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