Great Film overall

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Doctor X is a early example of one genre mixing with this movie could originaly be a mystrey and then they had the horror and comedy elements into it and the story in which trying to find a serial killer who only kills in the moonlight a Doctor will be put up to questioning professors at his instistue to find out if they re the killer and they are followed by a newspaper reporter who falls in love with the story and the daughter of Dr X. Lionel Atwill,Fay Wray and Lee Tracy are Dr X ,Joanne Xavier and Lee Taylor are the main characters who really show that a movie released in 1932 has a good as acting as now. The Supporting cast is Preston Foster,John Wray,Harry Beresford,Arthur Edmund Carewe,Leila Bennett,Robert Warwick,George Rosener, Willard Robertson and Harry Holman. Originally I thought that this movie was going to be a horror but then i watched it and it grew on me with the comedy and the romance and the way that the movie really has that erire tone is still there and for a movie that was relesed in 1932 i was very impressed with this one.

A serial killer is stalking New York . At the time of the full moon he strikes and the victims bodies show signs of cannibalism . Newspaper reporter Lee Taylor in needing of a big scoop to keep his job tries to track down the killer and suspicions fall upon a group of doctorsHungarian born Michael Curtiz could possibly be the greatest film director of the 20th Century . If you look through his resume on this website you'll see a long list of films that are legends from the golden era of Hollywood . He didn't confine himself to one genre but what ever type of film he made he could often weave cinematic magic . This early Hollywood contribution from Curtiz however isn't as good as it could have been DOCTOR X is an infuriating combination of good and bad . Based upon a stage play Curtiz manages to hide its origins and keeps the story pacing along nicely . He also manages to bring some very impressive directorial flourishes such a the introduction of Doctor Haines seen as a somewhat satanic silhouette against a wall . The problem with much of the visuals however is that its shot in early colour stock which is rather distracting . One can't help thinking black and white would have been much more suited to the movie and would have made for a better and much more atmospheric movie The fundamental problem with DOCTOR X is a very inconsistent tone with comedy elements that clash painfully with the darker themes . The killer is a cannibal and this shocking element is emphasised at every opportunity . Of course even in a pre-code era mutilated and half eaten bodies dripping blood couldn't be shown but this is explicitly alluded to through the dialogue of Dr Xavier . Strange then that Lee Taylor is written and played by Lee Tracy as a comedic character . Comedy is a subjective thing , one person's comedic genius is another person's irritating clown but it's amazing anyone thought Taylor/Tracy could be amusing in anyway and every time he appears on screen the audience are taken out of the film . Perhaps James Whale would have been a better choice of director ? As it stands DOCTOR X is a strange combination of good and band from an outstanding and superlative director . When the film works it works very well and I had no idea who the villain was going to be . Alas the elements that don't work sometimes threaten to sabotage the rest of the film and it would take another four or five years before Curtiz really hit his stride

Based on the previous reviews, Lee Tracy evidently is one of those actors that one either thoroughly enjoys or finds highly irritating – to me, he's entertaining and a joy to watch. I liked his wisecracking reporter character a lot – it was a pleasant relief from what was a rather dark and dreary movie. The plot of this early sound horror film is Dr. Xavier's search for which of his colleagues is the serial killer dubbed The Moon Rise Killer. Dr. Xavier runs a scientific research academy – all of the doctors working at the academy act odd including Xavier himself and the police have narrowed their search for the killer to the academy researchers and give Doctor Xavier 48 hours to uncover him. I'm not a big fan of early horror films (and no fan at all of contemporary horror films) but I must say that this one was particularly creepy due to, as others have noted, the wonderful sets, the excellent and scary make-up used at the end of the movie, and spot on acting by Atwill and Foster. The early Technicolor added to the spookiness. Lucky for Fay Wray that she was in King Kong for otherwise she would probably be virtually forgotten rather than fairly well known - at least among old movie buffs. As it is, Fay Wray is probably better known than Lee Tracy, which is a shame.

This movie was the archetype for the dark old house films of this era, with classic horror actors Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill in the starring roles. (Atwill never really gets credit, he was much a feature of classic horror films as Lugosi and Karloff, but only film buffs really know who he is.) The film was also famous for one of the first attempts to use Technicolor in a commercial film, albeit not successfully.The plot is simple, a number of murders with cannibalism have been committed (absolutely shocking in 1932 before the Hayes Code)and the suspects are a group of doctors at Doctor Xaiver's academy. (Must avoid X-men joke.) IN a rather convoluted experiment, Dr. X attempts to trap the killer using some fancy machine. It really borders on science fiction.this was before Hollywood movies fully understood the concept of tone and put elements of horror and comedy into the same film. And some of the acting and dialog was pretty corny, but keep in mind, they were only used to doing movies with sound for less than a decade at that point. In many ways, actors still acted like they were on stage in a theater, because cinema hadn't entirely developed as an art form yet.