The Return of Doctor X

The Return of Doctor X
Blu-ray
Warner Archive
1939 – 62 Min.
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Wayne Morris, Dennis Morgan
Cinematography by Sidney Hickox
Written by Lee Katz
Directed by Vincent Sherman

Directed by Vincent Sherman with a screenplay by Lee Katz, The Return of Doctor X stars Wayne Morris as Walter Garrett, a reporter investigating the strange case of Angela Merrova, a uniquely stubborn actress who keeps dying but refuses to stay dead. Humphrey Bogart is the man behind the mystery, a spectral figure with a shock of white hair and a nervous disposition named Marshall Quesne—also  known as Dr. Xavier on the dotted line and Doctor X on the movie marquee.

A faux sequel to Doctor X, Michael Curtiz’s hallucinatory shocker about a creature molded out of “synthetic” flesh, Sherman and Katz synthesize the twin terrors of Frankenstein and Dracula into one multifarious monster; a reanimated corpse with a thirst for human blood. The movie fiddles with comedy and horror in equal measure and sometimes actually succeeds in both. Though Morris’s volatile news hound wears thin fast, Dennis Morgan steadies the ship as the newsman’s co-detective.

It’s Bogart who, perhaps inadvertently, gives the movie its macabre punch; with his withered, ghostly makeup and a dead arm tucked against his waist like Dr. Strangelove, or better yet, John Cassavetes in The Fury, Bogart toes the line of parody—but he’s undeniably, convincingly weird. There’s nothing beneath the surface of Sherman’s skin deep programmer but with a waxen kisser like Bogart’s, the creepy surface is all that counts.

Also undeniably weird is Lya Lys as the unpredictable Merrova: when Morris stumbles over the actress’s corpse, his scoop makes him the hero of the newsroom. The applause doesn’t last long: Merrova appears at his office the next day, looking exactly like death warmed-over—not unlike her prime caregiver, Dr. X. The peculiar doctor has his own custodian, a grim scientist with the Seuss-like name of Francis Flegg. The goateed Flegg is played by the usually paternal John Litel (he was Bonita Granville’s dad in the Nancy Drew series). It was Flegg’s experiments on the long-dead Quesne that returned the mobster to his life of crime, albeit as a dead man walking.

Doctor X was Sherman’s first directorial effort after a brief sojourn as an actor and screenwriter, and while there’s no hint that a visionary stylist had arrived, Sherman has a steady hand on the wheel of this rickety potboiler (he was helped immeasurably by Thomas Pratt, Howard Hawks’s editor on The Crowd Roars and Lloyd Bacon’s on 42nd Street). How the no-nonsense Bogart was cast in such an uncharacteristic role can be blamed on the whims of Warner Bros.’s studio heads (Jack Warner’s marching orders for Sherman: “get him to play something other than Duke Mantee.”)

Bogart was resilient, the 40 year-old actor made seven films in 1939, from westerns to soap operas, and was finally on the cusp of real, above the title stardom. He would not rock the cradle on the way to his reward, even though his performance as Dr. X is a real outlier in his long career; an actor famed for his stoicism, he would not seem so at odds with himself until his purposely cartoonish turn as a nerdy bibliophile in The Big Sleep.

Bogart is not the only odd man out, the cast is a smorgasbord of styles, the buoyant songbird Rosemary Lane is a serious-minded assistant to the genial all-American doctor played by the genial, all-American Morgan, while the affable Litel turns in a performance better suited for the original Dr. X, Lionel Atwill. Mugging on the sidelines is Huntz Hall of all people (he co-starred with Bogart in that year’s Angels with Dirty Faces).

The German born Lya Lys is the real wild card of the crew, and her journey from Berlin to Paris to Hollywood was as adventuresome as her resume; she was best known for her role in L’Age d’Or, Buñuel’s scandal-making poke at decorum and her casting in Dr. X conforms to Hollywood’s view of the debauched European—with her coal-black eyes and corpse-white skin, she’s kissing cousin to Louise Allbritton’s vampire bride in Son of Dracula. A pity Bogart and Lys couldn’t recreate their outré characters in a more fitting vehicle, they would make such a cozy, creepy couple.

Warner Archive treats this off-the-wall commodity with the greatest respect: the picture quality is superb, Sidney Hickox’s cinematography (To Have and Have Not, White Heat) is as sharp as a tack, and the DTS soundtrack gives a real boost to Bernhard Kaun’s (Frankenstein, The Fly) brassy score. Alongside the feature are two Merry Melodies in HD, Doggone Modern and Porky’s Hotel. The original theatrical trailer is included but the standout extra is a feature-length archival commentary with Sherman conducted by Steve Haberman that goes into the convoluted genesis of The Return of Doctor X.

Here’s Joe Dante on The Return of Doctor X: