This is the sixth in a series of fifteen pieces on “minor” horror films that I’m going to be publishing here throughout October. For more information, please see this post from last year, when I first did this.
Doctor X (Michael Curtiz, 1932)
Doctor X is one of two two-strip Technicolor horror-mysteries Michael Curtiz directed back-to-back for Warner Bros. in the early 1930s, the other being Mystery at the Wax Museum. The films were produced with mostly the same cast and crew, and among those that still watch horror-mysteries from the 1930s, the general consensus seems to be that Wax Museum, which was shot second (I think), is the better of the two. It’s certainly the better-remembered, the one people are more likely to mention in conversation, the one they’re more likely to recommend. If you’ve seen both and prefer Wax Museum, I think that’s fine. I think they’re both very good, and in very similar ways. But if you haven’t seen both, you really ought to, because Doctor X is not a dry run or a preparatory sketch. It’s not underdeveloped or uncertain. It’s its own thing, as sure of what it’s doing as Wax Museum is, and with its own quirks, its own strangenesses, its own pleasures to be discovered.
