Fay Wray

(On Cable TV, May 2021) The Universal Monster films of the early 1930s get a lot of acclaim even today, but there were many other interesting horror films from other studios during the Pre-Code era, and some of them can feel surprisingly modern. From Warner Brothers, for instance, we had Doctor X and the subsequent Mystery of the Wax Museum, both of them shot in two-colour Technicolor and clearly anticipating later horror film tropes. Doctor X immediately announces itself as being Pre-Code for quickly jumping in a story with a cannibalistic killer, with dismemberment, rape and necrophilia not being far behind. What makes the film odder today is its insistence on keeping a somewhat prominent comic relief character as protagonist — a terribly unprofessional journalist played by Lee Tracy meddling around the edges of a police investigation into mysterious deaths whose culprit can be narrowed down to one of the mad scientists at a local medical academy. Doctor X remains foreboding — the colour scheme of the film oscillates between sickly green and disquieting orange, and director Michael Curtiz often plays off German expressionism in his use of shadows. The mad-scientist aspect of the plot still has quite a bit of charm (I found myself imagining how the same plot could work in a 2020s setting), and there’s no mistaking Fay Wray (future star of the following year’s King Kong) in the damsel-in-distress role. The contemporary setting of the film in 1930s New York City is interesting, and the slick dialogue adds another layer of interest. (Surely I can’t be the only one fascinated by a 1930s film with a “Doctor Xavier” heading an institute for gifted youngsters mad scientists?)  Doctor X is well worth a look even today, and takes up a surprisingly high spot on my list of essential 1930s horror films. Like its stablemate Mystery of the Wax Museum, the 2020 colour restoration of Doctor X makes it look fantastic and far more modern than its production date.