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.

Curtiz: The Man Behind Casablanca

It was banned in neutral Ireland, because it portrayed the National Socialists and the Vichy collaborators unfavorably, but for the rest of the world, Casablanca was an instant classic. It spawned two very short-lived TV series adaptations, but no filmmaker has dared remake such an iconic film. However, success was far from certain during its hectic production. Jewish-Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz wrestles with his personal demons and interference from multiple quarters as he struggles to complete the beloved movie in Tamas Yvan Topolanszky’s mostly English-language Hungarian film Curtiz, which starts streaming today on Netflix.

Curtiz was born Mano Kaminer in Budapest, but he Hungarianized his name to Mihaly Kertesz and then anglicized it to Michael Curtiz when he arrived in America. When he started directing films for Warner Brothers, he already had a reputation as a master filmmaker from his European work—which his ego and casting couch proclivities reflected.

Casablanca is one of about a dozen films in-production on the Warner lot, but it is the only film the Office of War Information is interested in. That means Curtiz must endure constant demands and feedback from Mr. Johnson, a government bureaucrat consulting on the project. Jack Warner makes it pretty clear Curtiz is on his own, but he is still expected to make another hit. To further complicate matters, the director’s estranged daughter Kitty has taken a studio job as a way of worming her way back into his life. Curtiz and the screenwriters Philip & Julius Epstein cannot even settle on a decent ending. His only ally on the production is legendary producer Hal B. Wallis, but Curtiz does his best to alienate him with his diva-like behavior.

Topolanszky and co-screenwriter Zsuzsanna Bak rather shrewdly chose which of the Hollywood legends associated with Casablanca to portray on film and which to only show in shadows or out of focus. Both Jozsef Gyabronka and Christopher Krieg are really terrific as S.Z. Sakall (Curtiz’s fellow Hungarian émigré, who played Carl) and Conrad Veidt (who played Maj. Strasser), respectively. Frankly, Krieg’s turn as Veidt might just change the way you see Casablanca, which is meant as a very high compliment. The only other cast-member who gets legitimate screen time in Curtiz is Oscar Reyes portraying Dooley Wilson, but he is not much of a factor in the behind-the-scenes story.

The rest of the ensemble is also quite strong, fortunately including Ferenc Lengyel, who is appropriately imperious yet complex as the man himself. Scott Alexander Young’s Wallis also gives the film a conscious and a dry wit. Declan Hannigan similarly deserves credit for humanizing Johnson, at least until Topolanszky & Bak suddenly and problematically decide to dehumanize in an ill-advised narrative left-turn.