Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★

  75

  Such a fabulous Pre-Code horror film from Michael Curtiz, now restored to scintillating effect and released by Warner Archive. A mix of Old Dark House shenanigans, comic relief, and mad scientist imagery. So many emerald-green lab vials and beakers. A charming and spooky early 30s concoction. The two-strip Technicolor photography by Ray Rennahan, just like in Curtiz' Mystery of the Wax Museum, fits like a glove in the Horror genre, and it's so unique and dreamy. The images glow with color and light throughout. Michael Curtiz provides his typically inventive eye for graphic angles and dramatic tension, and the climax is still quite violent and scary.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★ 4

  i think modern scientists are missing an aesthetic quality to their experiments -- if you go into a contemporary lab, you don't see machines firing off red sparks, no spinning spiral-wheels, no tubes of glowing green liquid, no tesla coils collecting lightning from the nightly storm -- what happened, why do scientists today have no panache? back in the day, you look at doc x, doc frankenstein, doc savage, these were men who took pride in their work, made science into a performance art -- now mad doctors are only looking for money and prestige instead of trying to become god, it's a damn shame.

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  Review by Rick Burin ★★★ 7

  If you love film history, don't miss it. If you don't, don't watch it.

  The story - about an unhinged medical professor stalking a Gothic house - is ludicrous, and the acting from a cast that includes Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and the incredible Lee Tracy is surprisingly dodgy, dogged by creakiness and plenty of fluffed lines, presumably because the two-strip Technicolor they were shooting on was so expensive.

  But the eye-popping sets, the casting, the Max Factor make-up and that experimental black-and-white-and-red-and-green-and-sort-of-yellow palette still amaze. The film is notable too for its populist flourishes, like having the reigning Scream Queen, Wray, enter the film screaming for absolutely no reason.

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  Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon ★★★★ 12

  6th of 7 Michael Curtiz (after The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, Night and Day and Mystery of the Wax Museum, before The Walking Dead)

  It's Thesis Time Again!

  What interests me about Doctor X is not the vivid Technicolour cinematography, the presence of Fay Wray or the goofy plot, but how it engages with then-current notions of disability, eugenics and the fallacies of science. Doctor X isn't about a mad scientist- it's about a whole house of mad scientists, all under suspicion of committing a bizarre series of cannibalistic murders. The titular Doctor is the ringleader, conducting an experiment to find out who this murderer is. Inspired by his theories about traumatic memories, he decides to re-stage…

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  Review by noir1946 ★★★ 2

  “One of us in this room may be a murderer.”

  A serial killer, a coterie of mad scientists, a fast-talking reporter, a spooky mansion, and a sexy dame. What more could an immature cinephile want? Well, there’s the early two-strip Technicolor process, with greens jumping off the screen, as with Fay Wray’s luminous robe. Sure, the plot’s kinda silly, there’s way too much of Lee Tracy’s bumbling comedy, and my man Lionel Atwill sounds at times like he can’t believe the awful dialogue he’s delivering. But still, it looks terrific, with Anton Grot’s sets, especially Lionel’s elaborate lab, standing out. I love the way Preston Foster says “synthetic flesh” with the emphasis on “syn” and when Tracy spits on his hands before attacking the killer. Atta boy. Bonus points for Foster’s frizzy hair, Lionel’s spats, and Fay’s wearing high heels with her swimsuit.

  “Say, didn’t I meet you in Havana?”

  Watched on TCM.

  Favorite Films of 1932

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  Review by Gentry ★★★

  “I have a habit of collecting pictures of beautiful girls.”

  I wasn’t really expecting this to turn into “mad scientist Clue” but I still enjoyed Lee Tracy doing Lee Tracy things around a spooky, green-lit mansion. Plays much more comedic than The Mystery of the Wax Museum, mostly due to the aforementioned Tracy. If Wax Museum was borderline necrophilic, Doctor X is borderline cannibalistic. Taken together they form a wonderfully perverse little pair of pre-code, two-tone, twin oddities. One key scene even features the same faux-wax figures (actually just actors standing very still); both films end with grand fisticuffs. Personally, I enjoyed that the first sound out of Fay Wray’s mouth was…a scream. And her green dress and red rouged cheeks looked marvelously tinted.

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  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★ 1

  A wise man once said “Never bet against Michael Curtiz.”

  The whole thing feels as if in direct response to a lack of the colour chemical-green in moving pictures, as though one day our writers collectively woke up in cold sweats knowing exactly what needed to be done in a world of less-than-green movies, and honestly I can’t think of a better rationale for one flicks entire existence.

  Peak mad scientist cinema.

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★

  I’m laying ten bucks to a dime it’s another Moon Killer murder.

  A campy whodunit featuring a rogues gallery of mad scientist suspects!

  Oh how I wish this was half as good as I wanted it to be. It’s such a great idea and I love the creepy look of that two tone technicolor process.

  Unfortunately it’s not as fun or energetic as the premise deserves. It does include a comic relief reporter, but most of his schtick falls flat.

  I can’t help but think that a modern day remake could result in the same kind of giddy fun as Mars Attacks and of course it would have to be in two tone technicolor!

  BONUS POINTS for those last 5 minutes. That’s what the whole movie should have been.

  Synthetic Flesh!

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  Review by laird ★★★½

  What it lacks in narrative intrigue it more than makes up for in production design (European ex-pat craftsmen with their Expressionist and Deco influences sure can turn a boring exposition scene into a work of art). Plus a half star for the two-strip Technicolor. It's Christmas for your eyeballs.

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  Review by Tom W

  Impossible to overstate how important the colour is here. Seductive in its texture, sickly in its hues, like oil pooling and coating a serious of archly presented corpses and artificial sets. That one daytime exterior scene felt like a violation of a pure thing.

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  Review by Noah Cassidy ★★★½

  We are all a little strange up here.

  Three and a half star movie for three reasons. First, the colors in this that don't exactly reach standard coloring in film, yet certainly isn't black and white. The color palette of this mainly featuring intense greens and oranges makes this an inherently creepy feature in virtually every shot. It causes some dissonance when certain scenes are perhaps meant to be taking place in darkness while the colors of the movie itself makes a set look bright, but even then, this is just a gorgeous and unique looking feature where it counts. Second, I like a movie where there are multiple scientists who all look and act equally viable as serial killers…

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  Review by Joe ★★★★ 1

  The Michael Curtiz/Lionel Atwill/Fay Wray/two strip Technicolor warmup for Mystery of the Wax Museum is a little pokier and more convoluted but it does have one of the very best climaxes in all of 1930s horror cinema so it evens out. It had been about 12 years since I last saw this movie but I still remembered the killer's repeated intonations of "synthetic flesh...," only in my memory he said it like a dozen times instead of just two or three. A great movie for any fan of the Hollywood whodunit eccentric scientist stock suspect -- here, all the suspects are eccentric scientists.