Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick. And today I think we're going to be doing the chronologically earliest film that we've done so far. Isn't that right?
I believe so.
So today we're going to be talking about Doctor X, a nineteen thirty two American pre code horror film that shocked my soul and conscience and I thought was just a fabulous ride.
Yeah. Yeah, this one was a pleasant surprise for me as well. I was only vaguely aware of it. I'll get into into some of that in a bit, but I was vaguely aware that it existed, knew basically nothing about it. You suggested it, I saw a couple of the people that were involved in it, and I just signed on side unseen and went in without any spoilers or anything. Watched it this morning and it was fabulous.
So while it might seem to start out as a rather traditional film, and it ends fairly to traditionally as well, it gets just heavily weird in the middle in a way that it really has to be experienced.
Yeah, well, there's one scene in particular. I mean, I would say that there is a like five minute sequence in this movie that you should watch the movie for, even if for nothing else. But there's some other fun stuff in there as well. Absolutely, and we'll get into what that is later on. But I thought at first we should talk for a little bit about the historical context of this era of movies. So this is a
pre code movie. You might have heard that term used by film historians before pre code, and that code there refers to something called the Haze Code. So basically from about nineteen thirty four until roughly the end of the nineteen fifties. I think sometimes the movie Some Like It Hot in nineteen fifty nine is held out as sort of like the demise of the Hayes Code era. But for this period, from the mid thirties through the fifties, American film studios sort of agreed to be governed by
censorship guidelines that were known as the Hayes Code. So this prohibited a lot of stuff that you might, you know, automatically think of, of course obvious R rated content like nudity and profanity, but it also banned content that was considered objectionable to conservative social values, so that might be all kinds of you know, references to cannibalism and things. You weren't supposed to have movies in which the audience would be asked to sympathize with criminals or crime, which is
just a great guideline for complex moral cinema. You weren't supposed to have movies that ridiculed the church or religion,
or movies with interracial or same sex romance. But there was a time before this code was implemented, before it was started, before it started to be strictly enforced in around nineteen thirty four, and that brief period between the spread of talkies, so movies with synchronized sound, which was mainly in nineteen twenty nine, and then the stricter enforcement of the code in nineteen thirty four, that like five year period is known as the pre Code period in
American film, and it's characterized by movies that experimented with more controversial content of multiple kinds. So you had sillacious content in terms of sex and violence and crime, the normal R rated kind of stuff that shocks the morals, but it was also I think it's worth pointing out a period of increased experimentation with progressive social themes that would mostly fade from American movies in the following decades,
only to re emerge in the sixties. So I think that's an interesting parallel that in the same time you see this brief early flowering of kind of like racy, r rated content, you also see things that we would later think are like good social values that were prohibited at the time, and they were sort of struck down with the same stick in thirty four.
Yeah, it's interesting too when you think about film, the film output, the cinematic output as an indicator of what the underlying culture is there was, you know, because once you have the code in place, Yeah, to a certain extent, the code is a product of the culture, and therefore you can see those films that come out of it as a reflection of what the culture wanted to see itself as. But it also means you have this inauthentic view of what was actually going on in the zeitgeist
of the time. You know, we just go back when we watch films from the nineteen fifties, American mainstream films from the fifties, and you get this kind of vision that's like, oh wow, it looks looks pretty dry, and you know, it's you know, it's pretty, it's pretty square. I don't know, it's very sanitized in many respects.
Well, people often harken back to they say there was a time where movies were more innocent. Have you ever heard that there was a more innocent age and cinema, which I think is a horrible way of putting it. I mean, that's not really what it was. What you're saying is there was a time when American movies were more censored.
Right, yeah, because I mean and certainly when you look at films from the fifties, there's plenty of horrible stuff
going on, like socially that's reflected in those films. But but yeah, you have this code in place is preventing this racier content from taking place, and it kind of limits the palette that artists of that time had to use, you know, that were at their disposal to bring their message across, be it like a really highly thought out artistic message or the B cinema message, which I think, as we've discussed before a lot of times, B cinema that is where the in genre cinema, cinema, horror cinema,
science fiction cinema. That's sometimes the first place where some of these cultural ideas are explored.
Yeah, totally before they reach the mainstream. Now I don't wanna say so, we're gonna be talking about this movie Doctor X, which is a horror movie in the pre code era, and for that reason for it it's time and place. It does feel very weird and edgy and unlike movies, you know, horror movies that would be put out by American studios a decade later. It feels much
more dangerous than that. But at the same time, I don't want to imply that this movie particularly embodies any like at the time controversial progressive social themes that I can think of. I don't think it really does. I mean, it's just like a horror, murder, mystery movie. But it does have this this harder edge from being in that early thirties period that I think serves it quite well.
Yeah. Absolutely, it's just.
Got a darker, weirder, more dangerous sensibility than stuff you would normally expect to see from movies of the thirties. Though then again, I would say, you know, there are some that are in the postcode era that that rival it in certain ways, Like I don't know, Mad Love, I think is sort of on the same level. Yeah, but maybe we should give the Elevator pitch for this movie. Okay, So what's Doctor x about?
Okay, So imagine yourself at a medical academy where absolutely every member of the faculty is a prime suspect in the cannibalistic moon killer slayings, like serial murderers that are taking place at night during a full moon. So we meet up with this character, doctor Xavier, Doctor Xavier, we'll get into the various pronunciations, and he's heading up the academy.
The police have come to him and they say, hey, we think the killer is one of you guys, and the doctor x here says, give me forty eight hours. I'll find the killer myself, so the police don't have to get involved and we don't have to get a lot of bad pr for the academy.
Yeah, it's a pretty great setup. Maybe we should hit that trailer audio. We are all under suspicion of murder.
What absurd? What imbitial thought that up? I'm Lee Taylor of the Daily World.
Then you did it? Me?
If you in printed that horrible story father in this morning's paper, don't be afraid tonight. Be sure you keep your eyes closed and relax.
I'm laying ten bucks to a dime.
It'ch another moon killer murder. One of us may be a murderer, a murderer who killed with the light of a full moon, leaving his victim's body mutilated. Sounds good, sounds good.
Now we may have buried one of the leads here, which is that this ced nineteen thirty two horror movie about cannibalistic murders and synthetic flesh was directed by Michael Kurtiz, the director of Casablanca. That's a pretty odd fact. So Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian American film director who made a lot of the most well regarded movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. He made The Adventures of Robin Hood in nineteen thirty eight with Errol Flynn, of course, Casablanca in
forty two, Mildred Pearce in nineteen forty five. He did at least one James Cagney crime movie. So we are not dealing with a Roger Korman type here. This is not a scrappy schlock production, you know, for kids at the drive in. This is one of the era's most high profile and successful directors. But there are ways in which Kurtis I think was much like Corman. And one of those ways is that Kurtis was prolific, ferociously productive, and he put out a staggering volume of film work
of sort of mixed staying power. Some of it, you know, is considered classics movies like Casablanca. Other stuff is largely forgotten, and he bounced all over genres. He directed musicals, westerns, swashbucklers, horror movies, biblical epics. And another thing that's interesting about him is that basically everybody who chronicles his life points out that his personal habits took the idea of staying busy to an almost fanatical extreme. There's one example of this.
It's a paragraph that I came across when I was reading an article in the La Times by Kenneth Turan that was a review of a book called Michael Kurtz, A Life in Films by Alan k. Rhade, and so Turin writes the following, both on camera and off, Kurtes wanted things always to be moving, hurtling cars and trains and propulsive people figure prominently in his films. Even the dark factory smoke in the movie Female moves purposefully across the screen rather than just evaporating lazily into thin air.
Someone who is likely easily bored and reportedly needed only four hours sleep. Kurtes only wanted to be doing, doing, doing, which led to difficult situations with his cast and crew. It's not just that the director believed lunch breaks were for whimps. Road notes that Curtiz's quote demonic work ethic approached savagery and working conditions on his sets are said to have been set, or said to be one of the reasons that the Screen Actors Guild was formed.
Oh wow, So yeah, just a hyperactive filmmaker who just wanted to be working all the time and perhaps just did not understand that other human beings either could not do that or did not want that right as the defining energy of their life.
Yeah, there was a whole other thing I was reading about his war against lunch. Like, he hated lunch. He thought lunch was a stupid waste of time, and that actors were lazy after lunch, and so he encouraged people to skip lunch because then they would be more productive in the afternoon. I don't know, it sounds borderline pathological.
You know, I have to say that I'm ultimately not super familiar with with his work. I saw Casablanca once for a film class in college and and enjoyed it. You know, it's an important film. But I've seen Overdrawn in the memory Bank so many times, and so many more times than Casa Blanca that the simulated Casablanca scenes in Overdrawn are the ones my mind goes to when I think of Casta Blanca. I think of Raal Julia right, as as as Rick. It's not Ricker, yes, Rick, Rick, Yes, Fingle.
I get Rick, Rick and Fingle are one in my mind.
Wait, who's Peter Laurie and Overdrawn? In the memory Bank?
They have some guy doing like a really really you know, stereotypical Peter Laurie impersonation. I don't remember if anybody connected to the plot role.
Julia was actually a good actor, and I bet he could have done a good Peter Lourie impression.
Oh I bet, yeah, he could have played every role in that film. But uh, I mean, Raal Julia is great in that film. He's great in everything, but I would.
Say Curtis's talent comes through in Doctor X. This is a This is a movie that is busy. It moves. I mean, it's got a lot of action. It is, it does not lag.
Yeah, there's not a lot of space to be bored in this in this film. Oh another thing about Kurtz. I don't know if you ran across this. This is an IMDb fact, So I don't know to what extent we can take this as absolute truth or it's just a story about him. But supposedly he fell out of a moving vehicle once because he had to He had some idea that he had to jot down. He had to write down on some notepad paper he was driving the vehicle at the time.
That sounds about right.
So another interesting thing about this This film is not interesting because of the names attached to it, but for what it tells you about about various storytelling mediums of the time. This was based on a play by Howard Warren Comstock and Alan C. Miller. So back in the day when I guess you just had more genre plays you could. You could have a cannibalistic serial killer play that one might view.
Yeah, that's interesting. Today, if one goes out to see a play, it's almost certainly going to be of you know, either a classical plays like you know, Greek or Shakespeare or something, or if it's a modern play, it's like a character driven drama, or it's a comedy. But yeah, we forget the early twentieth century like genre plays in terms of like bloody gory horror productions for the stage were extremely common, like the grang gin y'all in Paris.
I don't know, in a way I miss this tradition, Like why don't high school theater groups do viciously bloody grangin y'all. I'm sure you can still get those scripts somewhere. They're probably even in the public domain.
Yeah, and they'd probably be pretty fun to put on.
You get some kids to do the special effects, all the eyeballs squirting out and stuff. I mean, that could be good.
Yeah. Well, let's get into some of the players in this picture.
Okay, Well, you had an actor named Lee Tracy in one of the main roles in the movie. Now, Lee Tracy is not one of He doesn't play any of the scientists. Instead, he plays Lee Taylor, who is sort of the everyman anchor for the story. He is a
reporter for a newspaper called The Daily World. He is a street wise, fast talking newspaper hack, the kind of sardonic crime reporter character who appeared in a lot of movies of this era and then would later be sort of imitated or parodied for nostalgic recreations, like the character of Alexander Knox in the Tim Burton Batman.
You remember that guy, Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, played by an airless guy.
Yeah, Robert Woohl, Yeah, that guy I think is supposed to be a throwback to this stock character from thirties and forties movies.
Yeah, Like, you know, at the instant, the instant, a character like this walks on the screen because they're like, Hey, what you got there, partner, Let me talk to you about this murder. This happened in all of it out I'm afraid to go out a night because you know, it has this whole rhythm. This cadence is an obvious trope. I will say that that Lee Tracy is quite good in this role, though, and and while it does contain all these elements of the trope, it seems to have
some other fun Quirks added to it as well. So, not only is he this snappy newspaperman, but there's this whole thing where he's a He seems to be a practical joke enthusiast who often forgets that he's wearing one of these handshake buzzers.
Yeah, you know where he's like his wedding ring. He just forgets it's on there.
He just forgets it's on. And and this gag actually works quite well in the picture and plays into the plot a bit. So I applaud that for making for making a trope that I'm instantly not interested in actually entertaining.
Yeah, yeah, I got to hand it to him for that as well. And Tracy, I mean, he is this role. I mean it's just in his bones, you can tell.
Yeah, I read that he apparently played a lot of snappy newspaper men. There's a attributed quote I found on IMDb quote, I should have quit playing newspaper man after three or four parts in the movies, but the money kept coming in and I liked it.
He liked it. It almost sounds like a line his character would say in Doctor X.
Yeah, I should have done it in his voice. But I even I can't do that voice too often.
Okay. So then the next major player you've got is Lionel Atwill, who plays a doctor. Oh my god, So they pronounce his name like five different ways in this movie. It is like Professor Charles Xavier. It's Xavier Xavier or Exavier is how I think most Americans would say it today. But in the movie they call him doctor Xavier. They call him doctor Xavier. I don't know how many different ways they say it.
And then of course he is the titular doctor x But then in a way, the title also has another meaning, which we'll get to, and that is doctor x is in Doctor Unknown, right, yes, So Adwell is one of these actors who played a ton of characters who are either inspectors or doctors. In this he gets to play both. He's a doctor who acts as an inspector, and sometimes he played villains as well, such as the role of Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon from nineteen
forty three. And he's also in a string of horror films in the nineteen thirties. He played the one armed Inspector Krag and son of Frankenstein in nineteen thirty nine, which I believe was later parodied in what is it? The Melbrooks film Oh What in Young Frankenstein. Yeah, I believe they parody that role a bit in there. Oh I see, okay, Yeah, but in this yes, he is a doctor who acts as an inspector, so he has a lot of screen time. He's just constantly talking.
Yeah, and he's got a little bit slightly off brand Christopher Plumber vibes. You know, he's a little bit Christopher Plumber, but slightly less dashing.
Yes. And then there's also he does have this quality too where you're not sure if you can trust him or not either. Like a lot of this film is centers around a who done it scenario, And indeed you don't know what doctor X's deal is as well doctor Xaviu's deal is.
Yeah, it's great. There's a cast of like seven different creeps who are all testifying to each other's integrity. But they're all just like the most ominous, menacing people you've ever seen.
Yeah, it's a real rogues gallery, this medical academy. We'll get in like even without getting into the details of their spoil, which we'll get to, they all just look wonderful and grow grotesque in their own ways. It's a wonderful. We're not going to list their name, the names of the actors, because most of those names are probably not
going to really resonate with with listeners. They're worth looking up though, if you're if you're curious, but yeah, they're like there's so many scenes where you'll have like our leading lady, who are about to get to and she's talking like a foot away or less with one of these characters and their the lighting between the two characters is so distinct because of course she is illuminated and beautiful like an angel, right, and then these various character
actors are illuminated in ways to like really bring out the rugged definition of their face and all the lines and make them look like hollow, gaunt, haunted skeletons.
It's quick, wonderful, that's very well put. Well, we should get to the leading lady because she I think is without a doubt, the most well known member of the cast here. It's Fey Ray faey Ray plays Joan Xavier, the daughter I think the daughter, yeah, the daughter of doctor doctors doctor Zaber.
I wasn't clear on that for about half the Picture in the same years as the Daughter.
Yeah, and I mean god, this is Fay Ray from King Kong.
That's right, one of the original Scream queens. Yeah, she played Anne Darrow in the nineteen thirty three film King Kong, so she hadn't like fully exploded like King Kong was the film that really launched her into the spotlight in a major way. But she had a very long career. So she was born in Canada, they raised in Hollywood, so she intered acting at an early age, at sixteen, I believe in the nineteen twenty three short Gasoline Love. She acted in one hundred and twenty three titles up
through nineteen eighty. And as for standout roles, she was in nineteen thirty two is the Most Dangerous Game, and a standout role for us anyway, would also be Mystery of the Wax Museum from nineteen thirty three, which we've mentioned on Stuff to Blow your Mind before. She was in The Vampire Bat in nineteen thirty three, and yeah, she's a legend there. You can't deny her. In fact, she is mentioned twice in the lyrics to The Rocky
Horror Picture Show. So there's the whole there's a whole bit at the start of one of the songs, whatever happened to Fay Ray that delicate satin draped frame as it clung to her thigh? How I started to cry because I wanted to be dressed just the same.
Does Doctor Frankinfurter sing that?
Yes, yeah, okay, that's one of the closing songs there. But she's also mentioned in the lyrics to the opening number Science Fiction Double Feature, as is this very movie. By the way, Doctor X, Doctor X is the chorus, yeah where it goes, I ins Fiction Double Feature, Doctor X will build a creature very nice. That's my riff raff. So anyway, I like, you know, Feyay Hollywood icon and Doctor X in its own way is he is also part of the like the legacy of genre filmmaking here.
So I've been hearing Doctor X all this time watching and listening to Rocky hor Picture Show, and I never really looked up what that was. But it's clearly a reference to this film.
It almost sounds like it could be just a stock character reference, like it wouldn't have to be a real character from something.
Yeah, because it sounds it sounds like a stock character. Doctor X. You know, he's clearly a mad scientist of some sort. Right right now.
There's another strange feature of this movie that I wanted to mention, which is that this is nineteen thirty two, but the movie is sort of in color. It was made via a process that they were trying to get going at the time called two color Technicolor. It's sort of a strange technical interlude in the history of film. The movie is not exactly in full color. There are a lot of hues that don't get captured. You're not going to get accurate purples and blues and yellows and
all that. But it's definitely not in black and white. Though there was an alternate version of the film that was shot in black and white. I've read that it's almost identical in content except for some minor changes to ad libs and the dialogue. But there are two versions of this movie that were shot, one for black and white projectors and one for the Technicolor version. And this I think was the product of a deal between Technicolor
and Warner Brothers. Apparently Technicolor was not happy with the fact that an alternate black and white version of the film was produced, so It's kind of hard to describe exactly how it looks, but it's sort of in color. Certain types of colors and shades come through the dominant ranges of the movie seem to be sort of like green and orange, and I think that's because the two color process used two filters, one was green and one
was red. And I would say this two color spectrum would not be a good fit for every film, but I feel like it sort of works in this one. It's kind of appropriate because it suggests this diseased world of orange light that's kind of shining through the glass of a beer bottle, but also with this atmosphere of green fog. It works for Doctor X.
Yeah. It kind of has this dope theend vibe to it, which is fitting because there is a quote unquote dope fiend at what point in this film.
Another thing that you wouldn't get with the code.
Yeah, so I agree. I think it absolutely works here. If you run across a black and white copy of this film, don't watch it, watch the technicolor one. Because if black and white is the spectrum of truth and art for filmmaking of the time, then then it feels appropriate that we have this alternate unreality of technicolor in this film. Plus, there are elements of the flesh, of the synthetic flesh that I think really pop well with the color, Like I imagine they would have been equally
creepy in some respects in black and white. But the color, ooh, it really makes it work.
I agree, and especially because it's such an unnatural color schema.
Yeah.
But by the way, if you want more information on the two color process, the George Eastman Museum has a video I found. You can find it on YouTube that explains the technical details of the process. And one of the things that video points out is that the physical characteristics of the two color film made it especially prone
to scratching. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, yep, because Doctor X, at least the version that I streamed is full of scratches, long lines running vertically across the frame for whole scenes.
Yeah. Same here. I streamed it through iTunes, I believe, and same situation. But I like it. I like seeing those flaws in it, you know, especially for a film from this period.
Totally. Okay, Well, are you ready to get into the full plot breakdown?
Let's do it all right.
So we start with titling credits, and then we open on a kind of seedy wharf. There's a tug boat floating in the background, and a policeman strolls by whistling in the dark, and it's revealed that we're out in front of a building with a sign that reads the Mott Street Morgue. And then there's a man in a long coat and a fedora skulking around outside. He's kind
of hiding behind some barrels. He's smoking a cigarette. Then he looks up at the sky and sees a full moon and I think burns himself with his cigarette match and he says, are you bad luck? I guess talking to the moon. And it turns out that this is our hero in a way. Lee Taylor played by Lee Tracy, the crime reporter, and bad luck is sort of his catch phrase. He says it like eight times. And he is down here at the Mott Street Morgue because he's
trying to chase down a grizzly lead. There have been a string of horrifying murders in the city in recent months. I think it's supposed to be in New York City. I'm not quite sure. But was that the impression you got.
I just got a sense of it being the city, you know, the sort of eternal, cinematic city that could be any major metropolis of the day. It's dark city. Yeah, basically basically dark city.
But so these murderers apparently all take place on the night of the full moon, and there's a full moon tonight. So while he's hanging out outside the morgue, authorities are bringing a body in and Taylor thinks it might be another victim of the dreaded moon killer. Now there's an entourage that goes into the morgue. It's a bunch of cops and then it's this one guy in a coat with super silky fur lapels and I think that's doctor
X that's going in there. But it's funny because he's folding these fur lapels under his chin while he's entering the building, and he looks like Cruella Deville.
Yeah, they all have a very suspicious, villainous look to them.
Yeah. So Taylor tries to get into the morgue, but they won't let him in, and then he goes down the street, apparently to a brothel. I think that's what that's supposed to be.
Yeah, I think. So where he eases the telephone.
He makes a phone call to the night desk at his paper, The Daily World, and he's out here complaining. He's like, I can't get any dope. And the guy at the night desk is not very interested. And then he says to the to the editor here, he goes, listen, you lunkhead, I'm not clowning. Look out the window, will you. And so the guy at the night desk looks out the window and it's a full moon and oh, I think. Then he gets it. He thinks, oh, it may be
another moonkiller murder. And so the night desk editor is impressed by this and he's like, okay, see what you can dig up. And so then Lee Taylor goes around trying to get some leads. He tries to chat up a beat cop to see if he can get any info, and in the course of their conversation is, as we said earlier, revealed to be kind of a prankster because he zaps the cop with a hand buzzer.
Not a good idea, No, I mean, luckily, this this cop is like the roundest This is the softest cop you've ever seen. In your life in this picture. He's a sweetheart.
Yeah, and even he get and after they're chatting, he gives Taylor a cigar. He's like, here, some guy gave me this. You know you can have it. I think maybe Taylor asked him for a smoke or something, but he gives him the scar and then we cut to inside the morgue and then things start getting really interesting because here is an autopsy scene and Rob, I know you love a good autopsy scene.
I do, and yeah, this one kicks it off right.
So doctor Xavier. Doctor Xavier is examining the victim's body while the police detectives look on, and there's this great shot of the doctor silhouette behind a raised shroud. So they're lifting it up off the body and you just see him as a shadow operating behind it, but with his reflector on top of his head and everything is I don't know, it looks kind of like horns or something. And so the police ask him what's your theory, doctor,
and he says it's strangulation by terrifically powerful hands. And then they ask him about, well, what do you think of this incision at the base of the brain, and Doctor x says, obviously made by some type of scwlpel used for brain dissecting. The word scwlpel is said like that multiple times. So that's already shocking. Right strangulation and an incision at the base of the brain whatever that's supposed to mean. Uh, but then you know, here we
get a but wait, there's more moment. The left deltoid muscle is missing from the victim, and one of the cops asks, uh, it was torn right out, and doctor X says it wasn't torn gentlemen, this is cannibalism. I don't know how can he tell that.
Like were He doesn't say that their teeth marks or that it looks like it was chew out. He doesn't go into detail and say, well, this is a traditional like butchering cut or something like. Nope, I just can tell this is cannibalism. And it's firmly established and not questioned.
It's the chuck portion of the human. Yeah. But so okay, here we establish the moonkiller's mo strangulation by terrifically powerful hands, incision by scalpel at the base of the brain, and then eating the victim's left shoulder. And it makes me think this is a really overachieving serial killer, like they're trying to get extra credit.
Yeah, but it stands out, you know, It's like I'm instantly I watched this and I hear this, and I think to myself, well, I haven't come across this exact combination before. We're in fresh territory with this picture.
I agree. So they say this is the sixth the murder in a row, all committed during a full moon by means of strangulation and incision with a strange surgical knife. So why is the killer doing this? The police want to know, and then Doctor X gets into some brilliant speculation. He says the killer is quote a neurotic, of course, some poor devil suffering from a fixation, a knot or
kink tied in the brain from some past experience. And then he says that about of madness comes on for the killer whenever he's confronted with a vivid reminder of the past. And the policeman is skeptical, but doctor X insists. He says, I tell you that locked in each human skull is a little world all its own. And so the police want to know, well, what's the reminder, what's the thing that's triggering the killer to do this, and Doctor X says, he says it could be anything, the
side of the sea, the full moon. Every time he sees it, he's forced to relive the original moment that drove him mad.
Now this is great too, because we learned that this is doctor X's specialty, this is his area of study, and so of course this is tied into his hypothesis for the murder. It's the same way. You know, if Terence mckinna had been called upon to inspect these murders, he would have said, m I believe it probably had something to do with psychedelic mushrooms.
Yep, yep, yep, yep. Very good comparison. So anyway, Doctor X has given his professional opinion. He's about to leave, but then the police flip the script on him. Turns out they were sort of entrapping him here. All of the murders they reveal have taken place just in the vicinity of his medical academy. And what's more, the strange incisions made on the victims at the base of the brain have been traced to a special Austrian scalpel that
is only in the possession of doctor Xavier's facilities. So the medical supply companies confirm that no one else in the country has a knife like this seems like it would be hard to determine that, but that's what they say. And at first doctor Xavier is indignant and offended. He's as his students and faculty are exclusively of the highest integrity. This is impossible, yeah, soga.
So again we find out that the murder is definitely somebody at the academy. But then as we begin to meet the members of the academy, we will learn and we'll get into details here everybody is highly suspect and has ties to cannibalism or the study of cannibalism or some other elements. So it's wonderfully put together, like you can imagine a spreadsheet and you're like, okay, everybody checks off like two things on this list. There's no real standout candidate here.
Yeah, it's like you imagine hiring at this medical academy. It involves like, you know, must have five years of experience, must have eaten a human. But so Professor x offers a compromise. He says, look, don't you investigate the people in my academy. Let me investigate my academy in my own way, and the detectives want to know. Then they're like, well, how would you catch the killer? And then I had to write down Doctor X's response because I thought it
was great. He says, by immediately studying the pathological reactions of every man placed under suspicion, then trap the guilty one by a brain examination.
Science.
Oh, there is so much science exclamation point in this movie. There is an awful lot of very funny and plausible technobabble and scientific words being used in a context that makes no sense.
Yeah. If you watch this film, I advise you to not try to think too hard about anything science ye that any characters say, because none of it really adds up it. It will just hurt your brain if you try and make sense of it.
Yeah. So, anyway, doctor X and the detectives agree. You know, Doctor X will investigate the people in his academy on his own. There will be no publicity, the press cannot no. And then after they leave the room, one of the sheet draped corpses in the morgue suddenly sits up. Is it someone who has risen from the dead? No, it's old Lee Taylor the fast talking reporter. He's been snooping disguised as a cadaver. He's even got a little tag on his toe.
He's just so scrappy he can't keep him away from the story.
Yeah.
Now, I have to say I think this is all pretty fun set up with the whole situation where Xavier is given the chance to solve this internally before the authorities move in. Because, weirdly, having just watched the latest TV adaptation of the Name of the Rose, this is essentially the same predicament that Brother William finds himself in in the Name of the Rose. Solve the murders and the abbey internally before the papal inquisitor Bernardo Gui shows up and makes a bigger to do out of everything.
Right right now, I will say Doctor xis no William of Askerville, but he's I don't know, he's a clever guy though he If I have any major criticism of Doctor X, it is that Doctor X is far too trusting. I mean, just like every like creep and weirdo he comes across, He's like he couldn't possibly have done anything bad.
Yes, he ate human flesh once twice tops, but he has a good heart. I trust him completely. He writes poetry in his spare time for gossip.
Yeah, that actually happens, so we'll get to that. So so we follow Xavier and the detective. I'm sorry I keep saying in different ways. I'll just say doctor X the rest of the time. I'll probably fail at that too. But we follow doctor X and the detectives to his surgical academy and we begin to meet the other characters. Now, first we meet Joanne or Joan characters call her both names, and she is doctor X's daughter. This is Fey Ray here. Yeah,
but she doesn't appear to be a suspect. So the police are interested in meeting some of the suspects and they want to interview these other faculty members. So first up is doctor Wells, and it just happens to turn out Doctor X mentions, oh, well, he is a student of cannibalism. He's written a book about cannibalism, and this
gets the attention of the police. And then when they go to interview him, he's hunched over a lab table with a jar containing a beating heart, and then he claims that he has kept this heart alive for three years through the power of electrolysis. I do not think that is a correct use of the word whatever they had in mind. I think electrolysis is the decomposition of chemical compounds by the application of electric current. I'm not sure how that would keep a heart alive.
Yeah, again, don't think too much about anything sciency that's brought up in this film.
Okay, I apologize.
It's generally said in a very nice British accent, so just accept it.
I gotta say, in a weird way, like doctor Wells has a creepy vibe, but he's also kind of a hunk, Like he's got wild hair and a five o'clock shadow and kind of a deep voice. And I don't know if this is ever remarked upon it again, I'm not sure what this meant. But there's a pair of boots in the corner of the room that are bubbling as if they have been dipped in toxic goop, and the detectives just gonna look at them and notice them.
And then I don't work on a radiator. They're on a radiator. Oh yeah, So I couldn't figure out it was like, are their boots melting on the radiator? I wasn't sure what was happening there.
Yeah, I don't think that ever came up again, or if it did, I didn't notice it.
But it looked nice.
Yeah, it looked nice. But anyway, it is soon revealed that Wells could not possibly be the murderer because remember, the murderer strangles with two ferociously powerful hands, and in fact, Wells is an amputee and he wears a prosthetic left hand, so he is not capable of having performed the murderers, so the police exclude him at the beginning.
Luckily, though, there is an entire faculty of really suspicious characters to turn to. Next.
Right next, we meet this guy named Haynes. The police want to know something about him, and so they ask doctor X. Yeah, tell us about this Haynes and doctor X, I just have to reproduce this speech he says. Doctor Haynes and two other scientists were shipwrecked off Tahiti about a year ago while making a study of the coral reefs for the Killery Foundation. They were adrift for twenty four days. Their supplies were exhausted. When they were picked up,
Haines and one other were delirious. The third had vanished. There was no explanation at the time. Haines later claimed at the time that the man had died and had been thrown overboard. So again, it's like, it's as if this surgical college only hires people who have been suspected of cannibalism. But doctor X says, you know, he's sure that Haines cannot be the guilty party because this is his reasoning. One the killer is a maniac, and two doctor Haynes is one of the most brilliant men in
the medical world, So see it's impossible. So they go to meet doctor Haynes, who is experimenting with new procedures in what he calls brain growd. I tried to look that up to see if that's really a thing, and no, I think that would just mean like a brain transplant, which has never been performed in humans.
Yeah, but it sounds plenty suspicious, Like he definitely has his toes in the Mad Science sure, as as does Wells with the beating heart.
How would you characterize Haines's personality. I would say that he is he is paranoid, like he is not pleased to have the police in his lab. And while they're poking around, they find a kind of I didn't couldn't tell exactly what it was. It looked like they found a kind of Riske magazine among his things. It's like Ankles Quarterly. And in the police's eyes, this seemed to implicate him for some reason. It's like, Oh, this guy likes you know, risky magazines. You know who else does moonkillers?
Okay, so another strong candidate. But there are more.
Yeah, and we're about to get to maybe my favorite guy in the movie. So next up we meet doctor Rowitz and doctor Duke.
Now.
Rowitz is a tall, ominous man in a white lab coat with what I at first thought was an eye patch, but actually I think it is more like a dark tinted monocle. So it's like sunglasses, but only one side of them. And he when they first meet him, he's smoking a cigarette and leaning over a globe, and we find out that he studies the moon and is obsessed with the effects of lunar rays on neurotic types.
See, it's like a board game. This picture. I love it how all of them have these just highly suspicious elements. They're not just a little suspicious, They're all very suspicious.
Yes, and I gotta say doctor Rhotz is a god. I love Doctor Rhods. He's like, I want to be buds with him.
Yeah, he's great, though in a way he's he's almost too suspicious. You like, you kind of get the idea this couldn't possibly be the guy because he has he picked far too many items out of the villain accessory grab bag.
Right, Yeah, I agree. But then we meet the other guy. We meet doctor Duke, who his ma personality traits are that he is ornery and irascible. He just complains about everything. So he uses wheelchair and he comes into the lab yelling at the detectives. They like ask him how he's doing, and he yells at them for asking how he's doing. He's just always mad about something.
There are elements of this character that remind me of doctor Everett V. Scott in The Rocky hor Picture Show, so I would not be surprised if there was a connection there. I have nothing to go on other than doctor X is mentioned in the lyrics and therefore might have been in the mind of Richard O'Brien when he wrote the thing.
Yeah yeah, oh oh, And I almost forgot to mention that we learn doctor Rowitz was also in the life vote with doctor Haynes, so it was the two of them and the third delicious man who disappeared and was quote thrown overboard. Though it's funny how it's like, it's as if the rowboat story only applies to Haynes and does not apply to Rowitz. I'm not sure why. And though they say he was the other guy in the boat.
But they start grilling Rowits about his moon research, and Rowitt says, if you suffer sunstroke, might you not suffer some similar evil from the rays of the moon. And the cop says, moonstroke you mean? And Roots says, you know, the moon is powerful. It lifts billions of tons of water twice a day. I guess he's talking about the tides. And then he compares the water lifting to what is done by an old scrub woman, which is notable to the police because the last victim of the moonkiller was
that the papers called her an old scrub woman. I think the paper headline you see is like old scrub woman killed by moonkiller.
It's great, the script is just so well put together.
Yeah, now the police suspect Rowitz again, like every new guy. They meet, They're like, oh, it's got to be him. It's like that scene in Murder on the Orient Express where like every time they interview somebody, the companion's like, that's the one they But so the cops are like that. But doctor X is like, no, Rowitz can't be the murderer because here's his reasoning here. He has a lovely nature and he's the author of several volumes of poetry. I mean, who's ever heard of a poet killing somebody?
Yeah, that doesn't seem very logical. So this is this is definitely an area where he's falling below the Sherlock and brother William threshold.
I would agree. So it looks like we've met our suspects and the mystery investigation is afoot, and doctor X promises that he will complete this investigation within forty eight hours. And then meanwhile, you get some side story with Taylor the newspaperman and Faye Ray meeting up. When she catches him snooping around on the fire escape outside the medical academy. She confronts him and then shoves a revolver in his belly. He tries to get some facts out of her, but she rebuffs him.
Joan n.
Xavier clearly wants nothing to do with mister hot Scoop, Like he think he's very cool and he thinks he can sweet talk her, but she just wants none of it.
Right, And she's more concerned about her father because he seems overworked.
Right, Yes, she's concerned about his health that she says several times. I think just because he never gets any rest. There's also I guess we could just throw in a we meet more creeps. The movie's just crawling with creeps. There's a scene where we meet this guy named Otto who is Xavier's butler, and he's just another one of these ominous weirdos to round out the cast.
Yeah, yeah, again, just a great cast of character actors in this film.
So then we get a scene that goes by pretty quickly, but I thought it was pretty good. So Taylor the reporter goes off to kind of kick rocks in the alley like he's upset because he's he can't get any good leads and he's moping around about his failure to
crack the case. And then we get a very disturbing moment of suspense because behind Taylor's back, we see emerge a grotesque figure in a hooded cape with a drooping, agging, almost melted sort of face, and it approaches Taylor from behind to strangle him just as he's lighting a cigar, the cigar that he received as a gift from his cop friend earlier. And just as the creature is about to grasp his neck, you get this pop and it's
a trick cigar. It explodes, scaring away the Moonkiller in the process, and Taylor never knows his life was saved by a prank.
Yeah, it's a great little scene because it's suspenseful. It gives us our first very effective glimpse at the murderer, the monster in this film. But then also it redeems that whole ridiculous scene with the cop earlier. Again. This at first glance, this script might seem kind of schlocky, but it's so economical in the way everything ties together, like everything has a purpose.
Yeah, it is very tight. So Taylor keeps snooping. He goes by Xavier's house and meets a gullible maid named Mami, who lets him inside, and he tries to deal a photo of doctor x and a photo of Fey Ray and she catches him in the act and chews him out for writing a negative story about them and throws him out of the house. And then after this we
get a shift. The action retreats to a new location, so everything moves to Doctor X's country estate on Long Island, and he gathers all the various creeps from the academy there and he informs them that he has to perform an experiment to determine whether any of them is guilty of murder. And I don't recall it being established how he figures out to go here, but mister hot Scoop also shows up. Our reporter hero finds his way out
to the estate. He climbs up a drain pipe and sort of breaks into the house to continue snooping around
and trespassing as the plot develops. And here there is a scene where I think, basically anybody will recognize the following sequence that goes on with the reporter because it's recreated so many times in other movies and TV shows, where a character is nervously sneaking around in the dark and then is startled by a string of loud noises but all caused by inanimate objects like an ironing board falls out of the wall, then a cuckoo clock starts chiming,
and then Otto the butler walks by carrying a skeleton for some reason. For the next ten minutes or so, there is a lot of Lee Tracy making wise cracks at inanimate objects, like telling a skeleton to cut it out will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets very stoogy there for a minute.
But anyway, this is all working up to one of the big set pieces of the film, which is doctor X's experiment to determine who the killer is. I guess how would it be best to set this up and describe it?
Well, I would summarize by saying, this is basically sci fi Shakespeare, This is Hamlet, this is the play is the thing, right, because that's essentially what the whole scheme is. I'm going to show owes something to them, and then based on their reactions, I will know.
Yeah. Like if like if you were hooking the king up to an electrode and a machine that would read his guilt as he watches the play, yeah.
Yeah, And if it were elaborate, it took some explaining and had lots of tubes and liquids.
Right, So at this point it seems like the three main suspects are Rowits, Haines, and Duke, and they are strapped to electrical detectors that are supposed to measure their heart rate. Maybe there is just some magnificent technobabble about how the machine works. For some reason, it will measure the person in the machine for a history of cannibalism. And all three of them are going to go into the they're going to get hooked up to the machine.
And since doctor Wells could not be the killer because he does not have the two ferociously strong hands necessary for the strangulation, he helps Doctor X administer the test on the three others. And there's this great part where doctor Duke complains about being able to see the moon through the window. He's like, close the shutters, it's giving me a shiver.
And again, it's wonderful they keep the potential guilt, that's a suspicion just leveled out among all the candidates.
Yes, yes, well, And so they've got different attitudes, Like doctor Duke is complaining just because he's always complaining. He's just always mad about something. Doctor Haynes again is quite paranoid. He's very against the whole situation. He just feel. You can tell he feels his privacy is being invaded and he's nervous about something. And he says, if you ask me, doctor is Xavier. That's how he says. At this time,
doctor Xavier is using very unethical methods. And then Rowitz, who of everybody is the most on board with the whole experiment, he just responds, necessity has no ethics.
Yeah. Yeah, he's straight up like, I celebrate the chance to prove my innocence. Bring on the ridiculous mad science.
Yeah, but I think it's great because he might as well have just said, like, the ends justify the means.
Yeah.
So the stimulus for the test, they're hooked up to this machine that's going to test them for cannibalism via their heart rate and test. The stimulus for the test is going to consist of them looking at wax figures of the victims of the Moonkiller murders. I don't recall them explaining how these wax figures were made, where they came from, and I beautifully created.
I must have commissioned them, yes, And I.
Think it's also it's worth noting that So this was nineteen thirty two. Michael Curtiz, the director, also directed a wax horror movie right around the same time that came out in thirty three. I wonder if he was double dipping with the prop department.
He may have. I haven't seen Mystery of the Wax Museum from thirty three, but yeah, it was. He also directed that. It was also in two color Technicolor. I think these were the two of the last films that came out in that But then it also starred at Will and Fayray. So there you go. He was double dipping in multiple ways, I guess.
Interesting. So there's a reenactment of the most recent murder. So after looking at the wax figurines, there's going to be a reenactment of the murder, and it's going to be put on by Otto and Mami, the butler and the maid, and this, for some reason, should reveal who the killer is via the machine. And just as the reenactment is about to reveal the killer, suddenly everything we get. The lights go out, you know, there's like a power outage and all hell breaks loosee. So a bunch of
stuff happens while the lights are out. Somebody's cannibalism detector device goes off, and then doctor X reads it and declares it's doctor Rowitz. But there's a twist. When the lights come up, doctor Rowitz is dead, so Rowitz has been murdered. And also suddenly doctor Duke can walk again. He's up walking around and doctor Haines points him out
and he's like faker, faker. And then we also find out doctor Well, who was helping administer the experiment, has been struck on the head by somebody in the dark who called his name and then hit him. And there's this part where fey Ray quite rightly observes that this experiment was a disaster. And then everybody's just like, nah, chill out, calm down, you know, they're basically just like, don't worry about it. You know, you go get some rest,
we'll deal with this dead body and everything. Oh and then other like a bunch of stuff happens all at once. So in the while all this is happening, Taylor, who is hiding out in the closet, snooping around, he gets gassed, like somebody pumps some smoke into the closet with him and it knocks him unconscious, and you don't know who did it, and then they discover him unconscious in the closet, but they decide to let him stay for the night
at the manor. I'm not sure why that is, uh, But after that follows some incredibly implausible flirting between mister hot Scoop and fay Ray. Suddenly she's just responding to his flirt, whereas she hadn't been earlier. But anyway, everybody goes to bed, and did you notice, Like, do they explicitly say, like, no, we're not going to report doctor Rowitz's death to the police. It seems like they just decide that they shouldn't do that.
No, I mean, yeah, I think they decided we have to do a follow up experiment. Yeah, we can't stop now we're close, because I mean, it's basically what happened is you know, you're like you're saying, they're sort of test. They're testing to see who was stimulated the most by these the stimuli they were presented with. But then unfortunately, the individual who was stimulated the most, according to the readings, is also now dead, was killed in the dark, so it must be someone else.
So that's funny because that should indicate the fallibility of their experimental method, right like, if he wasn't the murderer, and yet he was the person that the test identified, that should show that the test is not necessarily great.
I agree, But yet they persist, you know, because ultimately he's thinking about publication. You know, it's not about whether you catch the murder, it's that you well document your attempts to catch the murder.
He's trying to get tenure.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
And then also we just get the little tid that later that night, like fey Ray's walking around and she comes across her father examining Rowitz's body under a sheet in a room in the house. Uh. And then we learn that his body has been cannibalized in the middle of the night. So somebody at the manor here cannibalized him. So but yes, as you say, the murderer still has to be discovered, and this all leads to the second test. Before that, there is a scene of hot Scoop and
fay Ray flirting some more. They're down at the beach, they're talking about swimming. There are some lines in this scene that are frankly hilarious. There's a great part where he's like, listen, forget that I'm a newspaper man, And I feel like here I'm wondering if maybe we should sort of leave off in describing the plot in too much detail after this, because this is getting up to the climax, and I feel like we should at least
be a little bit circumspective. But we don't want to spoil the mystery, do we.
Though.
There's a thing that is building up to that we have to talk about because it's the best thing about the movie.
Yeah, I think we basically have to have a werewolf break here in the in the episode, so we have to say, Look, if you want to experience the wonderful twist for yourself, and we recommend you do, then you should stop listening to this episode. Now, go out and at your leisure see the film for yourself, and then come back and you can listen to us talk about it, and then you can share your own thoughts on it, et cetera.
Okay, but if you're ready to hear the end right now, we absolutely must say that the revelation of the killer's identity involves the real star of this movie, and the best thing about it a god mode plot device called synthetic flesh that even gets like it gets announced in a voiceover segment. There's like a voice that is not spoken by a character on screen. It just comes on the soundtrack saying synthetic flesh.
Yes, yes, it's it's absolutely wonderful and indeed it's it's a fabulous plot twist, and it really I really got me too, because I have to admit I was convinced that Doctor X had to be the villain. He's secretly the villain the whole time, and he made some sort of monster to do his bidding. And I believe this because that's what Richard O'Brien told me in the lyrics to Science Fiction Double Feature. He said Doctor X made a creature. So I'm thinking that that's it. That's clearly
where we're going with this. Why would Richard O'Brien lie to me?
Right, Richard O'Brien wouldn't lie to you, but maybe he had just it'd been a while since he'd seen it. It got a little bit fuzzy. Yeah, there is almost a sort of creature creation, but no one of the parties there at the house is the villain. And it is in a great sequence where so all of the suspects, including Doctor X himself are handcuffed to chairs so that they can't get up and murder each other anymore. During the second test, doctor Wells handcuffs Haines, Duke and Doctor
X to these chairs so they're held down. And then Doctor Wells reveals I'm the killer and they're like, well,
how could it be you? And the answer is synthetic flesh, and we get this amazing psychedelic body horror sequence where it's very much I don't want to compare it too much to this because this came later, but it's kind of Clayface from Batman, where there is this putty that Doctor Wells applies to himself that I think is made from the flesh of the people who he supposedly cannibalized, and this putty goes on his body and can make new flesh and organs as he like smooths it on.
Yeah, it is fabulous. Another thing I would compare it to. And again, this is something that came later and I think was probably influenced by Doctor X, and that is Sam Raimi's Dark Man. Yes, because the main character in that, played by Liam Neeson, is a scientist who has created synthetic skin, which he kind of you know puts on it. God, I forget if he gobs it on or he just
kind of pulls it on like a mask. But at any rate, it's some sort of a fleshy goo that can transform his face into the face of another.
But yeah, the essential premise here is that you can like mold organs and skin out of this clay and just smear it onto your body and then it becomes functioning tissue.
Yeah, so Wells in this fantastic, lengthy, mostly dialogueless scene he puts first, he puts on this synthetic flesh claw, this great monstrous hand that he attaches to where he is of his amputation, and then he began he begins to gob this stuff onto his face, and it is it really turns the weirdness in this film up to eleven. You have the strange you know, two tone technicolor effects going on, and it really feels more in keeping with experimental cinema of later decades, you know, at least from
a modern film going perspective. Again, there's no dialogue other than well saying synthetic flesh a couple of times.
But as I said, he does, you don't see his mouth moving when he says it. It's like he says it as if like it's in his head, like it's a voiceover and it repeats, and so it very much has the feeling of something that would be sampled in a techno song or something.
Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It feels like something would be sampled in a mix, and I hope has been sampled in a mix. DJs, if you're listening, sample this because it's wonderful. But also the background audio for this whole scene is just kind of like add science see electros. And I was absolutely digging this as I was watching and listening to it, because I think in many ways it's an accidental early electronic music score.
So you know, maybe something it sounds like a little post industrial, like something something like Nurse with Wound would have created. In fact, I would love that if we could actually just listen to a sample, an audio sample from this scene so you can get a taste for it. Synthetic flesh, synthetic flesh. I want that. I want to pick up the single just as a bit of score trivia.
Though credit for the first electronic score generally goes to Bbe and Lewis Baron for their work with a magnetic tape on nineteen fifty six, the nineteen fifty six film Forbidden Planet. So this isn't an example of an electronic score, but if it were an electronic score, it would be
way ahead of its time. I also have to say that that the sequence where he's smearing the synthetic flesh over his face and into his hair and forming this noon face, this face of the moon Killer, it reminds me a lot of the later of the current the modern performance art. A French artist Oliver de Sagazin, who many of you may have seen. There's one of his performances features into the twenty eleven film Sam Sara, but
you can also find clips of his work online. Just look for Oliver Sagaza sa g A z A N and you'll see see what he does. Basically, he sets up in front of a camera and then he layers paint and clay over his own face and does a fair amount of like you know, performance art with it, to just transform himself into these various, I mean, kind of monstrosities. There's an unsettling nature to his work, but
it's wonderful. And in this film, in Doctor X, we kind of see a far earlier version of that same performance art.
Yeah, I mean it makes me wonder what are the other great examples of sort of extreme makeup effects in film from the thirties. I don't know of any other movies from this era that have effects that look like this. I mean, I would have thought, you know, makeup at the time was all basically just like realistic accentuation of the face, not the kind of like horror movie makeup effects we associate with movies of the seventies and eighties.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's impressive. I'm thinking trying to like figure out what it like. We can think about what it's supposed to be. You know, it's kind of like he's gobbing himself down with sci fi stem cells or something, but or you know, some sort of flesh that instantly forges a connection with his own flesh. But I imagine it's probably a twist on perceptions of elaborate
special effects makeup of the day. You know, the putty is like flesh, and then it seems to become the flesh, and within the context of the film, I don't know, it's like he's got this this you know, this big old jar stem cells that he's just gabbing it on
and sculpting his flesh into the desired nightmare. But I think also we can find a possible connection here to sort of the zeitgeist of the time when you look back at the history of plastic surgery, which to be clear, doesn't mean the use of plastic in sculpting flesh, but the overall plasticity of flesh that can be utilized in reconstructive surgery. So you look at some of the achievements that were made even at that time and in the
previous decades, and they were pretty amazing. Stuff like walking lengths of flesh up to the face or down from the forehead in order to slowly graft it and form it and to reform features that were lost. Cartilage implantation is another example. If you look up images of say World War One facial reconstruction, you can see examples of this. Because some of it is quite amazing. I mean, it's you know, it can be a little tough to take in,
but it's quite interesting. And remember this is nineteen thirty two, so memories of the First World War's injuries are still raw, as are likely the photographs of the surgical reconstructions that were possible. There's even a great line from Wells that I feel like reflects this, because as he's having his like supervillain reveal speech, he says, yes, look at it a real hand, it's a live it's flesh, synthetic flesh. For years, I've been searching to find the secret of
a living, manufactured flesh, and now I found it. You think I went to Africa to study cannibalism. I went there to get samples of the human flesh that the natives. E Yes, That's why I needed living flesh from humans. From my experiments, what difference did it make if a few people had to die their flesh taught me how to manufacture arms, legs, faces that are human. I'll make a cripple world hold again.
So again we get a very like ends justify the means thing. It's like, look, I've had to kill a lot of people, but I'm going to create amazing new surgical techniques by what I've learned through doing. So.
Yeah, and I think, yeah, you think about this film as coming out, you know, post World War One and before World War II, it seems like it seems like that maybe what is lashing onto here? You know, it's and again this is kind of the territory. This is the area in which genre filmmaking often works.
I think this is probably also a time where people were trying to figure out the limits of what was ethical scientific experimentation. Like, there was probably a lot of experimentation going on that we would today regard as unethical in its nature, but was you know, it was not just people who were like, I'm trying to do evil. It was people who had this idea of like, we'll think of all the good that we could accomplish exactly.
Yeah, and just you know, continuing to roll with what these technological changes meant for humanity. You know, like suddenly we're able to wage war in ways that we were not able to previously. I mean, one of the prime examples from the First World War would of course be chemical weaponry, and we have a brief scene of chemical weaponry in this film is the newspaper Guy Lee is gassed there. You know.
As for other ways this movie fits into the history of science, there's a thing that comes up several times, which is forensic experimentation, like forensic biometrics basically using brain examination or heart rate monitoring or things like that to determine the guilt of a person in trying to solve
a criminal case. If you would like more information about the history of that kind of thing, we did an episode I actually was Christian and I did a couple of episodes several years ago about the failures of forensic science where we talked about this big report that looked into the reliability of forensic sciences that are supposedly used to establish guilt in the courtroom, and how some of them are in most cases pretty solid, you know, like DNA evidence and all that, but a lot of them
do not have as solid a scientific basis as is often represented and may very well be sort of just sort of stealing them the primature of science as a concept to placed on some kind of weak evidence.
Yeah, speaking of weak evidence, I do love that. Ultimately doctor X was wrong. You know, earlier in the film, he's like, I'm totally sure that the killer sees the moon and it awakens these repressed feelings inside him, and that is what I will look for, and that is not what was happening at all.
No, the killer was, like doctor X. It was a researcher who was fanatically dedicated to his own work and was trying to and was willing to do whatever he could to further it.
Yeah, so in a way, it would have been interesting to see where they would have gone with a sequel to this film, right in that they could ask, well, where does doctor X go from there? He's been kind of been proven wrong in a way. He's in a similar place to where William of Baskerville is at the end of the Name of the Rose, where he realizes that to a certain extent, his logic and his reason has failed him. He wasn't able to actually prevent anything, even as he was able to solve the mystery.
Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I hope that the Doctor X has learned his lesson and will no longer say that you can prove the guilt of someone suspected of murder by using a machine.
Yes, hopefully so, But I don't know. He seems rather stubborn and he's already invested in all that gear.
Yeah. Oh, we didn't even say how it ends. I mean, so the other thing is after so Wells is going to kill Fay while they're all handcuffed to chairs and then lee the reporter is like, hey, this guy happened, and so he comes out and does it. He gives him the old fisticuffs and punches punches Wells in the face and they fight, and then I think he kills him by throwing a lamp on him, which sets him on fire, and.
He sits in it, hits it in the face with a lamp and then kind of like tackles him through a window.
Oh. I think he also hits him with his hand buzzer, doesn't.
He possibly, Yeah, he is looking at his hand buzzer after it happens, so that may have played a role. It would make sense because again the script is very economical. And then we get a nice little spot of romance and that's the end of the picture.
Yeah, that's it. Oh, we get well he Oh, by the way, he like he calls his society editor on the newspaper. He's like, hey, you know, you might want to set aside some What does he say? He's like, you might want to save some space for doctor Xavier to make an announcement about his about his daughter. I guess I'm plying that like that they're going to have a wedding announcement or something.
Yeah, so you get your happy, lovey w ending. The ending again is very very mainstream and normal. The beginning it's fairly normal, but man, the middle of this film gets into some serious weirdness and I love it. So you might be wondering where can you get this film? Well, you can rent or buy this one digitally most places, you know, wherever you get digital films, you can rent it or buy it. You can also pick it up on DVD, either as part of a two movie pack
along with the Yes, the nineteen thirty nine sequel. There is an actual sequel to this. I doubt that it meets my expectations, but it's called The Return of Doctor X, which starred an up and coming actor by the name of Humphrey Bogart. I haven't seen it, but we have brought it up on the show before, just because I believe it has a synthetic blood plot element.
I think I've read that it has little to do with this movie.
Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine it really carries on the legacy. Well. Oh, you can also pick this up in a big box set that also includes Mad Love and a few other films. That's we're looking for as well. Man, imagine a Mad Love Doctor X mashup, though that would have been so yeah.
Now, one thing I'll say that these movies have in common is that they're both I think, pretty great sci fi horror movies for their time. Both are sort of pushed over the edge into transcendence by one amazingly weird scene toward the end. In this case, it's the synthetic flesh scene. In Mad Love, it's the scene where he's dressed up his orlac and the brace with the sunglasses and all that that costume.
No, yeah, the Raulloh costume.
Yeah, oh yeah, sorry not or like the Raulo costume. You're right, yes, those are like the scenes that make the movies in both cases. But whereas Mad Love has Peter Lourie, I don't think this movie has anybody of the Peter Loriie caliber in it.
No.
I mean, you know, it's got a couple of big names for the time, and we mentioned you got at Well and you've got Fayray. But in terms of bringing the perform mormans like bringing something performance wise that's memorably weird, Yeah, they don't really have it. I guess you gave kind of sprinkles of it though, with the supporting cast.
Yeah, doctor Rowitz, Yeah he's I mean, he doesn't have enough screen time, but he's he's my hero.
Yeah. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and put a scalpel in this one and scalp. Hell it's done, scalpel and call it done. This has been another episode of weird Ouse Cinema. We're putting out Weird House Cinema every Friday. Stuff to Blow Your Mind remains a science and culture show, but Friday is our data. Unwind a little bit and enjoy a little midnight movie goodness. So let us know what you thought. Did you see this film? Had you seen it previously? How do you feel about
doctor X? How do you feel about the twists and the turns and that crazy scene with the synthetic flesh. We would love to hear from you. Let's see what else? Oh yeah again. You can find this show in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and we just asked that you eight review and subscribe. That's the main way to keep in touch with the show and keep up on what we're publishing.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest any topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuffed blow your Mind dot com.
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