TCM Classic ’21: Doctor X

Thirty years before the first appearance of Professor X, there was Doctor X. The “X” did indeed stand for Xavier, but Dr. Jerry Xavier was not a superhero—just super smart. He also oversees his own school, in this case a leading medical school. Unfortunately, one of his faculty members could very well be the notorious “Moon Killer,” so he sets a trap for the psychotic—or vice versa—in the great Michael Curtiz’s Doctor X, which screens in its restored 2-color Technicolor as part of the 2021 TCM Classic Film Festival (to be broadcast over the network this year, for pandemic reasons).

Every full moon, the Moon Killer takes another victim. He doesn’t just strangle the bodies, he also slices the base of their skull with a surgical scalpel and partially cannibalizes the corpses (this is pre-Code, remember). Wise-cracking but dumb-as-a-post reporter Lee Taylor has followed the story to Doctor X. The gangster-like cops finally noticed all six of the murders took place within a close radius of Xavier’s school (currently on a semester break), so naturally they want to turn the place upside. Instead, Dr. X convinces them to let him conduct his own investigation, using his mad scientist apparatus to measure his still-present faculty’s responses to a re-enactment of the latest murder.

In some ways, Doctor X feels dated, especially Lee Tracy’s yukkedy-yuk humor as the gadfly reporter. However, Anton Grot’s sets are wonderfully atmospheric. For some reason, Dr. Xavier decides to conduct his experimental inquiry in a creepy old mansion overlooking a cliff. Maybe you have to be a genius to understand that one, but it is a good setting for mayhem. Counter-intuitively, the 2-color Technicolor might even make it eerier than the black-and-white print (that was how fans knew the film for years), because it has a weird, ethereal vibe, like a Guy Maddin film without Udo Kier.

Of course, Lionel Atwill is a blast to watch bellowing scientistic mumbo-jumbo, like an early forerunner to Peter Cushing’s Dr. Frankenstein. This time, Atwill gets to play a good guy. It also represents the first of three collaborations with Fay Wray (and also with Curtiz). Plus, this would be Wray’s first screen scream as Dr. X’s daughter Joanne. It is not exactly a richly-written character, but she plays it with saucy pre-Code energy. You can see why her performance was a stepping stone to bigger and more iconic roles.

The Vampire Bat [Restored], Starring Fay Wray and Dwight Frye

It is hard to say whether superstition or science is a more destructive force for this Old European village. Of course, we are not talking about mere conventional science. Dr. Otto von Niemann practices mad science. However, he shrewdly exploits the traditional vampire legends to explain away all the bodies he has drained of blood in Frank R. Strayer’s The Vampire Bat, which was recently restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, who held a special streaming screening last night (and it also airs this afternoon on TCM, presumably from a standard, older print).

Dr. von Niemann is played by Lionel Atwill, so we know he is up to no good in his laboratory, but somehow his assistant and lodger, Ruth Bertin is oblivious to his villainy. She is romantically involved with Inspector Karl Breettschneider, who has been bedeviled by a rash of murder victims completely drained of blood. He initially thinks all the vampire talk is rubbish, but Dr. von Niemann gives it convincing credence.

Unfortunately, suspicion soon falls on poor Herman Glieb, the town freak, who keeps bats as pets in his garret (you could say they are in his belfry). He also has a habit of turning up at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Vampire Bat is the sort of production Roger Corman could respect. It was produced by a “Poverty Row” indie studio, but it approximated the look and vibe of the blockbuster Universal monster movies by repurposing hand-me-down sets from Frankenstein and Old Dark House. It also hired thesps who were (or would be) associated with the Universal franchises. For instance, Lionel Belmore, who played the Burgomaster in Frankenstein, plays Gustave Schoen, the Bergermeister (a totally different role).

More importantly, Dwight Frye (Fritz in Frankenstein and Renfield in Dracula) gives arguably his finest performance as the nutty yet acutely tragic Glieb. He raves, rolls his eyes, and does what he did best, but in a way that subverts and deconstructs his famous roles. Atwill (who would become iconic as the Inspector with the wooden arm in Son of Frankenstein) makes a coolly cerebral mad scientist, but he still chews plenty of scenery as von Niemann.

This was definitely a “scream queen” job for Fay Wray, but she plays Bertin with a bit more attitude and forcefulness then we usually get from pre-Code horror damsels in distress (as she also did in The Most Dangerous Game. She also has some nice flirty chemistry with Melvyn Douglas (fresh off Old Dark House), who is amusingly flamboyant and sarcastic, also providing a nice contrast to the standard bland horror leading men.

The Original Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell’s frequently anthologized short story finally went into the public domain this year, but it has been ripped off for decades. Tell me if you have heard this one before: there is a bad guy who enjoys hunting people for sport. It is not just Bacurau that just opened or The Hunt due to be released this week that “borrowed” this idea. There has also been Hard Target, Surviving the Game, 31, Preservation, Black Rock, Carnage Park, Turkey Shoot (and its remake, Elimination Game), The Tenth Victim, and The Prey that basically riffed on the same people-hunting-people gimmick. That makes this an opportune time to revisit the film that (officially) adapted Connell first, way back in 1932: Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack’s The Most Dangerous Game, which airs tomorrow on TCM, for those of you in quarantine.

Dashing young celebrity big-game hunter Robert Rainsford was enjoying a cruise with friends until their yacht foundered on the reef surrounding a remote island. It turns out the captain was correct to suspect the safety buoys had been moved. Alas, that would be the late captain. Only Rainsford eludes the sharks swarming their wreck, making it to shore, where he stumbles into the gothic fortress of Count Zaroff.

At dinner, he meets Eve Trowbridge, another shipwreck survivor, who took refuge with the Count, along with her drunkard brother Martin and two sailors that are now suspiciously missing. Since the Count recognizes the famous Rainsford, he invites him to join him hunting “the most dangerous game.” Of course, that would be man. When the horrified Rainsford refuses, he is forced to become the prey instead. The stakes will be particularly high for this hunt. If Rainsford survives until sunrise, he wins his life and the right to leave with Trowbridge.

Dangerous Game was produced “pre-Code,” but it is still pretty cagey when it implies what Zaroff intends to do to the lovelly Trowbridge once he bags Rainsford’s head, but it is pretty easy for modern audiences to infer. However, the film’s pre-Codeness is vividly clear in the early grisly engine room deaths we see when Rainsford’s ship goes down, as well as the trophy heads Zaroff keeps in bell jars. This is an old movie, but for genre fans, it is surprisingly cool.

Frankly, Joel McCrea should be better remembered than he is. In his day, he was a big movie star, whose charisma could carry a film. He also had sufficient comedic timing to hang with Robert Benchley in the criminally under-appreciated Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent. Being the leading man is rather thankless business in a film like this, but McCrae is admirably energetic as Rainsford. He also has some decent screen chemistry with Faye Wray.