🔗 Share this article

Even though The classic studio’s 1930s-40s terror tales popularized a collection of legendary fiends, 1931’s Frankenstein faithfully adapted its dark fiction roots in showing that sometimes, the real wrongdoing isn't perpetrated by a monstrous being of the night. Frequently it’s the handiwork of a doctor who’s lost his sanity with dark experimentation ambition.

A couple of independent horror movies from this time serve as a particularly captivating double feature for enthusiasts of fiends and/or deranged research: Doctor X from 1932, and Mad Love from 1935.

The 1932 Feature: Before Censorship Macabre and Technicolor

Doctor X — that receives a mention in the song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s opening number — assembled a several major film industry figures ahead of they did their best-known work.

Lionel Atwill went on to become a recurring actor in the famous Frankenstein movies. Actress Fay Wray features in this film a couple of years prior to she earned her place as the most iconic terrified leading ladies of all time in the original King Kong. They are overseen by Curtiz, who eventually created The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce, and including Casablanca, along with other films.

Doctor X isn’t nearly so sophisticated as the director’s canonized classics, but the transgression is magnificent: This movie was made ahead of censorship and prior to the filmmaking rules that prohibited themes like human consumption, sexual voyeurism, organ theft, and mind violence.

It was also produced in the vintage hue technique, an early form of filming in color which imparts the movie unearthly oddly tinted hues that suggest a world familiar yet different, but heightened and askew.

Watched in modern times, after decades of classic lycanthropes, unseen beings, and more, Doctor X’s whodunit storyline plays even more like a ingenious creature-feature feint. A series of grisly human-consuming murders taking place under a bright night sky sounds like the work of a fearsome creature. But suspects led by Dr. Xavier are nevertheless brought together for an probe, including twisted reenactments of the murder scenes.

Mad Love: Lorre and Devilish Strange Tales

Mad Love is not much of a mystery: Any feature featuring Peter Lorre makes it obvious to surmise who the wrongdoer is likely to be. When protagonist Stephen Orlac suffers hand amputation in an incident, he consults Dr. Gogol, who regrettably becomes obsessed with Stephen’s wife Yvonne.

Gogol conducts a surgical hand replacement on poor Stephen, giving him the hands of a blade-hurling lunatic, in an attempt to snatching Yvonne away.

Mad Love falls short of being as manic as the man-versus-hand comedy of Evil Dead 2, but it has some of that devilish bizarreness, benefiting mightily from the large number of the actor’s screen time. The pair of features are stranger and creepier than many of the Frankenstein sequels, and they are superb at the comparable domain as the finest classic creature films: blurring the line between creature and man, in these instances with a surgical expertise added to the combination.

Viewing Options

These features are available to purchase or rental through major digital platforms. Mad Love is accessible for viewing for free on certain ad-based services, though fans should beware regarding potential aspect ratio issues.