Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Doctor X

a lot of fun. So it's a great one to feature once more as a rare Weird House Cinema rerun. It's time to rub the synthetic flesh. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Bob 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 gonna be talking about Dr X, a nineteen thirty two American pre code horror film that that that shocked my soul and conscience and I thought it was just a fabulous ride. Yeah, yeah, this 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 new 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 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 that 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. Uh and and 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 in used by film historians. Before pre code, and that that code there refer 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 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 o earned 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 um, 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. Um you 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 was 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 salacious content in terms of sex and violence and crime, the normal R rated kind of stuff that that shocks the morals. But it was also I think it's worth pointing out a period of uh, 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 kind of like RACYR rated content, uh, you also see things that we would we would later think are like good social values that were prohibited at the time and uh, and there 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 you knows 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. Uh. 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, let's 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 um looks pretty dry and um, you know it's you know, it's it's it's pretty Uh, it's pretty square. Um, I don't know, it's 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 in cinema, which I think is a horrible way of putting it. I mean that 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, Uh, there's plenty of horrible stuff going on, like socially that's

reflected in those films. Uh. But but yeah, you have this this code in place is preventing, uh, this racier content from taking place, and it it kind of limits the palette that artists of that time had to to use, you know that that we're at their disposal to bring their message across, be it a 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, the cinema that is where the 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 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's 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 uh, 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 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, uh from movies of the thirties. So 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, a Mad Love I think is sort of on the 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 slangs like serial murders that are taking a 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, um, 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, 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 set up. Maybe we should hit that trailer audio. We are all under suspicion of murder. What absurd, ridiculous, what inbecial thought that I'm Lee Taylor

of the Daily World. Then you did it me if you included that heart of the story father in this morning's paper. Don't be afraid tonight. Be sure you keep your eyes closed and relax. I'm land ten bucks to a dime, which another moon one of us, maybe a murderer, A murderer who killed but the light of a full moon leading his victim's body mutilated. Sounds good? Sounds good.

Now we may have buried one of the leads here, which is that this seed nineteen thirty two horror movie about cannibalistic murders and synthetic flesh, was directed by Michael Curtiz, the director of Casablanca. That's a pretty odd fact. So um. 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 ninety eight with Errol Flynn, of course, Casablanca, and forty

two Mildred Pierce in nineteen five. He did at least one James Cagney crime movie. So we are not dealing with a with a Roger Corman type here. This is not a scrappy schlock production, you know, for 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 Curtis I think was much like Corman. And one of those ways is that Curtiz 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, western swashbucklers, horror movies, biblical epics. Uh. And 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. Uh. There's

one example of this. Uh. It's a paragraph that I came across when I was reading an article in The l A Times by Kenneth Turin. That was a review of a book called Michael Curtiz, A Life in Films by Alan kay Road. And so turn writes the following. Both on camera and off, Curtiz wanted things always to be moving, hurdling cars and trains, and propulsive people figured 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. Curtiz 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 is quote demonic work ethic, approached savagery, and working conditions on his sets are said to have been set are said to be one of the reasons

that the screen actors give old was formed. Oh wow, So yeah, just say, 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 as the defining energy of their life. Yeah. There, 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 there would be more productive in the afternoon. Uh. I don't know, it sounds borderline pathological, you know. I have to say that I'm I'm ultimately not super familiar with with his work. I saw Casablanca once for a film class in college and 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 Casablanca, that the simulated Casablanca scenes, you know, or drawn are the ones my mind goes to when I think of Casta Blanca, I think of Rale Julia right as as um as Rick. It's not Rick, it's Finger, Yes, yes, Fingle, I get Rick, Rick and Finger 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, a

stereotypical Peter louri impersonation. I don't remember miss anybody connected to the plot roll. 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 I mean, I mean, ral Julia is great in that film. He's great in everything. But I would say curtis Is talent comes through and 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. Um. Another thing about Curtis, I don't know if you ran across this. This is an I am dB facts, so I don't know to what extent we can take this as absolute truth or do he's 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 it tells you about about the various storytelling mediums of the time. Uh. 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 either a classical plays like you know, Greek or Shakespeare or something, or if it's a modern play a it's like a character driven drama or it's a comedy. But yeah, we've forgotten the early twentieth century like genre plays in terms of like bloody gory horror productions for the stage were

extremely common, like the the Grand gen y'all in in Paris. Um. I don't know, in a way I missed this tradition, like why don't high school theater groups do viciously bloody Grand Gaen 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 uh this 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 the everyman anchor for the story. He is a reporter for a newspaper are called The Daily World.

He is a streetwise, 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 and the Tim Burton Batman. Remember that guy, Oh yes, yeah, yeah, played by an airless guy. Yeah, Robert wool Yeah. He that that guy. I think is supposed to be a throwback to this stock character from

thirties and forties movies. Yeah, Like you know what, the instant, the instant a character like this walks on the screen because they're like, Hey, what you got there, partner? Okay, I'm gonna talk to you about this murder that's happening all of it own. I am afraid to go out of night because you know, it's it has this whole rhythm,

this cadence. It's an obvious trope. Um. I will say that that Lee Tracy is is quite good in this role, though, And and while it does contain all these elements of the trope, it's SEMs to have some other fun quirks added to it as well. So not only is he this snappy newspaper man, 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, you know, where he's like his wedding ring. He just

forgets it's on there. He just forgets his 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 gotta hand it to him for that as well. Um and Tracy, I mean he he is this role. I mean he's it's just in his bones, you can tell. Yeah. I I read that he apparently played a lot of snappy

newspaper men. There's an attributed quote I found on IMDb quote, I should have quit playing newspaper men 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 dr CT. Yeah, I should have done it in his voice, but I even I can't do that voice too up. Okay, So then the next major player, you've got his Lionel at Will, who plays a doctor. Oh my god, so they pronounced

his name like five different ways in this movie. It is like professor Charles Xavier. It's Xavier Xavier or Xavier is how I think most Americans would say it today. But in the movie they call him doctor Xavier. They call him doctors 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 Atwell is one of these actors who played a ton of characters who are either inspectors or doctors. Uh. 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 ninety three. And he was also in a string of horror films in the

nineteen thirties. He he played the one inspector Krog in Son of Frankenstein in nine, which I believe was It was later parodied in um What is It? The mel Brooks film Um Oh What? In Young Franken stuff. Yeah, I believe they parody that roll little bit in there. Yeah, but in this yes, he is. 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 to where, um, you're not sure if you can trust him or not either. Like a lot of the films, it centers around it who done it scenario, And indeed you don't know what dr Xes deal is as well. DR's a Views 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 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 in the name 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 they're like, the lighting between the two characters is so distinct because of course she is illuminated and beautiful

like an angel. 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 wonderful that 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 Fay Ray. Fay Ray plays Joan Xavier, the daughter I think the daughter, Yeah, the daughter of doctor I wasn't

clear on that for about half the picture. The daughter yeah, um, and and I mean got this Faye from King Kong, that's right, one of the original scream queens. Um. Yeah, she played and 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 she was born in Canada but raised in Hollywood, so she interacting in an early age, at sixteen, I believe in the nineteen short Gasolene Love. She acted in a hundred and twenty three titles up through nineteen eighty and as first standout roles she was in the Most Dangerous Game and um a standout role for us anyway would also be Mystery of the Wax Museum from nineteen thirty three, which which we've mentioned on

Stuff to Blow your Mind before. She was in The Vampire Bat nineteen thirty three, and uh, yeah, she she 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. Um, so there's the the whole Uh, 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 Dr Frankenfurter sing that, Yes, yeah, that's one of the closing songs there. But she's also mentioned in the lyrics to the opening number science Fiction Double Feature? Um, as is this very movie? By the way, Dr X, Dr X. There's of course, yeah where it goes science fiction double Feature, Doctor X will build a creature. Very nice. That's my riff raff. Uh So anyway, I like, you know, Fay Ray Hollywood icon and Dr X in its own way is um he's also part of the like the

legacy of of genre filmmaking here. So I've been hearing Doctor X all this time, uh, watching and listening to Rocky Hard 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 they were that they were trying to get going at the time called two color Technicolor. Uh. 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 blue s 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 in 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. Um 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 seemed 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 if 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 dr X. Yeah. It uh. It kind of has this dope theend vibe to it, which is fitting because there is a quote unquote dope fend 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 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, oh, it really makes it work. I agree, and especially because such

an unnatural color schema. But by the way, if you want more information on the two color process, the George Eastman Museum has a video I found that 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 dr 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 uh, the same situation. But 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, alright, So we start with titling credits, and then we we opened 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 Fedora skulking around outside.

He's kind of hiding behind some barrels. He's smoking a cigarette and 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 our hero in a way. Lee Taylor played by Lee Tracy, the crime reporter, and bad luck is sort of his catchphrase. He says it like eight times in the movie. 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 that was that the impression got. I just got a sense of it being the city, you know that the sort of eternal cinematic city that 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, gets a bunch of cops, and then it's this one guy in a coat with super silky fur lapels and I think that's Dr 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 de Ville. Yeah. They all have a very suspicious villain as 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 uses the telephone? He makes a phone call to uh to the night desk of 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 to your lunkhead, I'm not clowning. Look out the window, will you. And so the guy at the nightdesk 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 moon killer 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 uh. In the course of their conversation, Taylor is, as we said earlier, revealed to be kind of a prankster because he's zapps the cop with a hand buzzer. It's not a good idea, no, I mean, luckily, this this cop is like the roundest um. This is the softest copy you've ever seen in your life. In this picture he's sweetheart. Yeah. Uh, and even he and after,

after they're chatting, he gives Taylor a cigar. He's like, here, some guy gave me this. You know you you can have it. And I think maybe Taylor asked him for a smoke or something, but he gives him the smart and then we got two 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 Dr Xavier. Dr 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 like 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's I don't know, it looks kind of like horns or something. And so the police asked him, what's your theory, doctor,

and he says it's strangulation by terrifically powerful hands. And then they asked him about, well, what do you think of this incision at the base of brain and Dr x says, obviously made by some type of scalpel used for brain dissecting. The word scal pell 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. But then you know, here we get

a but wait, there's more moment. The left del toyed 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, he doesn't say that their teeth marks or that it looks like he was chewed out. He doesn't go into detail and say, well, this is a traditional like butchering cut or something like. No, I just can tell this is cannibalism. And it's firmly

established and not questioned. It's the chuck portion of the human. But so, okay, we established the Moon Killers m O strangulation by terrifically powerful hands, incision by scalpel at the base of the brain, and then eating the victim's left shoulder. Uh. And it makes me think this is a really overachieving serial killer, like they're trying to get extra credit. Yeah,

but he 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 Dr X gets into some brilliant speculation. He says the killer is quote a neurotic, of course, some poor devil suffering from a fixation, a not or kink tied in the brain from some past experience. And then he says that that about of madness comes on for the killer whenever he's con fronted 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 uh, and so the police want to know, well, what's the reminder, what's the thing that's that's triggering the killer to do this, and Dr 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 we learned that this is Doctor x is specialty, this is his area of study, and so of course this is tied into his um his hypothesis for the murders. It's the same way. You know, if if Terence McKenna had been called upon to and to uh to inspect these murders, he would have said, I believe it probably had something to do with psychedelic mushrooms. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Very good comparison. Um. So, anyway, Doctor X has given

his professional opinion. He's about to leave, but then the police flipped 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 Dr 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, uh Dr Xavier is indignant and offended. He says, his students and faculty are exclusively of the highest integrity. This is impossible. Yeah, So so again, were we find out that, um,

the murderer is definitely somebody at the academy. Um. But then as we begin to to meet the members of the academy, we 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 it's 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, uh 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 Dr

X's response because I thought it was great. He says, by immediately studying the pathological reactions of every man placed under suspicion, then trapped the guilt t one by a brain examination. Science. Oh, there is so much science exclamation point in this movie. There is. There is an awful lot of uh, very funny, implausible 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 and think too hard about anything science that any characters say, because none of it really adds up. That it will just hurt your brain if you try and make sense of it. Yeah. Um so, anyway, the Dr X and the detectives agree. You know, Dr X will investigate the people in his academy on his own. There

will be no publicity, the press cannot know. 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 Tailor, 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 can't keep him away from

the story. Now, I have to say, I think this is all pretty fun set up, with the whole situation where Xavier has 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 Rows, solve the murders in the abbey internally before the papal inquisitor Bernardo Goose shows up and makes a bigger to do out

of everything. Right now, I will say Dr X is no William of Baskerville. But but he's I don't know, he's a clever guy though. He see. If I have any major criticism of Doctor X, it is the Doctor X is far too trusting. I mean, just like every like creep and weirdo he comes across, he's like that. He couldn't possibly have done anything bad. Yes, he ate human flesh once, not twice tops, but he's as good heart I trust him completely, writes poetry and his spad

time for gospe. Yeah, that actually happens, So we'll get to that. So so we follow Xavier and the detect I'm sorry, I keep saying in different ways, so I'll just say Dr X the rest of the time. I'll probably fail at that too. But we follow Dr X and the detectives to his surgical academy and we begin to meet the other characters. Now, first we meet Joe Anne or Joan characters call her both names, and she is Dr X's daughter. This is fay Ray here, but

she doesn't appear to be a suspect. So the police are interested in in meeting some of the suspects, and they want to interview these other faculty members. So first up is Dr Wells, and it just happens to turn out Dr X mentions, oh, well, he is a student of cannibalism. He's written a book about cannibalism, and this

makes 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 hard 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 too much about anything science e that's brought up in this film. Okay, I apologize. He's generally said in a very nice British accent, so just accepted. I gotta say in a weird way, like Dr Wells has a 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. Um. And I don't know if this is ever remarked upon. 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 they're on a radiator. Yeah, and figure out. It's like, are there 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 murders. So 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 asked Dr X. Yeah, tell us about this Haynes guy, and Doctor X, I just have to reproduce this speech he says. Dr 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 a drift for twenty four days. Their supply eyes were exhausted. When they were picked up, Haynes and one other were delirious.

The third had vanished. There was no explanation at the time. Haynes later claimed at the time that the man had died and had been thrown overboard. But so again, it's like, it's as if this surgical college only hires people who have been suspected of cannibalism. But but Dr X says, you know, he's sure that Haynes cannot be the guilty party because this is his reasoning. One the killer is a maniac, and to Dr Haynes is one of the most brilliant men in the medical world. So see, it's impossible.

So they go to meet Dr Haynes, who is experimenting with new procedures in what he calls brain grafting. 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. Uh, And it sounds plenty suspicious, Like he definitely has his his toes in the mad science, as as does Wells

with the beating heart. How would you characterize Haynes's personality, I would say that he is, uh, 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 looks like they found a kind of risk A magazine among his things. It's like ankles quarterly and in the police's eyes that seemed to implicate him for some reason. It's like, oh, this guy likes you know, Riskue magazines.

You know who else does moon killers? Okay, so another strong candidate. But there are more. Yeah, and then we're about to get to maybe my favorite guy in the movie. So uh. Next up we meet Dr Rowitz and Dr Duke. Now Roewitts is a tall, ominous man in a white lab coat with what I 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 made him, he

smoking a cigarette 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 uh, 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 Dr Rhetts is a god. I love Dr Rhetts. He's like, I want to be buds with him. Yeah, he's great. Uh 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 Dr Duke, who his main personality traits are that he is ornerary and irascible. He just complains about everything. Uh. So he comes 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 him how he's doing. He's just all always mad about something. There are elements of this character that reminds me of Dr Everett V. Scott in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, So I would not be surprised if there was a connection there. I I have nothing to go on other than Dr 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 learned Dr Rowitts was also in the lifeboat with Dr Haynes, so the two of them and the third delicious man who disappeared and was quote thrown overboard. Though that it's funny how it's like it's as if the rowboat story only applies to Haynes and does not apply to Rowetts. I'm not sure why, even though they say he was the other guy in the boat. But

they start grilling Roe. It's about his moon research. And Rowett says, if you suffer sunstroke, might you not suffer some similar evil from the rays of the moon. And the cops says moonstroke you mean um and Roe it 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 moon killer was at the papers called her an old scrub woman. I think the paper headline you see is like old scrub woman killed by moon killer. It's great that the script is just so well put together. Yeah, now the police suspect Rowetts again like every new guy

they meet there like, oh, it's gotta be him. Uh. They It's it's like that scene in um Murder on the Orient Express where like every time they interview somebody, the companions like that's the one they did it. But so the cops are like that, but uh, Doctor X is like, no, Roets 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 the threshold, I would agree. So it looks like we've met our suspects and the mystery investigation is afoot and Dr X promises that he will complete this investigation within forty eight hours. And then meanwhile you get some some side story with Taylor the newspaperman and fay 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. Uh. He tries to get some facts out of her, but she rebuffs him. Uh. Joe Nixavier clearly wants nothing to do with Mr Hot Scoop Like he he thinks 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 like he never gets any rest. There's also I guess we could just throw in a we meet more creeps. The movie is 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. And 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, sagging, 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 the 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 moon Killer 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 a 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 if at first glance, this 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 Mamie who lets him inside, and he tries to steal a photo of Dr X and a photo of fay Rey, and she catches him in the act and choose 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 Dr 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 Mr Hot Scoop also shows up. You know, our 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 and here there is a scene where I think basically anybody will recognize the following sequence that goes on with 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 ku clock starts chiming uh, 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. Well, yeah, yeah, I gets very stoogey there for a minute. But anyway, this is all working up to one of the big set pieces of the film, which is Dr X's experiment

to determine who the killer is. I guess how 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 that's essentially what the whole scheme is. I'm going to show 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 and took some explain and had lots of tubes and liquids. Right. So it's at this point it seems like the three main suspects are Rowitts, Haynes, and Duke, and they are strapped to electrical detectors that are supposed to measure their heart rate maybe, and 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 gonna get hooked up to the machine, and uh, since Dr 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 Dr 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. Uh just leveled out among all the candidates. Yes, yeah, uh well, and so they've got different attitudes. Like Dr Duke is complaining just because he's always complaining. He's just always mad about something. Dr Haynes again is quite paranoid. He's very against the whole situation. He he just feels you can tell, he feels his privacy is being invaded and he's nervous about something. And he says, if you

ask me, doctors Xavier, that's how he says. At this time, doctor Xavier is using very unethical methods. And then Rowetts, 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. Uh so the stimulus for the test they're hooked up to this machine is going to test them for cannibalism via their heart rate, and uh the test, the stimulus for the test is going to consist of them looking at wax figures of the victims of the Moon Killer murders. I don't recall them explaining how these wax figures were made,

where they came from, uh and beautifully created Agnesta conditioned them. Yes, And I think it's also it's worth noting that, so this was 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 but yeah, it was. He also directed that. It was

also into color technicolor. I think these were the two of the last films that came out in that But then it also starred at Well and Fay Ray. So there you go. He was double dipping in multiple ways. I guess. Interesting. Uh, So there's a re enactment of

the most recent murder. So after looking at the wax figurines, there's gonna be a re enactment of the murder, and it's going to be put on by Otto and Maymie, the butler and the maid and this for 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 loose. So a bunch of stuff happens while the lights are out.

Somebody's cannibalism detector device goes off, and then Dr X reads it and declares it's Dr Rowetts. But there's a twist. When the lights come up, Dr Rowetts is dead, so Rohets has been murdered. And also suddenly Dr Duke can walk again. He's up walking around and U and Dr Haynes points him out and he's like faker, faker. And then we we also find out Dr Wells, 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 fay Ray quite rightly observes that this experiment was a disaster, and then everybody's just like, na, chill out, calm down. Uh, 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, um oh, and then other

like a bunch of stuff happens 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 manner. I'm not sure why that is. But after that follows some incredibly implausible flirting between Mr Hot Scoop

and and fay Ray. Suddenly she's just responding to his flirting, whereas she hadn't been earlier. But anyway, everybody goes to bed, and I did you notice, Like do they explicitly say, like now we're not going to report Dr roetz Is 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.

We can't stop now we're close, because I mean, it's it's basically what happened is you know, you're like you said, they're sort of 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 to be 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 fay Ray's walking around and she comes across her father examining row. It's his body under a sheet in a room in the house. Uh. And then we learned that his body has been cannibalized in the middle of the night. Is somebody at the manner here cannibalized him? Uh? 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 of hot Scoop and Fayray flirting some more. They're down at the beach. They're talking about swimming. Uh. 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 newspaperman. Uh. 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 circumspect. But we don't want to spoil the mystery, do we? Though. There's a thing that has holding 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 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, etcetera. Okay, but if you're ready to hear the end right now, uh, 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 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 Dr 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 Dr 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 had been a while since he'd seen it. It got a little bit fuzzy. Um. There is almost a sort of creature creation, but no one of the parties there at the house is the villain. And it is revealed, uh in a great sequence where so all of the suspects, including Dr X himself, are handcuffed two chairs so that they can't like get up

and murder each other anymore. During the second test, Dr Wells handcuffs Haynes, Duke and Doctor X to these these chairs so they're held down, and then Dr 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 um. I don't want to compare it too much to this because this came later, but it's kind of clay Face from Batman, where there is this putty that Dr Wells applies to himself that I think is made from the flesh of the people who he supposedly cannibalized. And this this putty goes on his body and can make new flesh and organs as he likes, 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 Dr X and that is Sam Raimi's Dark Man, because the main character in that, played Belliam Neeson, is a scientist whose creak it created synthetic skin, which he kind of, you know, puts on it. God, I forget to be 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 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, uh mostly dialogue less scene, he puts first, he puts on this synthetic flesh claw, this great monstrous hand that he attaches uh to to uh to to where he suffered his amputation. Uh. And then he began he begins to gob this stuff onto

his face and it 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 filmgoing perspective. Again, there's no dialogue other than Well saying synthetic flesh a couple of times. But as I said, he doesn't 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 in a techno song or something. Yeah, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Um, it feels like something that 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 mad science e 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 or early electronic music score. UM. So you know maybe something it sounds like a little post industrial, like something something like Nurse with Wound would

have created. Uh. 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 um just as a bit of a score trivia. Though credit for the first electronic score generally goes to BB and Louis Baron for their work on with a Magnetic Tape on nineteen six

film Forbidden Planet. UM. 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 the that the quints 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 the current the modern performance art. A French artist, all Oliver de Sagazin, who I mean, I meany of you

may have seen. There's one of his performances features into the two thousand eleven films Sam Sara. But you can also find clips of his work online. Just look for Oliver this s A G A Z A N and you'll see his 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, uh I mean,

kind of monstrosities. There's an unsettling nature to his work, but it's wonderful. And in this film in dr X, we kind of see a far earlier version of the same performance art. Yeah, I mean it makes me wonder what are the other great examples of of sort of extreme makeup effects and film from the thirties. I don't know of any other movies from this era that 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 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 it's impressive. Um, I'm 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 grabbing himself down with sci fi stem cells or something, but um 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 um uh special effects makeup of the day. You know that the putty is like flesh, and then it seems to be come 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 and he's just gobbing it on and sculpting his flesh

into the desired nightmare. But but I think also we can find a possible connection here to sort 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 um utilized in reconstructive surgery. So you look at some of the achievements that were

made even at that time and in you know, previous decades. Uh, they were pretty amazing, stuff like walking lengths of flesh up to the face or down from the forehead in order to slowly grafted inform it and to reform features that were lost. Uh. Cartilage implantation is another example. Uh. If you look up images of say World War One facial reconstruction, UH, you can see examples of this. Because some of it is quite amazing. I mean it's it's you know, it can be a little tough to take in, Uh,

but it's quite interesting. And remember this is two so memories of the First World Wars injuries are still raw, as are likely the photographs of the surgical reconstructions that were possible. Um. 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 alive. 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 what 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 at a very like ends justify the means things 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 is coming out, you know, post War War One and before World War Two, it seems like it seems like that maybe what is lashing onto here?

You know, it's uh uh. 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, well, think of all the good that we could accomplish exactly. Yeah, and and just you know, continuing to to to roll with with what these technological change is meant for humanity, you know, like suddenly we're able to 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 is gassed there. You know. As for other ways this movie fits into

the history of science. There there's a thing that comes up several times, which is UH forensic experimentation, like forensic biometrics, basically using UH brain examination or heart rate monitoring or things like that to determine the guilt of a person

in UH 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 that where we talked about this big report that looked into the reliability of

forensic science. Is 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 the perimative, the imperimature of science as a concept, to

placed on some kind of weak evidence. Yeah, speaking of weak evidence, I I do love that ultimately Dr X was wrong, you know there in the film, he's like, I'm totally sure that the the the 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. Like the Killer was like Dr X. It was a researcher who was fanatically dedicated to his own work and was trying to

end was willing to do whatever he could to further it. Yeah. So you know, 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 he seems rather stubborn and he's already invested in all that gear. Yeah, so we didn't

even say how it ends. I mean, so the other thing is, after so Wells is going to kill Fay Ray while they're all handcuffed to chairs. Then Lee the reporter is like, hey, this guy had 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 yeah, he suits him and hits him 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 buzzard, 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. That's it. Oh we get what he 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 for doctor Xavier to make an announcement about his about his daughter. I guess implying that like that they're going to have a wedding announcement or something. Yeah, so you get your happy levy ending that The ending again is very very mainstream and normal. The beginning is is fairly normal. But man, this 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 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 start an

up and coming actor by the name of Humphrey Bogart. Um. 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 is. Uh it really carries on the legacy well uh oh. You can also pick this up in a big box set that also includes Mad Love and a few other films, so that's worth looking for as well. Man, imagine a Mad Love Doctor X

mash up, though that would have been so yeah. Now, one thing I will 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 push over the edge into transcendence by one amazingly weird scene towards the end. In this case, it's the synthetic flesh scene. In Mad Love, it's the scene where he's dressed up as or Lac in the brace with the sunglasses and all that that that costume. Uh yeah, the

Rolo costume. Yeah, oh yeah, sorry not or like the Rolo costume. You're right, yes, Uh, those are like the scenes that make the movies in both cases. But whereas Mad Love has Peter Lori, I don't think this movie has anybody of the Peter Lori caliber in it. No. I mean, you know, it's it's got it's got a couple of of of big names for the time we mentioned you've got at Well and you've got Fay Raid.

But in terms of bringing the performance, like bringing something performance wise that's memorably weird, Yeah, they don't really have it. I guess you've kind of sprinkles off it though with the supporting cast. Yeah. Dr Roweitz, 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 uh put a scalpel in this one and scalpel it's done, scalpel and and uh and call it done. Um, this has

been another episode of weird al cinema. We're putting out weird how Cinema every Friday. Stuff to Blow Your Mind remains a science and culture show, but Friday is our 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 dr 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. Um, 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 rate, review and subscribe. That's a the main way to keep in touch with the show and keep up on what we're uh publishing, which thanks as always to our excellent

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