Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today I think we're going
Speaker 3: to be doing the chronologically earliest film that we've done
Speaker 3: so far. Isn't that right?
Speaker 2: I believe so.
Speaker 3: So today we're going to be talking about Doctor X,
Speaker 3: a nineteen thirty two American pre code horror film that
Speaker 3: shocked my soul and conscience and I thought was just
Speaker 3: a fabulous ride.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this one was a pleasant surprise for me
Speaker 2: as well. I was only vaguely aware of it. I'll
Speaker 2: get into into some of that in a bit, but
Speaker 2: I was vaguely aware that it existed, knew basically nothing
Speaker 2: about it. You suggested it, I saw a couple of
Speaker 2: the people that were involved in it, and I just
Speaker 2: signed on side unseen and went in without any spoilers
Speaker 2: or anything. Watched it this morning and it was fabulous.
Speaker 2: So while it might seem to start out as a
Speaker 2: rather traditional film, and it ends fairly to traditionally as well,
Speaker 2: it gets just heavily weird in the middle in a
Speaker 2: way that it really has to be experienced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's one scene in particular. I mean, I
Speaker 3: would say that there is a like five minute sequence
Speaker 3: in this movie that you should watch the movie for,
Speaker 3: even if for nothing else. But there's some other fun
Speaker 3: stuff in there as well. Absolutely, and we'll get into
Speaker 3: what that is later on. But I thought at first
Speaker 3: we should talk for a little bit about the historical
Speaker 3: context of this era of movies. So this is a
Speaker 3: pre code movie. You might have heard that term used
Speaker 3: by film historians before pre code, and that code there
Speaker 3: refers to something called the Haze Code. So basically from
Speaker 3: about nineteen thirty four until roughly the end of the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. I think sometimes the movie Some Like It
Speaker 3: Hot in nineteen fifty nine is held out as sort
Speaker 3: of like the demise of the Hayes Code era. But
Speaker 3: for this period, from the mid thirties through the fifties,
Speaker 3: American film studios sort of agreed to be governed by
Speaker 3: censorship guidelines that were known as the Hayes Code. So
Speaker 3: this prohibited a lot of stuff that you might, you know,
Speaker 3: automatically think of, of course obvious R rated content like nudity
Speaker 3: and profanity, but it also banned content that was considered
Speaker 3: objectionable to conservative social values, so that might be all
Speaker 3: kinds of you know, references to cannibalism and things. You
Speaker 3: weren't supposed to have movies in which the audience would
Speaker 3: be asked to sympathize with criminals or crime, which is
Speaker 3: just a great guideline for complex moral cinema. You weren't
Speaker 3: supposed to have movies that ridiculed the church or religion,
Speaker 3: or movies with interracial or same sex romance. But there
Speaker 3: was a time before this code was implemented, before it
Speaker 3: was started, before it started to be strictly enforced in
Speaker 3: around nineteen thirty four, and that brief period between the
Speaker 3: spread of talkies, so movies with synchronized sound, which was
Speaker 3: mainly in nineteen twenty nine, and then the stricter enforcement
Speaker 3: of the code in nineteen thirty four, that like five
Speaker 3: year period is known as the pre Code period in
Speaker 3: American film, and it's characterized by movies that experimented with
Speaker 3: more controversial content of multiple kinds. So you had sillacious
Speaker 3: content in terms of sex and violence and crime, the
Speaker 3: normal R rated kind of stuff that shocks the morals,
Speaker 3: but it was also I think it's worth pointing out
Speaker 3: a period of increased experimentation with progressive social themes that
Speaker 3: would mostly fade from American movies in the following decades,
Speaker 3: only to re emerge in the sixties. So I think
Speaker 3: that's an interesting parallel that in the same time you
Speaker 3: see this brief early flowering of kind of like racy,
Speaker 3: r rated content, you also see things that we would
Speaker 3: later think are like good social values that were prohibited
Speaker 3: at the time, and they were sort of struck down
Speaker 3: with the same stick in thirty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting too when you think about film, the
Speaker 2: film output, the cinematic output as an indicator of what
Speaker 2: the underlying culture is there was, you know, because once
Speaker 2: you have the code in place, Yeah, to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: the code is a product of the culture, and therefore
Speaker 2: you can see those films that come out of it
Speaker 2: as a reflection of what the culture wanted to see
Speaker 2: itself as. But it also means you have this inauthentic
Speaker 2: view of what was actually going on in the zeitgeist
Speaker 2: of the time. You know, we just go back when
Speaker 2: we watch films from the nineteen fifties, American mainstream films
Speaker 2: from the fifties, and you get this kind of vision
Speaker 2: that's like, oh wow, it looks looks pretty dry, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's you know, it's pretty, it's pretty square.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's very sanitized in many respects.
Speaker 3: Well, people often harken back to they say there was
Speaker 3: a time where movies were more innocent. Have you ever
Speaker 3: heard that there was a more innocent age and cinema,
Speaker 3: which I think is a horrible way of putting it.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's not really what it was. What you're
Speaker 3: saying is there was a time when American movies were
Speaker 3: more censored.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because I mean and certainly when you look
Speaker 2: at films from the fifties, there's plenty of horrible stuff
Speaker 2: going on, like socially that's reflected in those films. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, you have this code in place is preventing
Speaker 2: this racier content from taking place, and it kind of
Speaker 2: limits the palette that artists of that time had to use,
Speaker 2: you know, that were at their disposal to bring their
Speaker 2: message across, be it like a really highly thought out
Speaker 2: artistic message or the B cinema message, which I think,
Speaker 2: as we've discussed before a lot of times, B cinema
Speaker 2: that is where the in genre cinema, cinema, horror cinema,
Speaker 2: science fiction cinema. That's sometimes the first place where some
Speaker 2: of these cultural ideas are explored.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally before they reach the mainstream. Now I don't
Speaker 3: wanna say so, we're gonna be talking about this movie
Speaker 3: Doctor X, which is a horror movie in the pre
Speaker 3: code era, and for that reason for it it's time
Speaker 3: and place. It does feel very weird and edgy and
Speaker 3: unlike movies, you know, horror movies that would be put
Speaker 3: out by American studios a decade later. It feels much
Speaker 3: more dangerous than that. But at the same time, I
Speaker 3: don't want to imply that this movie particularly embodies any
Speaker 3: like at the time controversial progressive social themes that I
Speaker 3: can think of. I don't think it really does. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just like a horror, murder, mystery movie. But it
Speaker 3: does have this this harder edge from being in that
Speaker 3: early thirties period that I think serves it quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's just.
Speaker 3: Got a darker, weirder, more dangerous sensibility than stuff you
Speaker 3: would normally expect to see from movies of the thirties.
Speaker 3: Though then again, I would say, you know, there are
Speaker 3: some that are in the postcode era that that rival
Speaker 3: it in certain ways, Like I don't know, Mad Love,
Speaker 3: I think is sort of on the same level. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but maybe we should give the Elevator pitch for this movie. Okay,
Speaker 3: So what's Doctor x about?
Speaker 2: Okay, So imagine yourself at a medical academy where absolutely
Speaker 2: every member of the faculty is a prime suspect in
Speaker 2: the cannibalistic moon killer slayings, like serial murderers that are
Speaker 2: taking place at night during a full moon. So we
Speaker 2: meet up with this character, doctor Xavier, Doctor Xavier, we'll
Speaker 2: get into the various pronunciations, and he's heading up the academy.
Speaker 2: The police have come to him and they say, hey,
Speaker 2: we think the killer is one of you guys, and
Speaker 2: the doctor x here says, give me forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: I'll find the killer myself, so the police don't have
Speaker 2: to get involved and we don't have to get a
Speaker 2: lot of bad pr for the academy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a pretty great setup. Maybe we should hit
Speaker 3: that trailer audio. We are all under suspicion of murder.
Speaker 2: What absurd? What imbitial thought that up? I'm Lee Taylor
Speaker 2: of the Daily World.
Speaker 3: Then you did it? Me?
Speaker 2: If you in printed that horrible story father in this
Speaker 2: morning's paper, don't be afraid tonight. Be sure you keep
Speaker 2: your eyes closed and relax.
Speaker 3: I'm laying ten bucks to a dime.
Speaker 2: It'ch another moon killer murder. One of us may be
Speaker 2: a murderer, a murderer who killed with the light of
Speaker 2: a full moon, leaving his victim's body mutilated. Sounds good,
Speaker 2: sounds good.
Speaker 3: Now we may have buried one of the leads here,
Speaker 3: which is that this ced nineteen thirty two horror movie
Speaker 3: about cannibalistic murders and synthetic flesh was directed by Michael Kurtiz,
Speaker 3: the director of Casablanca. That's a pretty odd fact. So
Speaker 3: Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian American film director who made
Speaker 3: a lot of the most well regarded movies of Hollywood's
Speaker 3: Golden Age. He made The Adventures of Robin Hood in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight with Errol Flynn, of course, Casablanca in
Speaker 3: forty two, Mildred Pearce in nineteen forty five. He did
Speaker 3: at least one James Cagney crime movie. So we are
Speaker 3: not dealing with a Roger Korman type here. This is
Speaker 3: not a scrappy schlock production, you know, for kids at
Speaker 3: the drive in. This is one of the era's most
Speaker 3: high profile and successful directors. But there are ways in
Speaker 3: which Kurtis I think was much like Corman. And one
Speaker 3: of those ways is that Kurtis was prolific, ferociously productive,
Speaker 3: and he put out a staggering volume of film work
Speaker 3: of sort of mixed staying power. Some of it, you know,
Speaker 3: is considered classics movies like Casablanca. Other stuff is largely forgotten,
Speaker 3: and he bounced all over genres. He directed musicals, westerns, swashbucklers,
Speaker 3: horror movies, biblical epics. And another thing that's interesting about
Speaker 3: him is that basically everybody who chronicles his life points
Speaker 3: out that his personal habits took the idea of staying
Speaker 3: busy to an almost fanatical extreme. There's one example of this.
Speaker 3: It's a paragraph that I came across when I was
Speaker 3: reading an article in the La Times by Kenneth Turan
Speaker 3: that was a review of a book called Michael Kurtz,
Speaker 3: A Life in Films by Alan k. Rhade, and so
Speaker 3: Turin writes the following, both on camera and off, Kurtes
Speaker 3: wanted things always to be moving, hurtling cars and trains
Speaker 3: and propulsive people figure prominently in his films. Even the
Speaker 3: dark factory smoke in the movie Female moves purposefully across
Speaker 3: the screen rather than just evaporating lazily into thin air.
Speaker 3: Someone who is likely easily bored and reportedly needed only
Speaker 3: four hours sleep. Kurtes only wanted to be doing, doing, doing,
Speaker 3: which led to difficult situations with his cast and crew.
Speaker 3: It's not just that the director believed lunch breaks were
Speaker 3: for whimps. Road notes that Curtiz's quote demonic work ethic
Speaker 3: approached savagery and working conditions on his sets are said
Speaker 3: to have been set, or said to be one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that the Screen Actors Guild was formed.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So yeah, just a hyperactive filmmaker who just
Speaker 2: wanted to be working all the time and perhaps just
Speaker 2: did not understand that other human beings either could not
Speaker 2: do that or did not want that right as the
Speaker 2: defining energy of their life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a whole other thing I was reading
Speaker 3: about his war against lunch. Like, he hated lunch. He
Speaker 3: thought lunch was a stupid waste of time, and that
Speaker 3: actors were lazy after lunch, and so he encouraged people
Speaker 3: to skip lunch because then they would be more productive
Speaker 3: in the afternoon. I don't know, it sounds borderline pathological.
Speaker 2: You know, I have to say that I'm ultimately not
Speaker 2: super familiar with with his work. I saw Casablanca once
Speaker 2: for a film class in college and and enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's an important film. But I've seen Overdrawn
Speaker 2: in the memory Bank so many times, and so many
Speaker 2: more times than Casa Blanca that the simulated Casablanca scenes
Speaker 2: in Overdrawn are the ones my mind goes to when
Speaker 2: I think of Casta Blanca. I think of Raal Julia right,
Speaker 2: as as as Rick. It's not Ricker, yes, Rick, Rick, Yes, Fingle.
Speaker 2: I get Rick, Rick and Fingle are one in my mind.
Speaker 3: Wait, who's Peter Laurie and Overdrawn? In the memory Bank?
Speaker 2: They have some guy doing like a really really you know,
Speaker 2: stereotypical Peter Laurie impersonation. I don't remember if anybody connected
Speaker 2: to the plot role.
Speaker 3: Julia was actually a good actor, and I bet he
Speaker 3: could have done a good Peter Lourie impression.
Speaker 2: Oh I bet, yeah, he could have played every role
Speaker 2: in that film. But uh, I mean, Raal Julia is
Speaker 2: great in that film. He's great in everything, but I would.
Speaker 3: Say Curtis's talent comes through in Doctor X. This is
Speaker 3: a This is a movie that is busy. It moves.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's got a lot of action. It is,
Speaker 3: it does not lag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's not a lot of space to be bored
Speaker 2: in this in this film. Oh another thing about Kurtz.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ran across this. This is
Speaker 2: an IMDb fact, So I don't know to what extent
Speaker 2: we can take this as absolute truth or it's just
Speaker 2: a story about him. But supposedly he fell out of
Speaker 2: a moving vehicle once because he had to He had
Speaker 2: some idea that he had to jot down. He had
Speaker 2: to write down on some notepad paper he was driving
Speaker 2: the vehicle at the time.
Speaker 3: That sounds about right.
Speaker 2: So another interesting thing about this This film is not
Speaker 2: interesting because of the names attached to it, but for
Speaker 2: what it tells you about about various storytelling mediums of
Speaker 2: the time. This was based on a play by Howard
Speaker 2: Warren Comstock and Alan C. Miller. So back in the
Speaker 2: day when I guess you just had more genre plays
Speaker 2: you could. You could have a cannibalistic serial killer play
Speaker 2: that one might view.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. Today, if one goes out to see
Speaker 3: a play, it's almost certainly going to be of you know,
Speaker 3: either a classical plays like you know, Greek or Shakespeare
Speaker 3: or something, or if it's a modern play, it's like
Speaker 3: a character driven drama, or it's a comedy. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we forget the early twentieth century like genre plays in
Speaker 3: terms of like bloody gory horror productions for the stage
Speaker 3: were extremely common, like the grang gin y'all in Paris.
Speaker 3: I don't know, in a way I miss this tradition,
Speaker 3: Like why don't high school theater groups do viciously bloody
Speaker 3: grangin y'all. I'm sure you can still get those scripts somewhere.
Speaker 3: They're probably even in the public domain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they'd probably be pretty fun to put on.
Speaker 3: You get some kids to do the special effects, all
Speaker 3: the eyeballs squirting out and stuff. I mean, that could
Speaker 3: be good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, let's get into some of the players in
Speaker 2: this picture.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, you had an actor named Lee Tracy in
Speaker 3: one of the main roles in the movie. Now, Lee
Speaker 3: Tracy is not one of He doesn't play any of
Speaker 3: the scientists. Instead, he plays Lee Taylor, who is sort
Speaker 3: of the everyman anchor for the story. He is a
Speaker 3: reporter for a newspaper called The Daily World. He is
Speaker 3: a street wise, fast talking newspaper hack, the kind of
Speaker 3: sardonic crime reporter character who appeared in a lot of
Speaker 3: movies of this era and then would later be sort
Speaker 3: of imitated or parodied for nostalgic recreations, like the character
Speaker 3: of Alexander Knox in the Tim Burton Batman.
Speaker 2: You remember that guy, Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, played by
Speaker 2: an airless guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Robert Woohl, Yeah, that guy I think is supposed
Speaker 3: to be a throwback to this stock character from thirties
Speaker 3: and forties movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, you know, at the instant, the instant, a
Speaker 2: character like this walks on the screen because they're like, Hey,
Speaker 2: what you got there, partner, Let me talk to you
Speaker 2: about this murder. This happened in all of it out
Speaker 2: I'm afraid to go out a night because you know,
Speaker 2: it has this whole rhythm. This cadence is an obvious trope.
Speaker 2: I will say that that Lee Tracy is quite good
Speaker 2: in this role, though, and and while it does contain
Speaker 2: all these elements of the trope, it seems to have
Speaker 2: some other fun Quirks added to it as well. So,
Speaker 2: not only is he this snappy newspaperman, but there's this
Speaker 2: whole thing where he's a He seems to be a
Speaker 2: practical joke enthusiast who often forgets that he's wearing one
Speaker 2: of these handshake buzzers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know where he's like his wedding ring. He
Speaker 3: just forgets it's on there.
Speaker 2: He just forgets it's on. And and this gag actually
Speaker 2: works quite well in the picture and plays into the
Speaker 2: plot a bit. So I applaud that for making for
Speaker 2: making a trope that I'm instantly not interested in actually entertaining.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I got to hand it to him for
Speaker 3: that as well. And Tracy, I mean, he is this role.
Speaker 3: I mean it's just in his bones, you can tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read that he apparently played a lot of
Speaker 2: snappy newspaper men. There's a attributed quote I found on
Speaker 2: IMDb quote, I should have quit playing newspaper man after
Speaker 2: three or four parts in the movies, but the money
Speaker 2: kept coming in and I liked it.
Speaker 3: He liked it. It almost sounds like a line his
Speaker 3: character would say in Doctor X.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I should have done it in his voice. But
Speaker 2: I even I can't do that voice too often.
Speaker 3: Okay. So then the next major player you've got is
Speaker 3: Lionel Atwill, who plays a doctor. Oh my god, So
Speaker 3: they pronounce his name like five different ways in this movie.
Speaker 3: It is like Professor Charles Xavier. It's Xavier Xavier or
Speaker 3: Exavier is how I think most Americans would say it today.
Speaker 3: But in the movie they call him doctor Xavier. They
Speaker 3: call him doctor Xavier. I don't know how many different
Speaker 3: ways they say it.
Speaker 2: And then of course he is the titular doctor x
Speaker 2: But then in a way, the title also has another meaning,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to, and that is doctor x is
Speaker 2: in Doctor Unknown, right, yes, So Adwell is one of
Speaker 2: these actors who played a ton of characters who are
Speaker 2: either inspectors or doctors. In this he gets to play both.
Speaker 2: He's a doctor who acts as an inspector, and sometimes
Speaker 2: he played villains as well, such as the role of
Speaker 2: Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three. And he's also in a string of horror
Speaker 2: films in the nineteen thirties. He played the one armed
Speaker 2: Inspector Krag and son of Frankenstein in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 2: which I believe was later parodied in what is it?
Speaker 2: The Melbrooks film Oh What in Young Frankenstein. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: believe they parody that role a bit in there. Oh
Speaker 2: I see, okay, Yeah, but in this yes, he is
Speaker 2: a doctor who acts as an inspector, so he has
Speaker 2: a lot of screen time. He's just constantly talking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's got a little bit slightly off brand
Speaker 3: Christopher Plumber vibes. You know, he's a little bit Christopher Plumber,
Speaker 3: but slightly less dashing.
Speaker 2: Yes. And then there's also he does have this quality
Speaker 2: too where you're not sure if you can trust him
Speaker 2: or not either. Like a lot of this film is
Speaker 2: centers around a who done it scenario, And indeed you
Speaker 2: don't know what doctor X's deal is as well doctor
Speaker 2: Xaviu's deal is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. There's a cast of like seven different
Speaker 3: creeps who are all testifying to each other's integrity. But
Speaker 3: they're all just like the most ominous, menacing people you've
Speaker 3: ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real rogues gallery, this medical academy. We'll
Speaker 2: get in like even without getting into the details of
Speaker 2: their spoil, which we'll get to, they all just look
Speaker 2: wonderful and grow grotesque in their own ways. It's a wonderful.
Speaker 2: We're not going to list their name, the names of
Speaker 2: the actors, because most of those names are probably not
Speaker 2: going to really resonate with with listeners. They're worth looking
Speaker 2: up though, if you're if you're curious, but yeah, they're
Speaker 2: like there's so many scenes where you'll have like our
Speaker 2: leading lady, who are about to get to and she's
Speaker 2: talking like a foot away or less with one of
Speaker 2: these characters and their the lighting between the two characters
Speaker 2: is so distinct because of course she is illuminated and
Speaker 2: beautiful like an angel, right, and then these various character
Speaker 2: actors are illuminated in ways to like really bring out
Speaker 2: the rugged definition of their face and all the lines
Speaker 2: and make them look like hollow, gaunt, haunted skeletons.
Speaker 3: It's quick, wonderful, that's very well put. Well, we should
Speaker 3: get to the leading lady because she I think is
Speaker 3: without a doubt, the most well known member of the
Speaker 3: cast here. It's Fey Ray faey Ray plays Joan Xavier,
Speaker 3: the daughter I think the daughter, yeah, the daughter of
Speaker 3: doctor doctors doctor Zaber.
Speaker 2: I wasn't clear on that for about half the Picture
Speaker 2: in the same years as the Daughter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean god, this is Fay Ray from
Speaker 3: King Kong.
Speaker 2: That's right, one of the original Scream queens. Yeah, she
Speaker 2: played Anne Darrow in the nineteen thirty three film King Kong,
Speaker 2: so she hadn't like fully exploded like King Kong was
Speaker 2: the film that really launched her into the spotlight in
Speaker 2: a major way. But she had a very long career.
Speaker 2: So she was born in Canada, they raised in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: so she intered acting at an early age, at sixteen,
Speaker 2: I believe in the nineteen twenty three short Gasoline Love.
Speaker 2: She acted in one hundred and twenty three titles up
Speaker 2: through nineteen eighty. And as for standout roles, she was
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty two is the Most Dangerous Game, and
Speaker 2: a standout role for us anyway, would also be Mystery
Speaker 2: of the Wax Museum from nineteen thirty three, which we've
Speaker 2: mentioned on Stuff to Blow your Mind before. She was
Speaker 2: in The Vampire Bat in nineteen thirty three, and yeah,
Speaker 2: she's a legend there. You can't deny her. In fact,
Speaker 2: she is mentioned twice in the lyrics to The Rocky
Speaker 2: Horror Picture Show. So there's the whole there's a whole
Speaker 2: bit at the start of one of the songs, whatever
Speaker 2: happened to Fay Ray that delicate satin draped frame as
Speaker 2: it clung to her thigh? How I started to cry
Speaker 2: because I wanted to be dressed just the same.
Speaker 3: Does Doctor Frankinfurter sing that?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, okay, that's one of the closing songs there.
Speaker 2: But she's also mentioned in the lyrics to the opening
Speaker 2: number Science Fiction Double Feature, as is this very movie.
Speaker 2: By the way, Doctor X, Doctor X is the chorus,
Speaker 2: yeah where it goes, I ins Fiction Double Feature, Doctor
Speaker 2: X will build a creature very nice. That's my riff raff.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I like, you know, Feyay Hollywood icon and
Speaker 2: Doctor X in its own way is he is also
Speaker 2: part of the like the legacy of genre filmmaking here.
Speaker 2: So I've been hearing Doctor X all this time watching
Speaker 2: and listening to Rocky hor Picture Show, and I never
Speaker 2: really looked up what that was. But it's clearly a
Speaker 2: reference to this film.
Speaker 3: It almost sounds like it could be just a stock
Speaker 3: character reference, like it wouldn't have to be a real
Speaker 3: character from something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it sounds it sounds like a stock character.
Speaker 2: Doctor X. You know, he's clearly a mad scientist of
Speaker 2: some sort. Right right now.
Speaker 3: There's another strange feature of this movie that I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention, which is that this is nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 3: but the movie is sort of in color. It was
Speaker 3: made via a process that they were trying to get
Speaker 3: going at the time called two color Technicolor. It's sort
Speaker 3: of a strange technical interlude in the history of film.
Speaker 3: The movie is not exactly in full color. There are
Speaker 3: a lot of hues that don't get captured. You're not
Speaker 3: going to get accurate purples and blues and yellows and
Speaker 3: all that. But it's definitely not in black and white.
Speaker 3: Though there was an alternate version of the film that
Speaker 3: was shot in black and white. I've read that it's
Speaker 3: almost identical in content except for some minor changes to
Speaker 3: ad libs and the dialogue. But there are two versions
Speaker 3: of this movie that were shot, one for black and
Speaker 3: white projectors and one for the Technicolor version. And this
Speaker 3: I think was the product of a deal between Technicolor
Speaker 3: and Warner Brothers. Apparently Technicolor was not happy with the
Speaker 3: fact that an alternate black and white version of the
Speaker 3: film was produced, so It's kind of hard to describe
Speaker 3: exactly how it looks, but it's sort of in color.
Speaker 3: Certain types of colors and shades come through the dominant
Speaker 3: ranges of the movie seem to be sort of like
Speaker 3: green and orange, and I think that's because the two
Speaker 3: color process used two filters, one was green and one
Speaker 3: was red. And I would say this two color spectrum
Speaker 3: would not be a good fit for every film, but
Speaker 3: I feel like it sort of works in this one.
Speaker 3: It's kind of appropriate because it suggests this diseased world
Speaker 3: of orange light that's kind of shining through the glass
Speaker 3: of a beer bottle, but also with this atmosphere of
Speaker 3: green fog. It works for Doctor X.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It kind of has this dope theend vibe to it,
Speaker 2: which is fitting because there is a quote unquote dope
Speaker 2: fiend at what point in this film.
Speaker 3: Another thing that you wouldn't get with the code.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I agree. I think it absolutely works here.
Speaker 2: If you run across a black and white copy of
Speaker 2: this film, don't watch it, watch the technicolor one. Because
Speaker 2: if black and white is the spectrum of truth and
Speaker 2: art for filmmaking of the time, then then it feels
Speaker 2: appropriate that we have this alternate unreality of technicolor in
Speaker 2: this film. Plus, there are elements of the flesh, of
Speaker 2: the synthetic flesh that I think really pop well with
Speaker 2: the color, Like I imagine they would have been equally
Speaker 2: creepy in some respects in black and white. But the color, ooh,
Speaker 2: it really makes it work.
Speaker 3: I agree, and especially because it's such an unnatural color schema.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But by the way, if you want more information on
Speaker 3: the two color process, the George Eastman Museum has a
Speaker 3: video I found. You can find it on YouTube that
Speaker 3: explains the technical details of the process. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that video points out is that the physical
Speaker 3: characteristics of the two color film made it especially prone
Speaker 3: to scratching. And as soon as I saw that, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, yep, because Doctor X, at least the
Speaker 3: version that I streamed is full of scratches, long lines
Speaker 3: running vertically across the frame for whole scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Same here. I streamed it through iTunes, I believe,
Speaker 2: and same situation. But I like it. I like seeing
Speaker 2: those flaws in it, you know, especially for a film
Speaker 2: from this period.
Speaker 3: Totally. Okay, Well, are you ready to get into the
Speaker 3: full plot breakdown?
Speaker 2: Let's do it all right.
Speaker 3: So we start with titling credits, and then we open
Speaker 3: on a kind of seedy wharf. There's a tug boat
Speaker 3: floating in the background, and a policeman strolls by whistling
Speaker 3: in the dark, and it's revealed that we're out in
Speaker 3: front of a building with a sign that reads the
Speaker 3: Mott Street Morgue. And then there's a man in a
Speaker 3: long coat and a fedora skulking around outside. He's kind
Speaker 3: of hiding behind some barrels. He's smoking a cigarette. Then
Speaker 3: he looks up at the sky and sees a full
Speaker 3: moon and I think burns himself with his cigarette match
Speaker 3: and he says, are you bad luck? I guess talking
Speaker 3: to the moon. And it turns out that this is
Speaker 3: our hero in a way. Lee Taylor played by Lee Tracy,
Speaker 3: the crime reporter, and bad luck is sort of his
Speaker 3: catch phrase. He says it like eight times. And he
Speaker 3: is down here at the Mott Street Morgue because he's
Speaker 3: trying to chase down a grizzly lead. There have been
Speaker 3: a string of horrifying murders in the city in recent months.
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be in New York City.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure. But was that the impression you got.
Speaker 2: I just got a sense of it being the city,
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of eternal, cinematic city that could
Speaker 2: be any major metropolis of the day. It's dark city. Yeah,
Speaker 2: basically basically dark city.
Speaker 3: But so these murderers apparently all take place on the
Speaker 3: night of the full moon, and there's a full moon tonight.
Speaker 3: So while he's hanging out outside the morgue, authorities are
Speaker 3: bringing a body in and Taylor thinks it might be
Speaker 3: another victim of the dreaded moon killer. Now there's an
Speaker 3: entourage that goes into the morgue. It's a bunch of
Speaker 3: cops and then it's this one guy in a coat
Speaker 3: with super silky fur lapels and I think that's doctor
Speaker 3: X that's going in there. But it's funny because he's
Speaker 3: folding these fur lapels under his chin while he's entering
Speaker 3: the building, and he looks like Cruella Deville.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they all have a very suspicious, villainous look to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Taylor tries to get into the morgue, but
Speaker 3: they won't let him in, and then he goes down
Speaker 3: the street, apparently to a brothel. I think that's what
Speaker 3: that's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think. So where he eases the telephone.
Speaker 3: He makes a phone call to the night desk at
Speaker 3: his paper, The Daily World, and he's out here complaining.
Speaker 3: He's like, I can't get any dope. And the guy
Speaker 3: at the night desk is not very interested. And then
Speaker 3: he says to the to the editor here, he goes, listen,
Speaker 3: you lunkhead, I'm not clowning. Look out the window, will you.
Speaker 3: And so the guy at the night desk looks out
Speaker 3: the window and it's a full moon and oh, I think.
Speaker 3: Then he gets it. He thinks, oh, it may be
Speaker 3: another moonkiller murder. And so the night desk editor is
Speaker 3: impressed by this and he's like, okay, see what you
Speaker 3: can dig up. And so then Lee Taylor goes around
Speaker 3: trying to get some leads. He tries to chat up
Speaker 3: a beat cop to see if he can get any info,
Speaker 3: and in the course of their conversation is, as we
Speaker 3: said earlier, revealed to be kind of a prankster because
Speaker 3: he zaps the cop with a hand buzzer.
Speaker 2: Not a good idea, No, I mean, luckily, this this
Speaker 2: cop is like the roundest This is the softest cop
Speaker 2: you've ever seen. In your life in this picture. He's
Speaker 2: a sweetheart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even he get and after they're chatting, he
Speaker 3: gives Taylor a cigar. He's like, here, some guy gave
Speaker 3: me this. You know you can have it. I think
Speaker 3: maybe Taylor asked him for a smoke or something, but
Speaker 3: he gives him the scar and then we cut to
Speaker 3: inside the morgue and then things start getting really interesting
Speaker 3: because here is an autopsy scene and Rob, I know
Speaker 3: you love a good autopsy scene.
Speaker 2: I do, and yeah, this one kicks it off right.
Speaker 3: So doctor Xavier. Doctor Xavier is examining the victim's body
Speaker 3: while the police detectives look on, and there's this great
Speaker 3: shot of the doctor silhouette behind a raised shroud. So
Speaker 3: they're lifting it up off the body and you just
Speaker 3: see him as a shadow operating behind it, but with
Speaker 3: his reflector on top of his head and everything is
Speaker 3: I don't know, it looks kind of like horns or something.
Speaker 3: And so the police ask him what's your theory, doctor,
Speaker 3: and he says it's strangulation by terrifically powerful hands. And
Speaker 3: then they ask him about, well, what do you think
Speaker 3: of this incision at the base of the brain, and
Speaker 3: Doctor x says, obviously made by some type of scwlpel
Speaker 3: used for brain dissecting. The word scwlpel is said like
Speaker 3: that multiple times. So that's already shocking. Right strangulation and
Speaker 3: an incision at the base of the brain whatever that's
Speaker 3: supposed to mean. Uh, but then you know, here we
Speaker 3: get a but wait, there's more moment. The left deltoid
Speaker 3: muscle is missing from the victim, and one of the
Speaker 3: cops asks, uh, it was torn right out, and doctor
Speaker 3: X says it wasn't torn gentlemen, this is cannibalism. I
Speaker 3: don't know how can he tell that.
Speaker 2: Like were He doesn't say that their teeth marks or
Speaker 2: that it looks like it was chew out. He doesn't
Speaker 2: go into detail and say, well, this is a traditional
Speaker 2: like butchering cut or something like. Nope, I just can
Speaker 2: tell this is cannibalism. And it's firmly established and not questioned.
Speaker 3: It's the chuck portion of the human. Yeah. But so okay,
Speaker 3: here we establish the moonkiller's mo strangulation by terrifically powerful hands,
Speaker 3: incision by scalpel at the base of the brain, and
Speaker 3: then eating the victim's left shoulder. And it makes me
Speaker 3: think this is a really overachieving serial killer, like they're
Speaker 3: trying to get extra credit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it stands out, you know, It's like I'm
Speaker 2: instantly I watched this and I hear this, and I
Speaker 2: think to myself, well, I haven't come across this exact
Speaker 2: combination before. We're in fresh territory with this picture.
Speaker 3: I agree. So they say this is the sixth the
Speaker 3: murder in a row, all committed during a full moon
Speaker 3: by means of strangulation and incision with a strange surgical knife.
Speaker 3: So why is the killer doing this? The police want
Speaker 3: to know, and then Doctor X gets into some brilliant speculation.
Speaker 3: He says the killer is quote a neurotic, of course,
Speaker 3: some poor devil suffering from a fixation, a knot or
Speaker 3: kink tied in the brain from some past experience. And
Speaker 3: then he says that about of madness comes on for
Speaker 3: the killer whenever he's confronted with a vivid reminder of
Speaker 3: the past. And the policeman is skeptical, but doctor X insists.
Speaker 3: He says, I tell you that locked in each human
Speaker 3: skull is a little world all its own. And so
Speaker 3: the police want to know, well, what's the reminder, what's
Speaker 3: the thing that's triggering the killer to do this, and
Speaker 3: Doctor X says, he says it could be anything, the
Speaker 3: side of the sea, the full moon. Every time he
Speaker 3: sees it, he's forced to relive the original moment that
Speaker 3: drove him mad.
Speaker 2: Now this is great too, because we learned that this
Speaker 2: is doctor X's specialty, this is his area of study,
Speaker 2: and so of course this is tied into his hypothesis
Speaker 2: for the murder. It's the same way. You know, if
Speaker 2: Terence mckinna had been called upon to inspect these murders,
Speaker 2: he would have said, m I believe it probably had
Speaker 2: something to do with psychedelic mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Very good comparison. So anyway, Doctor
Speaker 3: X has given his professional opinion. He's about to leave,
Speaker 3: but then the police flip the script on him. Turns
Speaker 3: out they were sort of entrapping him here. All of
Speaker 3: the murders they reveal have taken place just in the
Speaker 3: vicinity of his medical academy. And what's more, the strange
Speaker 3: incisions made on the victims at the base of the
Speaker 3: brain have been traced to a special Austrian scalpel that
Speaker 3: is only in the possession of doctor Xavier's facilities. So
Speaker 3: the medical supply companies confirm that no one else in
Speaker 3: the country has a knife like this seems like it
Speaker 3: would be hard to determine that, but that's what they say.
Speaker 3: And at first doctor Xavier is indignant and offended. He's
Speaker 3: as his students and faculty are exclusively of the highest integrity.
Speaker 3: This is impossible, yeah, soga.
Speaker 2: So again we find out that the murder is definitely
Speaker 2: somebody at the academy. But then as we begin to
Speaker 2: meet the members of the academy, we will learn and
Speaker 2: we'll get into details here everybody is highly suspect and
Speaker 2: has ties to cannibalism or the study of cannibalism or
Speaker 2: some other elements. So it's wonderfully put together, like you
Speaker 2: can imagine a spreadsheet and you're like, okay, everybody checks
Speaker 2: off like two things on this list. There's no real
Speaker 2: standout candidate here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like you imagine hiring at this medical academy.
Speaker 3: It involves like, you know, must have five years of experience,
Speaker 3: must have eaten a human. But so Professor x offers
Speaker 3: a compromise. He says, look, don't you investigate the people
Speaker 3: in my academy. Let me investigate my academy in my
Speaker 3: own way, and the detectives want to know. Then they're like, well,
Speaker 3: how would you catch the killer? And then I had
Speaker 3: to write down Doctor X's response because I thought it
Speaker 3: was great. He says, by immediately studying the pathological reactions
Speaker 3: of every man placed under suspicion, then trap the guilty
Speaker 3: one by a brain examination.
Speaker 2: Science.
Speaker 3: Oh, there is so much science exclamation point in this movie.
Speaker 3: There is an awful lot of very funny and plausible
Speaker 3: technobabble and scientific words being used in a context that
Speaker 3: makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you watch this film, I advise you to
Speaker 2: not try to think too hard about anything science ye
Speaker 2: that any characters say, because none of it really adds
Speaker 2: up it. It will just hurt your brain if you
Speaker 2: try and make sense of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, anyway, doctor X and the detectives agree. You know,
Speaker 3: Doctor X will investigate the people in his academy on
Speaker 3: his own. There will be no publicity, the press cannot no.
Speaker 3: And then after they leave the room, one of the
Speaker 3: sheet draped corpses in the morgue suddenly sits up. Is
Speaker 3: it someone who has risen from the dead? No, it's
Speaker 3: old Lee Taylor the fast talking reporter. He's been snooping
Speaker 3: disguised as a cadaver. He's even got a little tag
Speaker 3: on his toe.
Speaker 2: He's just so scrappy he can't keep him away from
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, I have to say I think this is all
Speaker 2: pretty fun set up with the whole situation where Xavier
Speaker 2: is given the chance to solve this internally before the
Speaker 2: authorities move in. Because, weirdly, having just watched the latest
Speaker 2: TV adaptation of the Name of the Rose, this is
Speaker 2: essentially the same predicament that Brother William finds himself in
Speaker 2: in the Name of the Rose. Solve the murders and
Speaker 2: the abbey internally before the papal inquisitor Bernardo Gui shows
Speaker 2: up and makes a bigger to do out of everything.
Speaker 3: Right right now, I will say Doctor xis no William
Speaker 3: of Askerville, but he's I don't know, he's a clever
Speaker 3: guy though he If I have any major criticism of
Speaker 3: Doctor X, it is that Doctor X is far too trusting.
Speaker 3: I mean, just like every like creep and weirdo he
Speaker 3: comes across, He's like he couldn't possibly have done anything bad.
Speaker 2: Yes, he ate human flesh once twice tops, but he
Speaker 2: has a good heart. I trust him completely. He writes
Speaker 2: poetry in his spare time for gossip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that actually happens, so we'll get to that. So
Speaker 3: so we follow Xavier and the detective. I'm sorry I
Speaker 3: keep saying in different ways. I'll just say doctor X
Speaker 3: the rest of the time. I'll probably fail at that too.
Speaker 3: But we follow doctor X and the detectives to his
Speaker 3: surgical academy and we begin to meet the other characters. Now,
Speaker 3: first we meet Joanne or Joan characters call her both names,
Speaker 3: and she is doctor X's daughter. This is Fey Ray here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but she doesn't appear to be a suspect. So the
Speaker 3: police are interested in meeting some of the suspects and
Speaker 3: they want to interview these other faculty members. So first
Speaker 3: up is doctor Wells, and it just happens to turn
Speaker 3: out Doctor X mentions, oh, well, he is a student
Speaker 3: of cannibalism. He's written a book about cannibalism, and this
Speaker 3: gets the attention of the police. And then when they
Speaker 3: go to interview him, he's hunched over a lab table
Speaker 3: with a jar containing a beating heart, and then he
Speaker 3: claims that he has kept this heart alive for three
Speaker 3: years through the power of electrolysis. I do not think
Speaker 3: that is a correct use of the word whatever they
Speaker 3: had in mind. I think electrolysis is the decomposition of
Speaker 3: chemical compounds by the application of electric current. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how that would keep a heart alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, don't think too much about anything sciency that's
Speaker 2: brought up in this film.
Speaker 3: Okay, I apologize.
Speaker 2: It's generally said in a very nice British accent, so
Speaker 2: just accept it.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, in a weird way, like doctor Wells
Speaker 3: has a creepy vibe, but he's also kind of a hunk,
Speaker 3: Like he's got wild hair and a five o'clock shadow
Speaker 3: and kind of a deep voice. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is ever remarked upon it again, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure what this meant. But there's a pair of boots
Speaker 3: in the corner of the room that are bubbling as
Speaker 3: if they have been dipped in toxic goop, and the
Speaker 3: detectives just gonna look at them and notice them.
Speaker 2: And then I don't work on a radiator. They're on
Speaker 2: a radiator. Oh yeah, So I couldn't figure out it
Speaker 2: was like, are their boots melting on the radiator? I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure what was happening there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think that ever came up again, or
Speaker 3: if it did, I didn't notice it.
Speaker 2: But it looked nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looked nice. But anyway, it is soon revealed
Speaker 3: that Wells could not possibly be the murderer because remember,
Speaker 3: the murderer strangles with two ferociously powerful hands, and in fact,
Speaker 3: Wells is an amputee and he wears a prosthetic left hand,
Speaker 3: so he is not capable of having performed the murderers,
Speaker 3: so the police exclude him at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Luckily, though, there is an entire faculty of really suspicious
Speaker 2: characters to turn to. Next.
Speaker 3: Right next, we meet this guy named Haynes. The police
Speaker 3: want to know something about him, and so they ask
Speaker 3: doctor X. Yeah, tell us about this Haynes and doctor X,
Speaker 3: I just have to reproduce this speech he says. Doctor
Speaker 3: Haynes and two other scientists were shipwrecked off Tahiti about
Speaker 3: a year ago while making a study of the coral
Speaker 3: reefs for the Killery Foundation. They were adrift for twenty
Speaker 3: four days. Their supplies were exhausted. When they were picked up,
Speaker 3: Haines and one other were delirious. The third had vanished.
Speaker 3: There was no explanation at the time. Haines later claimed
Speaker 3: at the time that the man had died and had
Speaker 3: been thrown overboard. So again, it's like, it's as if
Speaker 3: this surgical college only hires people who have been suspected
Speaker 3: of cannibalism. But doctor X says, you know, he's sure
Speaker 3: that Haines cannot be the guilty party because this is
Speaker 3: his reasoning. One the killer is a maniac, and two
Speaker 3: doctor Haynes is one of the most brilliant men in
Speaker 3: the medical world, So see it's impossible. So they go
Speaker 3: to meet doctor Haynes, who is experimenting with new procedures
Speaker 3: in what he calls brain growd. I tried to look
Speaker 3: that up to see if that's really a thing, and no,
Speaker 3: I think that would just mean like a brain transplant,
Speaker 3: which has never been performed in humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it sounds plenty suspicious, Like he definitely has
Speaker 2: his toes in the Mad Science sure, as as does
Speaker 2: Wells with the beating heart.
Speaker 3: How would you characterize Haines's personality. I would say that
Speaker 3: he is he is paranoid, like he is not pleased
Speaker 3: to have the police in his lab. And while they're
Speaker 3: poking around, they find a kind of I didn't couldn't
Speaker 3: tell exactly what it was. It looked like they found
Speaker 3: a kind of Riske magazine among his things. It's like
Speaker 3: Ankles Quarterly. And in the police's eyes, this seemed to
Speaker 3: implicate him for some reason. It's like, Oh, this guy
Speaker 3: likes you know, risky magazines. You know who else does moonkillers?
Speaker 2: Okay, so another strong candidate. But there are more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're about to get to maybe my favorite
Speaker 3: guy in the movie. So next up we meet doctor
Speaker 3: Rowitz and doctor Duke.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Rowitz is a tall, ominous man in a white lab
Speaker 3: coat with what I at first thought was an eye patch,
Speaker 3: but actually I think it is more like a dark
Speaker 3: tinted monocle. So it's like sunglasses, but only one side
Speaker 3: of them. And he when they first meet him, he's
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette and leaning over a globe, and we
Speaker 3: find out that he studies the moon and is obsessed
Speaker 3: with the effects of lunar rays on neurotic types.
Speaker 2: See, it's like a board game. This picture. I love
Speaker 2: it how all of them have these just highly suspicious elements.
Speaker 2: They're not just a little suspicious, They're all very suspicious.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I gotta say doctor Rhotz is a god.
Speaker 3: I love Doctor Rhods. He's like, I want to be
Speaker 3: buds with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's great, though in a way he's he's almost
Speaker 2: too suspicious. You like, you kind of get the idea
Speaker 2: this couldn't possibly be the guy because he has he
Speaker 2: picked far too many items out of the villain accessory
Speaker 2: grab bag.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I agree. But then we meet the other guy.
Speaker 3: We meet doctor Duke, who his ma personality traits are
Speaker 3: that he is ornery and irascible. He just complains about everything.
Speaker 3: So he uses wheelchair and he comes into the lab
Speaker 3: yelling at the detectives. They like ask him how he's doing,
Speaker 3: and he yells at them for asking how he's doing.
Speaker 3: He's just always mad about something.
Speaker 2: There are elements of this character that remind me of
Speaker 2: doctor Everett V. Scott in The Rocky hor Picture Show,
Speaker 2: so I would not be surprised if there was a
Speaker 2: connection there. I have nothing to go on other than
Speaker 2: doctor X is mentioned in the lyrics and therefore might
Speaker 2: have been in the mind of Richard O'Brien when he
Speaker 2: wrote the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, oh oh, And I almost forgot to mention
Speaker 3: that we learn doctor Rowitz was also in the life
Speaker 3: vote with doctor Haynes, so it was the two of
Speaker 3: them and the third delicious man who disappeared and was
Speaker 3: quote thrown overboard. Though it's funny how it's like, it's
Speaker 3: as if the rowboat story only applies to Haynes and
Speaker 3: does not apply to Rowitz. I'm not sure why. And
Speaker 3: though they say he was the other guy in the boat.
Speaker 3: But they start grilling Rowits about his moon research, and
Speaker 3: Rowitt says, if you suffer sunstroke, might you not suffer
Speaker 3: some similar evil from the rays of the moon. And
Speaker 3: the cop says, moonstroke you mean? And Roots says, you know,
Speaker 3: the moon is powerful. It lifts billions of tons of
Speaker 3: water twice a day. I guess he's talking about the tides.
Speaker 3: And then he compares the water lifting to what is
Speaker 3: done by an old scrub woman, which is notable to
Speaker 3: the police because the last victim of the moonkiller was
Speaker 3: that the papers called her an old scrub woman. I
Speaker 3: think the paper headline you see is like old scrub
Speaker 3: woman killed by moonkiller.
Speaker 2: It's great, the script is just so well put together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now the police suspect Rowitz again, like every new guy.
Speaker 3: They meet, They're like, oh, it's got to be him.
Speaker 3: It's like that scene in Murder on the Orient Express
Speaker 3: where like every time they interview somebody, the companion's like,
Speaker 3: that's the one they But so the cops are like that.
Speaker 3: But doctor X is like, no, Rowitz can't be the
Speaker 3: murderer because here's his reasoning here. He has a lovely
Speaker 3: nature and he's the author of several volumes of poetry.
Speaker 3: I mean, who's ever heard of a poet killing somebody?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't seem very logical. So this is this
Speaker 2: is definitely an area where he's falling below the Sherlock
Speaker 2: and brother William threshold.
Speaker 3: I would agree. So it looks like we've met our
Speaker 3: suspects and the mystery investigation is afoot, and doctor X
Speaker 3: promises that he will complete this investigation within forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile, you get some side story with Taylor
Speaker 3: the newspaperman and Faye Ray meeting up. When she catches
Speaker 3: him snooping around on the fire escape outside the medical academy.
Speaker 3: She confronts him and then shoves a revolver in his belly.
Speaker 3: He tries to get some facts out of her, but
Speaker 3: she rebuffs him.
Speaker 2: Joan n.
Speaker 3: Xavier clearly wants nothing to do with mister hot Scoop,
Speaker 3: Like he think he's very cool and he thinks he
Speaker 3: can sweet talk her, but she just wants none of it.
Speaker 2: Right, And she's more concerned about her father because he
Speaker 2: seems overworked.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, she's concerned about his health that she says
Speaker 3: several times. I think just because he never gets any rest.
Speaker 3: There's also I guess we could just throw in a
Speaker 3: we meet more creeps. The movie's just crawling with creeps.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where we meet this guy named Otto
Speaker 3: who is Xavier's butler, and he's just another one of
Speaker 3: these ominous weirdos to round out the cast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, again, just a great cast of character actors
Speaker 2: in this film.
Speaker 3: So then we get a scene that goes by pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: but I thought it was pretty good. So Taylor the
Speaker 3: reporter goes off to kind of kick rocks in the
Speaker 3: alley like he's upset because he's he can't get any
Speaker 3: good leads and he's moping around about his failure to
Speaker 3: crack the case. And then we get a very disturbing
Speaker 3: moment of suspense because behind Taylor's back, we see emerge
Speaker 3: a grotesque figure in a hooded cape with a drooping, agging,
Speaker 3: almost melted sort of face, and it approaches Taylor from
Speaker 3: behind to strangle him just as he's lighting a cigar,
Speaker 3: the cigar that he received as a gift from his
Speaker 3: cop friend earlier. And just as the creature is about
Speaker 3: to grasp his neck, you get this pop and it's
Speaker 3: a trick cigar. It explodes, scaring away the Moonkiller in
Speaker 3: the process, and Taylor never knows his life was saved
Speaker 3: by a prank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great little scene because it's suspenseful. It
Speaker 2: gives us our first very effective glimpse at the murderer,
Speaker 2: the monster in this film. But then also it redeems
Speaker 2: that whole ridiculous scene with the cop earlier. Again. This
Speaker 2: at first glance, this script might seem kind of schlocky,
Speaker 2: but it's so economical in the way everything ties together,
Speaker 2: like everything has a purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is very tight. So Taylor keeps snooping. He
Speaker 3: goes by Xavier's house and meets a gullible maid named Mami,
Speaker 3: who lets him inside, and he tries to deal a
Speaker 3: photo of doctor x and a photo of Fey Ray
Speaker 3: and she catches him in the act and chews him
Speaker 3: out for writing a negative story about them and throws
Speaker 3: him out of the house. And then after this we
Speaker 3: get a shift. The action retreats to a new location,
Speaker 3: so everything moves to Doctor X's country estate on Long Island,
Speaker 3: and he gathers all the various creeps from the academy
Speaker 3: there and he informs them that he has to perform
Speaker 3: an experiment to determine whether any of them is guilty
Speaker 3: of murder. And I don't recall it being established how
Speaker 3: he figures out to go here, but mister hot Scoop
Speaker 3: also shows up. Our reporter hero finds his way out
Speaker 3: to the estate. He climbs up a drain pipe and
Speaker 3: sort of breaks into the house to continue snooping around
Speaker 3: and trespassing as the plot develops. And here there is
Speaker 3: a scene where I think, basically anybody will recognize the
Speaker 3: following sequence that goes on with the reporter because it's
Speaker 3: recreated so many times in other movies and TV shows,
Speaker 3: where a character is nervously sneaking around in the dark
Speaker 3: and then is startled by a string of loud noises
Speaker 3: but all caused by inanimate objects like an ironing board
Speaker 3: falls out of the wall, then a cuckoo clock starts chiming,
Speaker 3: and then Otto the butler walks by carrying a skeleton
Speaker 3: for some reason. For the next ten minutes or so,
Speaker 3: there is a lot of Lee Tracy making wise cracks
Speaker 3: at inanimate objects, like telling a skeleton to cut it
Speaker 3: out will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets very stoogy there for a minute.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this is all working up to one of
Speaker 3: the big set pieces of the film, which is doctor
Speaker 3: X's experiment to determine who the killer is. I guess
Speaker 3: how would it be best to set this up and
Speaker 3: describe it?
Speaker 2: Well, I would summarize by saying, this is basically sci
Speaker 2: fi Shakespeare, This is Hamlet, this is the play is
Speaker 2: the thing, right, because that's essentially what the whole scheme is.
Speaker 2: I'm going to show owes something to them, and then
Speaker 2: based on their reactions, I will know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like if like if you were hooking the king
Speaker 3: up to an electrode and a machine that would read
Speaker 3: his guilt as he watches the play, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if it were elaborate, it took some explaining
Speaker 2: and had lots of tubes and liquids.
Speaker 3: Right, So at this point it seems like the three
Speaker 3: main suspects are Rowits, Haines, and Duke, and they are
Speaker 3: strapped to electrical detectors that are supposed to measure their
Speaker 3: heart rate. Maybe there is just some magnificent technobabble about
Speaker 3: how the machine works. For some reason, it will measure
Speaker 3: the person in the machine for a history of cannibalism.
Speaker 3: And all three of them are going to go into
Speaker 3: the they're going to get hooked up to the machine.
Speaker 3: And since doctor Wells could not be the killer because
Speaker 3: he does not have the two ferociously strong hands necessary
Speaker 3: for the strangulation, he helps Doctor X administer the test
Speaker 3: on the three others. And there's this great part where
Speaker 3: doctor Duke complains about being able to see the moon
Speaker 3: through the window. He's like, close the shutters, it's giving
Speaker 3: me a shiver.
Speaker 2: And again, it's wonderful they keep the potential guilt, that's
Speaker 2: a suspicion just leveled out among all the candidates.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, well, And so they've got different attitudes, Like
Speaker 3: doctor Duke is complaining just because he's always complaining. He's
Speaker 3: just always mad about something. Doctor Haynes again is quite paranoid.
Speaker 3: He's very against the whole situation. He just feel. You
Speaker 3: can tell he feels his privacy is being invaded and
Speaker 3: he's nervous about something. And he says, if you ask me,
Speaker 3: doctor is Xavier. That's how he says. At this time,
Speaker 3: doctor Xavier is using very unethical methods. And then Rowitz,
Speaker 3: who of everybody is the most on board with the
Speaker 3: whole experiment, he just responds, necessity has no ethics.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's straight up like, I celebrate the chance
Speaker 2: to prove my innocence. Bring on the ridiculous mad science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's great because he might as
Speaker 3: well have just said, like, the ends justify the means.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the stimulus for the test, they're hooked up to
Speaker 3: this machine that's going to test them for cannibalism via
Speaker 3: their heart rate and test. The stimulus for the test
Speaker 3: is going to consist of them looking at wax figures
Speaker 3: of the victims of the Moonkiller murders. I don't recall
Speaker 3: them explaining how these wax figures were made, where they
Speaker 3: came from, and I beautifully created.
Speaker 2: I must have commissioned them, yes, And I.
Speaker 3: Think it's also it's worth noting that So this was
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two. Michael Curtiz, the director, also directed a
Speaker 3: wax horror movie right around the same time that came
Speaker 3: out in thirty three. I wonder if he was double
Speaker 3: dipping with the prop department.
Speaker 2: He may have. I haven't seen Mystery of the Wax
Speaker 2: Museum from thirty three, but yeah, it was. He also
Speaker 2: directed that. It was also in two color Technicolor. I
Speaker 2: think these were the two of the last films that
Speaker 2: came out in that But then it also starred at
Speaker 2: Will and Fayray. So there you go. He was double
Speaker 2: dipping in multiple ways, I guess.
Speaker 3: Interesting. So there's a reenactment of the most recent murder.
Speaker 3: So after looking at the wax figurines, there's going to
Speaker 3: be a reenactment of the murder, and it's going to
Speaker 3: be put on by Otto and Mami, the butler and
Speaker 3: the maid, and this, for some reason, should reveal who
Speaker 3: the killer is via the machine. And just as the
Speaker 3: reenactment is about to reveal the killer, suddenly everything we get.
Speaker 3: The lights go out, you know, there's like a power
Speaker 3: outage and all hell breaks loosee. So a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff happens while the lights are out. Somebody's cannibalism detector
Speaker 3: device goes off, and then doctor X reads it and
Speaker 3: declares it's doctor Rowitz. But there's a twist. When the
Speaker 3: lights come up, doctor Rowitz is dead, so Rowitz has
Speaker 3: been murdered. And also suddenly doctor Duke can walk again.
Speaker 3: He's up walking around and doctor Haines points him out
Speaker 3: and he's like faker, faker. And then we also find
Speaker 3: out doctor Well, who was helping administer the experiment, has
Speaker 3: been struck on the head by somebody in the dark
Speaker 3: who called his name and then hit him. And there's
Speaker 3: this part where fey Ray quite rightly observes that this
Speaker 3: experiment was a disaster. And then everybody's just like, nah,
Speaker 3: chill out, calm down, you know, they're basically just like,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it. You know, you go get some rest,
Speaker 3: we'll deal with this dead body and everything. Oh and
Speaker 3: then other like a bunch of stuff happens all at once.
Speaker 3: So in the while all this is happening, Taylor, who
Speaker 3: is hiding out in the closet, snooping around, he gets gassed,
Speaker 3: like somebody pumps some smoke into the closet with him
Speaker 3: and it knocks him unconscious, and you don't know who
Speaker 3: did it, and then they discover him unconscious in the closet,
Speaker 3: but they decide to let him stay for the night
Speaker 3: at the manor. I'm not sure why that is, uh,
Speaker 3: But after that follows some incredibly implausible flirting between mister
Speaker 3: hot Scoop and fay Ray. Suddenly she's just responding to
Speaker 3: his flirt, whereas she hadn't been earlier. But anyway, everybody
Speaker 3: goes to bed, and did you notice, Like, do they
Speaker 3: explicitly say, like, no, we're not going to report doctor
Speaker 3: Rowitz's death to the police. It seems like they just
Speaker 3: decide that they shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, yeah, I think they decided we have
Speaker 2: to do a follow up experiment. Yeah, we can't stop
Speaker 2: now we're close, because I mean, it's basically what happened
Speaker 2: is you know, you're like you're saying, they're sort of test.
Speaker 2: They're testing to see who was stimulated the most by
Speaker 2: these the stimuli they were presented with. But then unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the individual who was stimulated the most, according to the readings,
Speaker 2: is also now dead, was killed in the dark, so
Speaker 2: it must be someone else.
Speaker 3: So that's funny because that should indicate the fallibility of
Speaker 3: their experimental method, right like, if he wasn't the murderer,
Speaker 3: and yet he was the person that the test identified,
Speaker 3: that should show that the test is not necessarily great.
Speaker 2: I agree, But yet they persist, you know, because ultimately
Speaker 2: he's thinking about publication. You know, it's not about whether
Speaker 2: you catch the murder, it's that you well document your
Speaker 2: attempts to catch the murder.
Speaker 3: He's trying to get tenure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 3: And then also we just get the little tid that
Speaker 3: later that night, like fey Ray's walking around and she
Speaker 3: comes across her father examining Rowitz's body under a sheet
Speaker 3: in a room in the house. Uh. And then we
Speaker 3: learn that his body has been cannibalized in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night. So somebody at the manor here cannibalized him.
Speaker 3: So but yes, as you say, the murderer still has
Speaker 3: to be discovered, and this all leads to the second test.
Speaker 3: Before that, there is a scene of hot Scoop and
Speaker 3: fay Ray flirting some more. They're down at the beach,
Speaker 3: they're talking about swimming. There are some lines in this
Speaker 3: scene that are frankly hilarious. There's a great part where
Speaker 3: he's like, listen, forget that I'm a newspaper man, And
Speaker 3: I feel like here I'm wondering if maybe we should
Speaker 3: sort of leave off in describing the plot in too
Speaker 3: much detail after this, because this is getting up to
Speaker 3: the climax, and I feel like we should at least
Speaker 3: be a little bit circumspective. But we don't want to
Speaker 3: spoil the mystery, do we.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 3: There's a thing that is building up to that we
Speaker 3: have to talk about because it's the best thing about
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we basically have to have a werewolf
Speaker 2: break here in the in the episode, so we have
Speaker 2: to say, Look, if you want to experience the wonderful
Speaker 2: twist for yourself, and we recommend you do, then you
Speaker 2: should stop listening to this episode. Now, go out and
Speaker 2: at your leisure see the film for yourself, and then
Speaker 2: come back and you can listen to us talk about it,
Speaker 2: and then you can share your own thoughts on it,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Okay, but if you're ready to hear the end right now,
Speaker 3: we absolutely must say that the revelation of the killer's
Speaker 3: identity involves the real star of this movie, and the
Speaker 3: best thing about it a god mode plot device called
Speaker 3: synthetic flesh that even gets like it gets announced in
Speaker 3: a voiceover segment. There's like a voice that is not
Speaker 3: spoken by a character on screen. It just comes on
Speaker 3: the soundtrack saying synthetic flesh.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's it's absolutely wonderful and indeed it's it's
Speaker 2: a fabulous plot twist, and it really I really got
Speaker 2: me too, because I have to admit I was convinced
Speaker 2: that Doctor X had to be the villain. He's secretly
Speaker 2: the villain the whole time, and he made some sort
Speaker 2: of monster to do his bidding. And I believe this
Speaker 2: because that's what Richard O'Brien told me in the lyrics
Speaker 2: to Science Fiction Double Feature. He said Doctor X made
Speaker 2: a creature. So I'm thinking that that's it. That's clearly
Speaker 2: where we're going with this. Why would Richard O'Brien lie
Speaker 2: to me?
Speaker 3: Right, Richard O'Brien wouldn't lie to you, but maybe he
Speaker 3: had just it'd been a while since he'd seen it.
Speaker 3: It got a little bit fuzzy. Yeah, there is almost
Speaker 3: a sort of creature creation, but no one of the
Speaker 3: parties there at the house is the villain. And it
Speaker 3: is in a great sequence where so all of the suspects,
Speaker 3: including Doctor X himself are handcuffed to chairs so that
Speaker 3: they can't get up and murder each other anymore. During
Speaker 3: the second test, doctor Wells handcuffs Haines, Duke and Doctor
Speaker 3: X to these chairs so they're held down. And then
Speaker 3: Doctor Wells reveals I'm the killer and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: how could it be you? And the answer is synthetic flesh,
Speaker 3: and we get this amazing psychedelic body horror sequence where
Speaker 3: it's very much I don't want to compare it too
Speaker 3: much to this because this came later, but it's kind
Speaker 3: of Clayface from Batman, where there is this putty that
Speaker 3: Doctor Wells applies to himself that I think is made
Speaker 3: from the flesh of the people who he supposedly cannibalized,
Speaker 3: and this putty goes on his body and can make
Speaker 3: new flesh and organs as he like smooths it on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is fabulous. Another thing I would compare it to.
Speaker 2: And again, this is something that came later and I
Speaker 2: think was probably influenced by Doctor X, and that is
Speaker 2: Sam Raimi's Dark Man. Yes, because the main character in that,
Speaker 2: played by Liam Neeson, is a scientist who has created
Speaker 2: synthetic skin, which he kind of you know puts on it. God,
Speaker 2: I forget if he gobs it on or he just
Speaker 2: kind of pulls it on like a mask. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, it's some sort of a fleshy goo that
Speaker 2: can transform his face into the face of another.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the essential premise here is that you can
Speaker 3: like mold organs and skin out of this clay and
Speaker 3: just smear it onto your body and then it becomes
Speaker 3: functioning tissue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Wells in this fantastic, lengthy, mostly dialogueless scene
Speaker 2: he puts first, he puts on this synthetic flesh claw,
Speaker 2: this great monstrous hand that he attaches to where he
Speaker 2: is of his amputation, and then he began he begins
Speaker 2: to gob this stuff onto his face, and it is
Speaker 2: it really turns the weirdness in this film up to eleven.
Speaker 2: You have the strange you know, two tone technicolor effects
Speaker 2: going on, and it really feels more in keeping with
Speaker 2: experimental cinema of later decades, you know, at least from
Speaker 2: a modern film going perspective. Again, there's no dialogue other
Speaker 2: than well saying synthetic flesh a couple of times.
Speaker 3: But as I said, he does, you don't see his
Speaker 3: mouth moving when he says it. It's like he says
Speaker 3: it as if like it's in his head, like it's
Speaker 3: a voiceover and it repeats, and so it very much
Speaker 3: has the feeling of something that would be sampled in
Speaker 3: a techno song or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It feels
Speaker 2: like something would be sampled in a mix, and I
Speaker 2: hope has been sampled in a mix. DJs, if you're listening,
Speaker 2: sample this because it's wonderful. But also the background audio
Speaker 2: for this whole scene is just kind of like add
Speaker 2: science see electros. And I was absolutely digging this as
Speaker 2: I was watching and listening to it, because I think
Speaker 2: in many ways it's an accidental early electronic music score.
Speaker 2: So you know, maybe something it sounds like a little
Speaker 2: post industrial, like something something like Nurse with Wound would
Speaker 2: have created. In fact, I would love that if we
Speaker 2: could actually just listen to a sample, an audio sample
Speaker 2: from this scene so you can get a taste for it.
Speaker 2: Synthetic flesh, synthetic flesh. I want that. I want to
Speaker 2: pick up the single just as a bit of score trivia.
Speaker 2: Though credit for the first electronic score generally goes to
Speaker 2: Bbe and Lewis Baron for their work with a magnetic
Speaker 2: tape on nineteen fifty six, the nineteen fifty six film
Speaker 2: Forbidden Planet. So this isn't an example of an electronic score,
Speaker 2: but if it were an electronic score, it would be
Speaker 2: way ahead of its time. I also have to say
Speaker 2: that that the sequence where he's smearing the synthetic flesh
Speaker 2: over his face and into his hair and forming this
Speaker 2: noon face, this face of the moon Killer, it reminds
Speaker 2: me a lot of the later of the current the
Speaker 2: modern performance art. A French artist Oliver de Sagazin, who
Speaker 2: many of you may have seen. There's one of his
Speaker 2: performances features into the twenty eleven film Sam Sara, but
Speaker 2: you can also find clips of his work online. Just
Speaker 2: look for Oliver Sagaza sa g A z A N
Speaker 2: and you'll see see what he does. Basically, he sets
Speaker 2: up in front of a camera and then he layers
Speaker 2: paint and clay over his own face and does a
Speaker 2: fair amount of like you know, performance art with it,
Speaker 2: to just transform himself into these various, I mean, kind
Speaker 2: of monstrosities. There's an unsettling nature to his work, but
Speaker 2: it's wonderful. And in this film, in Doctor X, we
Speaker 2: kind of see a far earlier version of that same
Speaker 2: performance art.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it makes me wonder what are the
Speaker 3: other great examples of sort of extreme makeup effects in
Speaker 3: film from the thirties. I don't know of any other
Speaker 3: movies from this era that have effects that look like this.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would have thought, you know, makeup at
Speaker 3: the time was all basically just like realistic accentuation of
Speaker 3: the face, not the kind of like horror movie makeup
Speaker 3: effects we associate with movies of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's impressive. I'm thinking trying to
Speaker 2: like figure out what it like. We can think about
Speaker 2: what it's supposed to be. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like he's gobbing himself down with sci fi stem cells
Speaker 2: or something, but or you know, some sort of flesh
Speaker 2: that instantly forges a connection with his own flesh. But
Speaker 2: I imagine it's probably a twist on perceptions of elaborate
Speaker 2: special effects makeup of the day. You know, the putty
Speaker 2: is like flesh, and then it seems to become the flesh,
Speaker 2: and within the context of the film, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's like he's got this this you know, this big
Speaker 2: old jar stem cells that he's just gabbing it on
Speaker 2: and sculpting his flesh into the desired nightmare. But I
Speaker 2: think also we can find a possible connection here to
Speaker 2: sort of the zeitgeist of the time when you look
Speaker 2: back at the history of plastic surgery, which to be clear,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean the use of plastic in sculpting flesh, but
Speaker 2: the overall plasticity of flesh that can be utilized in
Speaker 2: reconstructive surgery. So you look at some of the achievements
Speaker 2: that were made even at that time and in the
Speaker 2: previous decades, and they were pretty amazing. Stuff like walking
Speaker 2: lengths of flesh up to the face or down from
Speaker 2: the forehead in order to slowly graft it and form
Speaker 2: it and to reform features that were lost. Cartilage implantation
Speaker 2: is another example. If you look up images of say
Speaker 2: World War One facial reconstruction, you can see examples of this.
Speaker 2: Because some of it is quite amazing. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: you know, it can be a little tough to take in,
Speaker 2: but it's quite interesting. And remember this is nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 2: so memories of the First World War's injuries are still raw,
Speaker 2: as are likely the photographs of the surgical reconstructions that
Speaker 2: were possible. There's even a great line from Wells that
Speaker 2: I feel like reflects this, because as he's having his
Speaker 2: like supervillain reveal speech, he says, yes, look at it
Speaker 2: a real hand, it's a live it's flesh, synthetic flesh.
Speaker 2: For years, I've been searching to find the secret of
Speaker 2: a living, manufactured flesh, and now I found it. You
Speaker 2: think I went to Africa to study cannibalism. I went
Speaker 2: there to get samples of the human flesh that the natives.
Speaker 2: E Yes, That's why I needed living flesh from humans.
Speaker 2: From my experiments, what difference did it make if a
Speaker 2: few people had to die their flesh taught me how
Speaker 2: to manufacture arms, legs, faces that are human. I'll make
Speaker 2: a cripple world hold again.
Speaker 3: So again we get a very like ends justify the
Speaker 3: means thing. It's like, look, I've had to kill a
Speaker 3: lot of people, but I'm going to create amazing new
Speaker 3: surgical techniques by what I've learned through doing. So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, yeah, you think about this film
Speaker 2: as coming out, you know, post World War One and
Speaker 2: before World War II, it seems like it seems like
Speaker 2: that maybe what is lashing onto here? You know, it's
Speaker 2: and again this is kind of the territory. This is
Speaker 2: the area in which genre filmmaking often works.
Speaker 3: I think this is probably also a time where people
Speaker 3: were trying to figure out the limits of what was
Speaker 3: ethical scientific experimentation. Like, there was probably a lot of
Speaker 3: experimentation going on that we would today regard as unethical
Speaker 3: in its nature, but was you know, it was not
Speaker 3: just people who were like, I'm trying to do evil.
Speaker 3: It was people who had this idea of like, we'll
Speaker 3: think of all the good that we could accomplish exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just you know, continuing to roll with what
Speaker 2: these technological changes meant for humanity. You know, like suddenly
Speaker 2: we're able to wage war in ways that we were
Speaker 2: not able to previously. I mean, one of the prime
Speaker 2: examples from the First World War would of course be
Speaker 2: chemical weaponry, and we have a brief scene of chemical
Speaker 2: weaponry in this film is the newspaper Guy Lee is
Speaker 2: gassed there. You know.
Speaker 3: As for other ways this movie fits into the history
Speaker 3: of science, there's a thing that comes up several times,
Speaker 3: which is forensic experimentation, like forensic biometrics basically using brain
Speaker 3: examination or heart rate monitoring or things like that to
Speaker 3: determine the guilt of a person in trying to solve
Speaker 3: a criminal case. If you would like more information about
Speaker 3: the history of that kind of thing, we did an
Speaker 3: episode I actually was Christian and I did a couple
Speaker 3: of episodes several years ago about the failures of forensic
Speaker 3: science where we talked about this big report that looked
Speaker 3: into the reliability of forensic sciences that are supposedly used
Speaker 3: to establish guilt in the courtroom, and how some of
Speaker 3: them are in most cases pretty solid, you know, like
Speaker 3: DNA evidence and all that, but a lot of them
Speaker 3: do not have as solid a scientific basis as is
Speaker 3: often represented and may very well be sort of just
Speaker 3: sort of stealing them the primature of science as a
Speaker 3: concept to placed on some kind of weak evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of weak evidence, I do love that. Ultimately
Speaker 2: doctor X was wrong. You know, earlier in the film,
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm totally sure that the killer sees the
Speaker 2: moon and it awakens these repressed feelings inside him, and
Speaker 2: that is what I will look for, and that is
Speaker 2: not what was happening at all.
Speaker 3: No, the killer was, like doctor X. It was a
Speaker 3: researcher who was fanatically dedicated to his own work and
Speaker 3: was trying to and was willing to do whatever he
Speaker 3: could to further it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in a way, it would have been interesting
Speaker 2: to see where they would have gone with a sequel
Speaker 2: to this film, right in that they could ask, well,
Speaker 2: where does doctor X go from there? He's been kind
Speaker 2: of been proven wrong in a way. He's in a
Speaker 2: similar place to where William of Baskerville is at the
Speaker 2: end of the Name of the Rose, where he realizes
Speaker 2: that to a certain extent, his logic and his reason
Speaker 2: has failed him. He wasn't able to actually prevent anything,
Speaker 2: even as he was able to solve the mystery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I hope that the
Speaker 3: Doctor X has learned his lesson and will no longer
Speaker 3: say that you can prove the guilt of someone suspected
Speaker 3: of murder by using a machine.
Speaker 2: Yes, hopefully so, But I don't know. He seems rather
Speaker 2: stubborn and he's already invested in all that gear.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, we didn't even say how it ends. I mean,
Speaker 3: so the other thing is after so Wells is going
Speaker 3: to kill Fay while they're all handcuffed to chairs and
Speaker 3: then lee the reporter is like, hey, this guy happened,
Speaker 3: and so he comes out and does it. He gives
Speaker 3: him the old fisticuffs and punches punches Wells in the
Speaker 3: face and they fight, and then I think he kills
Speaker 3: him by throwing a lamp on him, which sets him
Speaker 3: on fire, and.
Speaker 2: He sits in it, hits it in the face with
Speaker 2: a lamp and then kind of like tackles him through
Speaker 2: a window.
Speaker 3: Oh. I think he also hits him with his hand buzzer, doesn't.
Speaker 2: He possibly, Yeah, he is looking at his hand buzzer
Speaker 2: after it happens, so that may have played a role.
Speaker 2: It would make sense because again the script is very economical.
Speaker 2: And then we get a nice little spot of romance
Speaker 2: and that's the end of the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. Oh, we get well he Oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, he like he calls his society editor on
Speaker 3: the newspaper. He's like, hey, you know, you might want
Speaker 3: to set aside some What does he say? He's like,
Speaker 3: you might want to save some space for doctor Xavier
Speaker 3: to make an announcement about his about his daughter. I
Speaker 3: guess I'm plying that like that they're going to have
Speaker 3: a wedding announcement or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you get your happy, lovey w ending. The
Speaker 2: ending again is very very mainstream and normal. The beginning
Speaker 2: it's fairly normal, but man, the middle of this film
Speaker 2: gets into some serious weirdness and I love it. So
Speaker 2: you might be wondering where can you get this film? Well,
Speaker 2: you can rent or buy this one digitally most places,
Speaker 2: you know, wherever you get digital films, you can rent
Speaker 2: it or buy it. You can also pick it up
Speaker 2: on DVD, either as part of a two movie pack
Speaker 2: along with the Yes, the nineteen thirty nine sequel. There
Speaker 2: is an actual sequel to this. I doubt that it
Speaker 2: meets my expectations, but it's called The Return of Doctor X,
Speaker 2: which starred an up and coming actor by the name
Speaker 2: of Humphrey Bogart. I haven't seen it, but we have
Speaker 2: brought it up on the show before, just because I
Speaker 2: believe it has a synthetic blood plot element.
Speaker 3: I think I've read that it has little to do
Speaker 3: with this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine it really carries on the legacy. Well. Oh,
Speaker 2: you can also pick this up in a big box
Speaker 2: set that also includes Mad Love and a few other films.
Speaker 2: That's we're looking for as well. Man, imagine a Mad
Speaker 2: Love Doctor X mashup, though that would have been so yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing I'll say that these movies have in
Speaker 3: common is that they're both I think, pretty great sci
Speaker 3: fi horror movies for their time. Both are sort of
Speaker 3: pushed over the edge into transcendence by one amazingly weird
Speaker 3: scene toward the end. In this case, it's the synthetic
Speaker 3: flesh scene. In Mad Love, it's the scene where he's
Speaker 3: dressed up his orlac and the brace with the sunglasses
Speaker 3: and all that that costume.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, the Raulloh costume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, sorry not or like the Raulo costume.
Speaker 3: You're right, yes, those are like the scenes that make
Speaker 3: the movies in both cases. But whereas Mad Love has
Speaker 3: Peter Lourie, I don't think this movie has anybody of
Speaker 3: the Peter Loriie caliber in it.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's got a couple of big
Speaker 2: names for the time, and we mentioned you got at
Speaker 2: Well and you've got Fayray. But in terms of bringing
Speaker 2: the perform mormans like bringing something performance wise that's memorably weird, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they don't really have it. I guess you gave kind
Speaker 2: of sprinkles of it though, with the supporting cast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, doctor Rowitz, Yeah he's I mean, he doesn't have
Speaker 3: enough screen time, but he's he's my hero.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and put
Speaker 2: a scalpel in this one and scalp. Hell it's done,
Speaker 2: scalpel and call it done. This has been another episode
Speaker 2: of weird Ouse Cinema. We're putting out Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: every Friday. Stuff to Blow Your Mind remains a science
Speaker 2: and culture show, but Friday is our data. Unwind a
Speaker 2: little bit and enjoy a little midnight movie goodness. So
Speaker 2: let us know what you thought. Did you see this film?
Speaker 2: Had you seen it previously? How do you feel about
Speaker 2: doctor X? How do you feel about the twists and
Speaker 2: the turns and that crazy scene with the synthetic flesh.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you. Let's see what else?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah again. You can find this show in the
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and we just
Speaker 2: asked that you eight review and subscribe. That's the main
Speaker 2: way to keep in touch with the show and keep
Speaker 2: up on what we're publishing.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest any topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuffed
Speaker 3: blow your Mind dot com.
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