© 2008 William Ahearn
Michael Curtiz’s 1934 “Dr X” is one of the few movies from the 1930s shot in color. Filmed in what’s known as two-strip Technicolor – that lends an eerie ambiance to the film stock – it’s a perfect visual environment for a horror film. According to numerous sources, the two-strip technique was used because of a contractual obligation the studio had to Technicolor, Inc. and after a few showings, a monochrome version of the film played in most theatres and on TV. Recently restored, “Dr. X” is now available in all its two-color splendor.
Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Lee Tracy, “Dr X” is a spin on the “old dark house” genre of mystery. For background on old dark house mysteries, go here and here. The characters are the standard fare: a wisecracking reporter, a mad scientist working for the public good and his beautiful daughter, numerous other oddball scientist surgeons, the police captain, maids, butlers and the proprietor of a cathouse.
And then there’s The Moon Killer. When the moon is full, women are killed, surgically cut and cannibalized near Dr. Jerry Xavier’s Academy of Surgical Research. The police believe it must be someone at the academy, so Dr. X takes the whole crew out to Long Island to his old dark house to run truth experiments consisting mostly of psychobabble and electricity.
This would be just another mad scientist Hollywood flick except for one odd aspect and that is that The Moon Killer is described as a cannibal. Cannibalism is often described as the last taboo and it’s easy to see how writers could use it to scare moviegoers. Dashiell Hammett used cannibalism as metaphor in his 1934 novel The Thin Man. It must have been in the air because I can’t find a single case of a serial killer cannibal prior to the film. The year that the film was released coincided with the arrest of one of the United State’s most notorious child killers and cannibals, Albert Fish. More on Fish can be found here, here, and here. Another serial child killer, Peter Kudzinowski was executed several years before. More on Kudzinowski can be found here.
One of those odd coincidences, I suppose. Another bizarre aspect is that The Moon Killer used synthetic flesh as a disguise. Years later and way north, Ed Gein would use real skin in an attempt to become a woman or his mother or for reasons all his own.