Golden Sci-Fi Horror Watch: Dr. X (1932)

Watched:  05/15/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Curtiz!

I have felt like I should watch every movie mentioned in Science Fiction / Double Feature, the opening tune from opening of Rocky Horror Picture Show, at some point.  And I've done pretty well.

This viewing of Dr. X (1932) checks off "Dr. X will build a creature", I believe, leaving only Tarantula.  The line doesn't at all describe the actual plot of Dr. X, but okay.  

Maybe best described as a sci-fi-horror-comedy-heavy-on-the-horror, Dr. X sees a series of killings occur in the streets of New York, the link being they all occur on a full moon and with the same surgical instrument.  The police investigate and determine the instrument used is very rare, and only purchased by a specific medical school run by a Dr. Xavier.  

Shadowed by a determined reporter (Lee Tracy) the police meet each of the kooky scientists working on their research.  

The school is out for the term, which means only the faculty remain, and we're introduced to them individually, a full pack of creepy dudes, all of whom seem like they could be our strangler/ cannibal/ stabber.  Each of them shows some reason they might and probably aren't the killer.  We have a one armed scientist (ruling out strangulation), a guy who is shown to be a known pervert for (checks notes) looking at what appears to be 1930's porn, someone who is vaguely German, and a guy with a bum leg.

Cleverly, the film barely shows us the face of the killer in an early scene, a clearly distorted mug belonging to a brute and clearing us of the faculty.  BUT DOES IT?

Dr. X, who is clearly a bit nuts, begs the cops to let him sniff out the killer if they're among his faculty.  So, he makes them come to an old sea-side mansion, where he'll perform a series of psycho-physiological experiments by making his colleagues watch a pantomime of a murder while hooking them up to equipment - sort of a liquid based  

The movie co-stars Lionel Atwill as Dr. X, Fay Wray (looking smashing) as his spunky daughter, Lee Tracy as a jokester reporter, and a host of others we will not pretend anyone reading this has ever heard of.  

The form for sound film is still settling in 1932, but setting mood via cinematography was sorted out much earlier.  While Universal was perfecting Dracula's environs in 1931 and Frankenstein's castle by 1932, both in black and white, with Dr. X we're playing with two-strip Technicolor, splashing mysterious green light here and there and making for eerie and gorgeous visuals.  I watched the recently restored version, and am now considering finding it on disc just to see these visuals again.

The transformation scene knows its being compared to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and so it leans into the craziness of seeing a man slop on putty to remake himself into the brute.  What should seem kind of silly is instead grotesque and bizarre in a way movies wouldn't figure out again until maybe some Hammer pics or the 1970s.  This is Michael Curtiz in the director's chair working with Max Factor, of all people, on make-up.  And they really do make for some movie magic here.

It's also pre-code, which hit me over the head when we find out the killer is also a cannibal.  Early movies went hard.  But there's also the bit with the porn and a few other things - like the indication that our hero grabs Fay Wray's butt in the dark in the last scene (while wearing a joy buzzer) - that make you realize this is pre-code.

I already liked Mystery of the Wax Museum well enough, but I think I liked this one a tad more.  But that may be because House of Wax was my intro to Vincent Price as a kid, and this was all new to me.  And so fucking weird.

I love how Michael Curtiz just did *everything*.  From silents he moved into some big studio pictures and did horror like this - but mixing it up. He did 6 pictures in 1932 alone.  This was before he went off to do some of my favorite films with The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, The Unsuspected, Flamingo Road, The Breaking Point, and White Christmas.  And there's a bunch he did I didn't list as favorites that are all great films I've seen.  Like The Sea Wolf and The Sea Hawk (deeply unrelated movies).  

Anyway - I recommend it!  It's a good time and comes in at a brief 80 minutes or so.   

On a speculative note - comics often got ideas from the pulps and movies.  It's always fascinating to see something that became a staple of comics show up as some bit in a movie that got recycled by a comics creator on a deadline.  And so I do wonder about Stan and Jack coming up with "Professor X" and his school of weirdos.  You never know.