencumbered by restraint, unable to just bury his feelings for Drake, his Gogol refusing to just let it go, even as her Yvonne makes it loud and clear Stephen Orlac is the man she loves. The stepfather who took pleasure in Stephen’s suffering due to a crash (which is just gut-wrenching due to the sheer hatred and spite you see in an antiquities salesman), Gogol taking advantage to set Stephen up, and Yvonne infiltrating Gogol’s home, pretending to be the statue, learning of his disguise as Stephen’s “id”, pretending to be the executed knife-thrower with neck brace…it’s all building to the very hands of the killer used to save Yvonne as Gogol, now completely mad, willing to strangle his love so that no one else can have her. 5/5