Console best movie i've ever seen.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

JohnHowardReid It's certainly wonderful to see this hitherto lost work of director Michael Curtiz. True, it has been available in black-and-white, but who in their right senses would want to look at Doctor X without color? I agree the picture might still deliver a few odd thrills, but its obsessive mood, its genuinely spooky atmosphere — not to mention all its splendidly Gothic pictorial effects — are utterly lost. In monochrome, maybe a passable chiller. In color, a minor yet fascinating masterpiece of almost unbearably tingling horror.Take the cast. Thanks to her appearances in this one and "The Mystery of the Wax Museum", plus "The Most Dangerous Game" and "King Kong", Fay Wray is the only female film star of the early 1930s who has a greater reputation today than way back then. She looks lovely. And most attractively dressed too. The imperiled heroine par perfection.Lee Tracy is hardly our first choice for the role of comic newspaperman, but he handles that assignment with such skill that he ingratiatingly delivers thrills, laughs and romance in liberal yet almost equal measure. The ever-reliable Lionel Atwill is handed a made-to-order part as the suspicious doctor-in-charge. Few actors can deliver lines with such commendable speed and authority. Robert Warwick makes a game try here, but comes nowhere close. As for Preston Foster, his startling performance will have audiences cheering. Leila Bennett is also effective as a scared-witless maid. And A.E. Carewe has a small but vivid role to play.For me, however, there are two actors in "Doctor X" who truly excel way, way beyond the call of duty. The other is George Rosener. Admittedly, he's handed a colorful role as a sadistically servile Otto-of-all-work, but Rosener plays it with an edge that is absolutely riveting.It's a bit mean to single out a few players when Curtiz has drawn such vividly convincing portraits from the whole cast. Notice how he adds to the realism by sometimes causing one player to break in on someone else's dialogue, or cues a number of actors to all speak at once.Curtiz has also made fine use of Grot's magnificently atmospheric sets and — assisted by Amy's smoothly sharp editing — paced the picture to a really palm-sweating climax. Ray Rennahan's superb camera-work adds immeasurably to the bizarrely enthralling atmosphere of ultra- chilling suspense.Finally, I will mention that Atwill, Foster and company all rejoice in titles of both "doctors" and "professors"; that Miss Wray is usually called "Joanne" but that she is twice addressed as "Joan"; that Mae Busch is obviously the madam of a brothel, not a speak- easy; that Tom Dugan is best described as a plainclothesman outside the Mott Street Morgue; that Harry Holman of the exploding cigar (which plays a neat part in the cleverly menacing plot) is indeed Patrolman Mike; and yes, it is Selmer Jackson in the not-credited bit part as the Globe's night editor.The play opened on Broadway at the Hudson on 9 February 1931, running 80 performances. Howard Lang starred.

flapdoodle64 On the whole, this film is an agreeable and interesting waste of time, yet doesn't pack nearly the punch of its peers, which include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, King Kong, Mystery in the Wax Museum, etc.The major flaw is that there is an excess of comic relief. Being adapted from a stage play, this is understandable. Live theater usually requires more laughs, even in mostly serious productions, than does film. Filmmakers were still relatively new to talkies, and talking horror movies were definitely a novelty when this was made.Fright films do need some comic relief, so as to avoid the problem of having the audience laugh at the monsters. James Whale took this concept as far as possible with Bride of Frankenstein; but Dr. X goes a little farther than it should, and so you have this uneven feel, with one foot in the world of comedy, and one foot in the world of horror.On the plus side, there is Lionel Atwill, one of the greatest villains of the classic period of the movies, and you have Fay Wray, who was always a pleasure to watch. And you have a fairly original plot and a whodunit, and you have weird mad scientists, and a bizarre lab. And you have a truly creative and macabre make-up job by the legendary Max Factor: I don't know if he did any other horror make-up besides this film.So far as I know, this is the earliest film to have 'X' prominently in the title, referring to Dr. Xavier and to the unknown villain both. There were later scifi/horror films with the titles 'X: the Unknown' and 'X: the Man with the X-Ray Eyes', and in 1963 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the now famous comic book 'X-Men', led by Dr. Charles Xavier. Of course, in the 1990's, the 'X-Files' became a hit on TV and at the cinema.Overall, this film is interesting, but flawed. I'd recommend it only after you've had a chance to see the other films mentioned in paragraph 1 of this review.

Robert J. Maxwell This is old-fashioned fun.Lionel Atwill is Dr. Xavier who runs the experimental "Academy for Surgical Research" on a cliff top on the Long Island shore. His three colleagues, each a physically impaired, troglodytic drone, are hard at work on their searches for new discoveries. The three weirdos include a one-eyed man, a cripple, and Preston Foster, who has only one hand. Atwill's daughter runs around breathlessly, as only Fay Wray can be breathless. A spooky servant named Otto lurches around in the background. Lee Tracy is one of those scurrying reporters from "The Front Page." The Madam in the cat house is played by the ever popular Mae Busch.A couple of murdered bodies show up and are taken to the Academy for examination. Atwill concludes that they were subject to cannibalistic gnawing after being strangled. The police determine that all signs point to the murderer's being a member of the Academy. Only Foster is exempt from suspicion because the killer used two hands. ("Note the deep depressions on the sternocleidomastoid.") Fortunately, Atwill has a device -- I forget what he calls this sublimely typical piece of 1930s-movies electronic junk -- that will uncover the identity of the murderer by reenacting the last murder, the killing of a young woman, using his daughter as the victim. At a critical moment during the demonstration the lights go out. There is a shriek, a scuffle, furniture tumbles over, and when the lights come back on nobody has been exposed, not even Fay Wray.With the cops pressing him, Atwill goes through the routine a second time but the protocol has been changed. Otto will lock the laboratory door from the outside, so no one can get in. Atwill himself will participate in the experiment. He and the two other suspects will be handcuffed to their bolted chairs. Only Preston Foster will be loose to manage things.Medical ethics prevent any further plot revelations except maybe for one hint. Letting Foster and Fay Wray be the only two people not handcuffed to their chairs? That was a big mistake.It's short, recklessly headlong in its pace. Director Michael Curtiz was never known for slow slogs through metaphysical swamps. The two-strip technicolor images are not bad for their time. You have your choice of tints -- ghoul green or cadaver mauve. The set borrows heavily from German expressionism. There's hardly a right angle in the joint, so to speak. And you must admire the way every wall looks shabby, dirty, like that of a tenement kitchen.Your final paragraph, Buckie, is here. I recommend the movie. I mean, what the hell. We've all spent less pleasant hours than we'd spend watching this. Why, I remember once, the dentist asking me to "Turn this way a little." What an hour THAT was.

dougdoepke That two-tone coloring process lends the film a weird, even otherly world, complexion. However, a number of compensations can't make up for an erratic script, containing some good ideas, but unfortunately developed in muddled fashion. Too many scenes don't follow effectively on one another ( e.g. the focus shifts often and abruptly onto peripheral characters). Nor can certain compensations make up for Lee Tracy's inept comedy relief, which comes across more like silly distraction. I agree that the culprit was too easy to spot, removing a key element of plot suspense. On the other hand, some set-ups are genuinely creepy—sinister shadows, sudden close-ups, the Jekyll-Hyde transformation—likely director Curtiz's creative touches.Maybe I shouldn't say it, but the normally sinister Lionel Atwill looks almost aristocratically handsome, playing the head of the clinic in uncharacteristically straight fashion. Still, I expected a maniacal cackle at some point. And, of course, the gruesome proceedings have to have a pretty girl to ease up on the eyes. Frankly, I liked the beach scene, where the luscious Wray bares the sort of curves that sent the big gorilla into a spin a year later. All in all, the premise of a faculty full of eccentrics one of whom is a killer may be a promising one. Nonetheless, in my little book, the script should have been sent back to re-write.