Doctor X (1932)

The Moon Killer murders have all happened around a medical research academy and the cops naturally suspect one of its members.

The cops give Doctor X forty-eight hours (which is hardly enough time to build exact wax replicas of the murder victims!) to investigate and conduct very unorthodox scientific experiments to find out if the killer is indeed one of his colleagues, so as not to generate bad publicity, which doesn’t really help because a nosy reporter is already on the case from scene one.

Strangely enough, all the eccentric academicians seem to have something or other which, at least, superficially seems to incriminate them: One of them is investigating the effects of the moon on the human mind; another reads girly mags; still another wrote a book on cannibalism (has there ever been such a thing? Once I read a mere - but still lengthy - article which seemed to exhaust all possibilities); two others might have been in involved in actual cannibalistic practices, etc.

What starts as a simple murder mystery soon seems nearly Science Fictional (what with the murder determining experiment and all necessary accoutrement,) and ends up with the possibility of an actual Horror-worthy monster.

The reporter seems merely to be there merely for comic relief (so’s the maid, and they are both corny, but still pretty good,) but soon becomes the romantic hero for some reason when by all rights the hero should have been Doctor X… Except that he himself might be the killer!

The sets are highly stylized and the scientific equipment pretty amazing for something which supposedly merely detects subtle electrical changes in the human body (the explanation is nonsensical mumbo jumbo.)

The premise of reenacting a murder to unmask the killer had already been used in Hamlet and would again be used in Mark of the Vampire. It never really seems as if it’s well thought out, is it?

Some cool camerawork for such an early film.

The early two-color Technicolor process might as well be bad modern colorization, for its limited palette and fuzziness. It’s a neat gimmick, but all we see are greens and oranges.

Would nice, sharp B&W photography had been better? We’ll never know.

Pre-Code elements include murder, cannibalism, dope fiends, pornography and prostitution, (a phone call is placed at a brothel, for no real reason.)

With Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Lee Tracy.