The Mad Doctor (1940)

THE MAD DOCTOR (1940) ***1/2
Basil Rathbone, like his fellow English actor Peter Cushing afterwards in the Hammer films, could effectively play both villains and heroes. He’s perfect as both Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes in the 14 movies produced by 20th Century Fox and Universal from 1939 through 1946.

Rathbone (1892-1967) could be suave and sinister, charming and cunning, and it worked for him during a career that lasted from the 1920s through the 1960s.

That great ability to play both suave and sinister, charming and cunning, serves both Rathbone and The Mad Doctor well, a 1940 release directed by Tim Whelan and from Paramount Pictures (now owned by Universal, though) not to be confused with the 1933 Disney animated short The Mad Doctor or the 1942 Universal film The Mad Doctor of Market Street starring Lionel Atwill and directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

You just might recognize the plot of The Mad Doctor from a hundred or a thousand or maybe even a million novels, TV shows, and movies. It seems to have been one of the first plots ever devised.

Our title character targets wealthy women, marries them, and then murders them for their money. We pick it up with his latest target, who also happens to be suicidal in addition to being wealthy. Her ex-fiancé, a newspaper reporter, and an older doctor find out the dark truth about the mad doctor but is it too late for the latest target to be saved from becoming the latest victim. The mad doctor and his male assistant are obviously lovers, something made a lot more obvious than the average movie from 1940.

Yeah, definitely seems familiar, but The Mad Doctor works so effectively and becomes a minor classic because of the performances of not only Rathbone but also Ralph Morgan as bloodhound Dr. Charles Downer and resident villain actor Martin Kosleck as the real nasty piece of work Maurice Gretz.

I heard that Rathbone and Kosleck played up the gay subtext more and more because they found it amusing, and it’s so blatant when Kosleck sinks his teeth into You’re like all the other clever ones, clever until they meet a woman, and then they suddenly become fools.

One can be relatively sure this passed the Hays Code because, let’s face it, Rathbone’s title character and Kosleck’s Maurice Gretz do not meet happy endings.

The Mad Doctor has a classic promotional trailer.

[Text] Women Know The ECSTASY and TERROR Of Loving This Man!

But For Him A KISS … A CARESS Is Not Enough!

He Builds a Bonfire OF WOMEN’S SOULS …

To Satisfy His MONSTROUS CONCEIT!

[Narration] Blood-chilling drama of a man who kills as easily as he loves starring Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, and John Howard with Barbara Allen and Ralph Morgan in the amazing drama of a fiend who fascinates women, lures them with love, and then as he tears their souls apart, destroys them.

[Text] SUAVE!

TENDER!

SINISTER!

TERRIBLE!

‘THE MAD Doctor’

Robin and Marian (1976)

ROBIN AND MARIAN (1976) ****
Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian definitely made a strong first impression.

I placed it on my top 10 films list for 1976, based on just viewing it a single time on cable TV many years ago.

Granted, Robin and Marian crossed my mind several times in recent months, especially after Robin and Marian star Sean Connery died last Halloween and then after I watched both the Disney (1973’s Robin Hood) and the Mel Brooks (1993’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights) takes on the legendary old warhorse. Disney and Brooks both left me feeling often unimpressed and ultimately supremely disappointed, for very different reasons, and I started thinking instead about superior Robin Hood films The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin and Marian, both of which I first encountered during childhood or teenage years.

The Adventures of Robin Hood remains my favorite take on Robin Hood and I’ve watched it numerous times over the years. Of course, it helped that The Adventures of Robin Hood ranked among the select few titles Grandma Sisney had on VHS and I played it — along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Fun in Acapulco — so many times before Grandma took over her TV for a day of game shows and soap operas. There’s always been something so indelible about Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood that I judge all others portraying Robin Hood against Flynn’s standard, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone make incredibly satisfying villains, and Olivia de Havilland’s Maid Marian simply radiates a MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD AT THIS VERY MOMENT glow. Plus, it’s hard to forget the colors (and costumes) that argue for three-strip Technicolor superiority.

Robin and Marian left a mark for similar reasons — Connery and Audrey Hepburn both carry some of the same appeal as Flynn and de Havilland do in their iconic roles. Flynn was just a month shy of 29 years old when The Adventures of Robin Hood first came out in May 1938 and similarly, De Havilland was two months shy of a mere 22. However, Connery and Hepburn play older Robin Hood and older Maid Marian — please consider both Connery and Hepburn were in their mid-40s during Robin and Marian and each had a solid 15-20 years of stardom behind them. Connery and Flynn both have an undeniable robust humor and physicality (both men seemed tailor-made for James Bond, for example) and Hepburn could make claims on de Havilland’s radiant MBWITW glow several times during her career, from Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady to Robin and Marian.

Anyway, I finally watched Robin and Marian for a second time and it holds up as a great movie, right behind only The Adventures of Robin Hood in the Robin Hood cinematic pantheon.

Because of centering around middle age characters, Robin and Marian plays different notes and takes on a greater emotional range than any other Robin Hood film I have ever seen.

It’s definitely not the lusty adventure like The Adventures of Robin Hood. Sure, Robin and Marian has sword fights and scenic vistas and soaring music and horses and romantic clinches and every prerequisite of the genre, as well as King John, King Richard the Lionhearted, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, and Sherwood Forest, but they’re all — both people and places, and every plot event — suffused with melancholy.

To be fair, though, Lester and Connery inject enough good humor and spirit into Robin and Marian to help it avoid being a more downbeat experience like the 1991 Robin Hood starring Kevin Costner. And the scenes between Connery and Hepburn are simply flat-out appealing, rooted in seeing two of the most attractive, most ebullient performers to ever grace the screen share time with each other (and us audience members).

It should also be mentioned that supporting players Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, and Ian Holm contribute to an absolute dynamite cast.

Didn’t we always ponder how it all turned out for Robin Hood, Maid Marian, the Sheriff, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlett?

Lester’s film, with a screenplay written by James Goldman (writer of the play, film adaptation, and TV movie version of The Lion in Winter), answers those very questions, but do we viewers feel comfortable with the answers? Are we prepared to see Maid Marian as a nun because Robin Hood, off on his damn crusades and holy wars with Richard and Little John, didn’t write her for the last 20 years? We also found out that she attempted suicide. He’s back, though, and it’s obvious that Robin Hood and Maid Marian are destined to be together. They might initially hate it and initially fight it, she invariably more than he, but they are pulled together rather than apart.

All roads lead toward a final showdown between Robin Hood and the Sheriff (Robert Shaw). They fight like two worn-out, downtrodden men with many, many battles behind them and none ahead of them, who have resigned themselves to their final destiny. They fight because it’s their duty, or their almost perverse obligation to each other as hero and villain. They really don’t want to be fighting each other at this precise historical moment, it feels like, BUT THEY MUST FIGHT TO THE DEATH. There’s none of the joy in this fight that can be found in great film sword fights like the one, for example, between Robin Hood (Flynn) and the Sheriff (Rathbone) in The Adventures of Robin Hood. This final showdown, just like Robin and Marian overall, gives us something that’s different from any other purely adventure movie. All the main players have lived through considerable pain, considerable disappointment, and the film serves a reminder (from early on and throughout) there’s flesh-and-blood and real-life experience behind every legend, every song, every ode, every hymn, every myth.

Maid Marian gives Robin Hood (and us) some final words, “I love you. More than all you know. I love you more than children. More than fields I’ve planted with my hands. I love you more than morning prayers or peace or food to eat. I love you more than sunlight, more than flesh or joy or one more day. I love you more than God.”

Boris, Boris, Boris: The Man They Could Not Hang, The Man with Nine Lives, The Boogie Man Will Get You

BORIS, BORIS, BORIS: THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG, THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES, THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU

I am a big fan of the horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s and I am a big Boris Karloff (1887-1969) fan.

Older horror movies often stand out for two main reasons: atmosphere and wit. Just think DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

Karloff’s film career began in the silent era and he was already 80 movies deep into his career when he portrayed Frankenstein’s Monster in James Whale’s 1931 FRANKENSTEIN. Karloff’s career exploded and he (along with such figures as Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Lionel Atwill, and Lon Chaney Jr.) became synonymous with a certain vintage of horror thrillers.

Watching his early Universal films like FRANKENSTEIN and THE OLD DARK HOUSE and then his work for Columbia like THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG, THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES, and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU, it is fascinating to observe Karloff’s evolution from menacing mutes to mad scientists with mad elocution. In fact, during THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU, I wanted Karloff’s Professor Nathaniel Billings to just the heck shut up for a darn minute. He’s a blabbermouth, and it’s amazing to even think of Karloff playing that way after FRANKENSTEIN and THE OLD DARK HOUSE made the actor famous for playing silent but deadly.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG contains one of Karloff’s best performances. He plays Dr. Henryk Savaard, a genius who can bring the dead back to life, a feat that might come in handy for a film titled THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG. You guessed it, that man would be Dr. Savaard. Anyway, a medical student volunteers for Dr. Savaard and before he can be returned to life, them darn proper authorities interrupt Dr. Savaard. Call it “cadaver reanimatus interruptus.” They bring Dr. Savaard up for murder, convict him, and sentence him to death by hanging. They do in fact hang the good doctor, but his incredibly trustworthy assistant claims the body and brings the doctor back to life to enact his revenge against the judge and the jury responsible for convicting him and sentencing him to his death.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG basically splits into three movies: mad scientist, courtroom drama, and revenge thriller. It all works extremely well predominantly because of Karloff, whose performance dominates the movie. His courtroom defense scene is a thing of absolute beauty and it just might be his best single scene.

By the way, I absolutely love it when horror movies are not afraid to venture into other genres and become more than a horror movie while simultaneously maintaining the bulk of their body within the genre.

THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES tells a similar tale and Karloff plays a similar character to his role in THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG. Both pictures also have the same director (Nick Grinde) and the same writer (Karl Brown), as well as the same cinematographer (Benjamin Kline).

NINE LIVES picks up once we find Karloff’s Dr. Leon Kravaal frozen in an ice chamber deep in a secret passage within his home. Also found are Dr. Kravaal’s accusers … and might I add the plot of THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES gets very loopy even for its genre, despite its ties to real life.

Both THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG and THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES are rooted in Dr. Robert E. Cornish and his famous resuscitation experiments. Cornish successfully revived two dogs (Lazarus IV and V) and he wanted to expand his testing on humans. San Quentin inmate Thomas McMonigle, on Death Row, contacted Cornish and offered his body for experimentation, but California denied Cornish and McMonigle their petition because law enforcement officials feared a reanimated McMonigle would have to be freed due to “double jeopardy.” McMonigle was executed in early 1948. Cornish (1903-63) himself appeared in the 1935 film LIFE RETURNS, playing himself.

THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU plays around with similar material as the other Karloff films he made for Columbia, only more for laughs this fifth time. Yes, Karloff plays yet another mad scientist.

The presence of Karloff and Peter Lorre (1904-64) guarantees at minimum a certain quality and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU definitely finds that minimum and nothing less or nothing more. The less said about it the better, and I wish the movie would have followed that policy.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG ***1/2; THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES ***; THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU **