Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax Museum

Doctor X (1932) and The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) were Warner Bros. answer to Universal's horror power house. Both films star Lionel Atwil and Fay Wray, both were directed by Michael Curtiz and both used the two-strip technicolor process. There is even a remarkable similarity in plot--an intrepid reporter investigating a series of murders, stumbles upon a bizarre series of suspects, solves the murder and winds up living happily ever after.Both films bolster the fairly weak horror plots with lots of humor and Warner's stable of snappy actors make these movies quite enjoyable. The desaturated technicolor provides an unusually moody atmosphere for horror, making morgues, foggy waterfronts and old dark houses that much creepier.

Doctor X stars Lee Tracy as the reporter. As always Tracy is really fun , zipping in snide one-liners and even doing a little slapstick now and again. Tracy is investigating a series of full moon murders where the victims were strangled and their bodies cannabalized. He is lead to Doctor Xavier's research institute, aka the Spooky Old House of Incredibly Suspicious Mad Scientist Murder Suspects. He also meets the Xavier's daughter, Joan (Fay Wray), who doesn't seem at all disturbed by the half dozen potential maniac cannibals roaming her house, but is totally spooked by her father staying up late in his library. Horror truly is a subjective thing I guess.

Doctor X has a fun twist on the whodunnit denoument in which all the suspects are gathered together. Xavier chains them all to their chairs and hooks them into a crazy 1930s "science" movie set. The killer is of course the one person not chained up, and he dons his artificial flesh made out of melted down corpse bits and sets to work attacking Joan who has been set up as bait for the killer. Good thinking doctor! This is actually a tense and horrifying scene, but Tracy saves the day and gets the girl in the end.

The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins with a sculptor Igor (Lionel Atwill) who is hard at work on his wax creations, which are for some reason confined only to this movie, considered high art. His business partner, fed up with loosing money on the museum, decides to burn the place down. He doesn't bother to wait till Igor's gone home to make with the matches and Igor barely survives the fire, trying desparately to save his creations. The melting of the wax statues is actually awesomely creepy and is one of the best things about this movie. Igor becomes obsessed with recreating them, but his hands are so badly damaged in the fire that he can no longer sculpt.

Meanwhile in New York City, we are introduced to Florence (Glenda Farrell), an intrepid reporter investigates the death of a fashion model. Like Lee Tracy, Farrell is an actor who livens up every scene and it's a joy to watch her in a lead rather than side-kick position. Florence finds out that the police suspect the model's boyfriend, George Winton and she interviews the fellow in jail. Florence flirts with him and later decides to date the millionaire playboy.

Her roommate Charlotte (Fay Wray) takes her to the opening of a wax museum and Florence becomes convinced that a statue of Joan of Arc is actually the dead fashion model whose body had recently disappeared from the morgue. Igor is struck by Charlotte's beauty and her resemblance to his masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. He traps her in the wax museum and tries to kill her. In the tense climactic scene Charlotte attacks his face and it crumbles away revealing his hideously burned visage beneath a wax mask. Florence arrives in the nick of time but discovers that her new boyfriend, the millionaire playboy is involved with bootlegging and is associated with Igor's match-happy former business parner. Luckily out of left field, her editor proposes to her and in annoying twist, Florence gives up her career as a reporter.

I think Doctor X is probablya tighter and more entertaining picture. At times Mystery of the Wax Museum looses focus, sending us down dark alleyways looking into bootlegging operations and the life of Igor's drug-addled assistant Mr. Darcy. As a Jane Austen fan I had a hard time with that character name, actually. Assistants are supposed to be called Igor, but I suppose since that was already taken by the main villain they needed to have some kind of name for his deranged helper.

The pre-code in both these films comes out in the treatment of Fay Wray as cheesecake. In Doctor X there is a completely out of place beach scene were Wray and Tracy lounge in skimpy costumes and in Mystery of the Wax Museum there is a gratuitous dressing before the camera. Apart from these surface ornaments, the movies feel much more like films that would be made later in the decade. With the emphasis on fast-talking humor, marrying off the working woman and other conventions of the late 30s, I half expected to see Howard Hawks' name above the title.

Piratical Dudes: The Sea Hawk

Errol Flynn and Alan Hale diggin some pirate booty.


I love pirate movies. Maybe not with the same fanatical devotion as I love submarine movies, but pirate movies are definitely up there in the whole men at sea milleaux. The Sea Hawk (1940) is one of the great pirate movies of all time. Or is it? It starts off very promisingly indeed, with a sea battle in which Flynn captures a Spanish Galleon, all its treasure, a cranky ambassador (Claude Raines having the worst hair day of his life) and, the requisite hot-tempered lady of nobility. The second act of the film changes course and follows Flynn and his men as they ambush Spanish soldiers in the jungle. The jungle? What is this Pirates of the Caribbean II? It's almost as if the producers decided to make a hybrid of their earlier hits Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The Sea Hawk is then probably only 30% pirate (despite slinging about the words pirate, buccaneer, privateer and my favorite "piratical") but it's still 100% fun.

Errol Flynn stars as Geoffrey Thorpe a Francis Drake type of privateer (a pirate who works officially or unofficially for a government). He captures Spanish vessels and treasure in the name of Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson) taking public slaps on the wrist all the while getting an official wink and nudge behind closed doors from the grateful and flirtatious monarch. The movie is a perfect two hours of non-stop rip-snorting swashbuckling mayhem and romantic adventure directed by the great Michael Curtiz (Casablanca).

It may be worth noting that there is a novel called 'The Sea Hawk' by Rafael Sabatini and the 1924 silent film version is based on that book about a man sold into slavery aboard a pirate ship who swears his revenge on the brother who betrayed him. Apparently the film's producers started off using the novel and there are some strong anti-slavery themes, but quickly dispensed with all the characters and situations in favor of a strong pro-England message. Given what was going on in the world it is not surprising that movie's main theme revolves a power-mad despot who uses slave labor and intends to conquer the whole globe using his super weapon, the Spanish Armada. The film begins with King Philip of Spain looking at a map of the globe and proclaiming that the only thing that stands between himself and controlling all of Europe is "that barren, rock-bound island" as the camera pans up to zero in on England. It's not hard to understand the context that the scriptwriters were hinting at.

I must confess I have a great fondness for the historical dramas of this period. I love Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Fire Over England, That Hamilton Woman, Henry V and the earlier Flynn/Curtiz collaboration The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. All of these movies hold up England as a great place and emphasize its noble traditions of law and literary art. Some use past military campaigns and leaders as stand-ins to make their case about rallying around the country and forgetting appeasement, but all of them are completely and totally anglophilic. Sometimes the parallels seem quite apt as long as you don't look too closely at history. It's one thing to condemn the Spanish Inquisition as tyranny but one doesn't have to look very hard in Elizabeth's reign to find examples of religious and political persecution. Yet, overlooking hypocrisy as the inevitable effect of a cinema at the time which was unapologetically pro-British and anti-fascist, I still love their sense of scale, grandeur and wonderful actors. These are some of the most beautiful and romantic films ever made by anyone, for any reason.

And The Sea Hawk is a very romantic movie, though the romance doesn't come from the quarter one might expect. The chemistry between Flynn and his love-interest Donna Elmira (Brenda Marshall) is a bit flat. He plays Thorpe as supposedly awkward and tongue-tied around the beautiful lady and the effect is that he just seems half-hearted. Flynn is much better in scenes with Flora Robson, his male compatriots like Alan Hale and even the villainous Henry Daniell. The real romance is between Flynn and the camera. Maybe the reason we don't buy Flynn as an awkward lover is that we can't believe him to be anything but perfectly smooth and graceful at everything he does. In one scene Thorpe and his men escape from the galley of a Spanish ship and move silently in cover of darkness to capture a different ship in the harbor. Even in low light Flynn stands out as perfectly chiseled with fluid movements as he stalks about in his pirate short-shorts.

From the opening sallies of gunfire of Thorpe's Albatross onto the Spanish Galleon, to the final parry and thrusts of the inevitable climatic candle slashing sword fight, the Sea Hawk is thoroughly entertaining. There is also the innovative middle section of the movie set in the jungles of panama which uses a sepia tone to convey the intense heat. It's a remarkably simple technique and just one of the many innovations in the film. The opening sea battle is as good as anything ever put on film and I only wish Curtiz had been given a movie like Fire Over England to make as a follow up since it picks up where The Sea Hawk leaves off, with England sending with a small fleet of scrappy fast ships against the fearsome Armada. In comparison the sinking of the Armada in Fire Over England looks like something my toddler would manage with his plastic boats in the bath tub. While it's true Curtiz only had to create a battle with two ships in the Sea Hawk, but I'm sure he could have pulled it off. I'd bet on anyone that could make Henry Daniell look like he's actually a great fencing master when in reality the man was famous for barely knowing how to hold a sword.