just watch it!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

As colorless as Humphrey Bogart's skin in this D grade Warner Brothers' horror film. this has as much connection to the 1932 science fiction classic "Doctor X" as the Universal series of 1940's mummy films had in common with with the 1932 Karloff classic. There is a slight connection, but it is completely unbelievable. Good scientist/doctor Dennis Morgan must discover why nearly bloodless corpses of the same blood type keep turning up and why one alleged victim turns up alive, only to die for real out of the blue. This brings him and detective Wayne Morris to blood specialist John Litel who has some answers, some of which make this preposterous film more convoluted and hardly suspenseful, especially when they meet Litel's seemingly anemic assistant (Bogart), made up to resemble Karloff in 1934's "The Black Cat". Bogart has never looked so embarrassed on screen, and with good reason. After all, what movie star can say that they were made up to look like both Karloff AND Pepe le Peu in the same film? If Hollywood ever starts a wax museum of the most bizarre looking people on screen, Bogart's character here should be the first created!

There is no way that this horror film from "Warner Bros." can be compared with the 1932 masterpiece. That other film had style, imagination, great acting and direction, plus it was genuinely eerie. This 1939 film is strictly routine fare and at best, is a tolerable programmer. The low budget is in evidence but that has always been the way for most horror films. Humphrey Bogart looks slightly ill at ease in his role of a dead man brought back to life. According to various reports, he slammed his copy of the script across the desk of Jack Warner and demanded more money for having to appear in this particular film. However, at least he is making an effort in being a bit different in his performance and he is the best known actor by far in "The Return of Doctor X." Wayne Morris and Dennis Morgan join forces in order to determine what the mysterious Doctor Xavier has been up to, regarding some of his patients at the local hospital. The actor who plays the evil doctor is rather stiff and dull. No way can he hold a candle to the creepy and effective performance of Lionel Atwill from the 1932 film. The script isn't up to much but the pace of the film keeps everything ticking along agreeably enough. The running time is just over an hour which is a relief.

THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X has it all: humor, Horror, and Humphrey- Bogart, that is, as a pale, bloodless Vampire in search of you-know-what. His streak of white hair is straight out of James Whale's THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. There are some great lines, too. When a reporter tells a coroner that he'll see the man "later," the coroner quips, "I'm sure you will." When a grave is dug up to reveal an empty coffin, the gravedigger complains, "I've been robbed..." Then there's the rabbit Bogart carries around "for warmth," who ends up dead only to be resurrected... But it's Bogart as the ghostly "Cain" who steals the show whenever he's on screen. Whatever his personal feelings regarding this movie, for my money his performance here is second only to his performance in THE MALTESE FALCON- but, then, I'm a die-hard Fright Film fan.

Okay, I'm a hopeless vulgarian, but I thought the movie wasn't as bad as many others say. Sure, the material is z-grade, done a hundred times over starting with Frankenstein. But, except for Bogie's horrible make-up applied with a trowel, the movie's not all that hokey. The narrative is well constructed, building little-by-little on what's come before. Namely, why are blood donors being killed, and by whom, and what's aristocratic Dr. Flegg's (Litel) role. In my little view, the screenplay's construction is surprisingly good for a programmer. Plus, Morgan makes a dashing pursuer, along with a stumbling Wayne Morris as a comic-relief reporter. Then there's poor Rosemary Lane (Joan) in a tacked on role, no doubt for marquee purposes. And catch a non-goofy Huntz Hall (Pinky) before the Bowery Boys consumed his career. But who is the mysterious Lya Lys (Merrova), whose close-ups are the scariest thing in the movie. Sure, Bogie's make-up is the hokiest element in the 60-minutes and no doubt the low point of his spectacular career. Meanwhile, he has to take what Warner Bros. gives him. Anyway, the programmer does have its compensations.