Here’s a Balladeer’s Blog Halloween Season classic from 2011.
Return of Dr X
THE RETURN OF DR. X (1939) – Category: Enjoyably campy bad movie elevated by kitsch-value in the casting. (Wow! I forgot I used to use categories for my Bad Movie Reviews.)
Yes, it’s the famous “Humphrey Bogart as a zombie mad scientist” movie. The tale goes that Jack Warner inflicted this role on gangster-flick star Bogart as punishment for resisting being cast in too many formulaic crime films. This was, of course, before The Maltese Falcon made Bogie a big-time star and long before actors had the kind of contracts that they have these days.
Bogart plays the titular Dr. X, but not the same Dr. X that Lionel Atwill played in a movie of that name earlier in the decade. This Dr. X is Dr. Maurice Xavier, a mad scientist executed in the electric chair for, among other things, bizarre experiments on infants (a pretty ballsy story element in those pre- Auschwitz awareness days).
The “return” mentioned in the title refers to the fact that Bogart’s Dr. X has been brought back from the dead by the film’s secondary menace, Dr. Flegg. But let’s face it, The Return of Dr. Flegg just doesn’t have the same sinister appeal. Continue reading
If you’re into celebrity trivia from the 1970’s and earlier Rich Little’s Christmas Carol will have you laughing from start to finish over all the sly jokes and riffs that abound in this Canadian- made special. For those unfamiliar with Little he was the Frank Caliendo of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, a first- class celebrity impressionist. The Canadian comic’s first venture into using the voices and personas of iconic celebrities as characters in the Charles Dickens classic began in the 1960’s. Part of Rich’s stand-up act was a several minute sendup of A Christmas Carol with John Wayne, Jack Benny and other figures playing roles in the famous story.
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