Skip to main content

Movie - Doctor X (1932)

 

My views

Plot

Daily World newshawk Lee Taylor is investigating a series of pathological murders that have taken place over a series of months in New York City. The murders always take place at night, under the glow of a full moon, and each body has been cannibalized after the murder. Witnesses describe a horribly disfigured "monster" as the killer.

Doctor Xavier is called in for his medical opinion, but the police have an ulterior motive. They want to investigate Xavier's medical academy, as the brain scalpel used to cannibalize the bodies of the victims is exclusive to that institution. Aside from Xavier, the other suspects are: Wells, an amputee who has made a study of cannibalism; Haines, who displays a sexual perversion with voyeurism; Duke, a grouchy paralytic; and Rowitz, who is conducting studies of the psychological effects of the moon.

The police give Xavier 48 hours to apprehend the killer in his own way. During this time, reporter Taylor investigates the doctor's intentions and in the process, meets Joanne Xavier, the doctor's daughter. Joanne is exceedingly cold to Taylor, particularly after finding out that it was his story that pointed a finger at her father and ruined his first attempt at locating the killer. Taylor takes a romantic interest in Joanne, despite her hostility.

At Dr. Xavier's beach-side estate, all of the suspects gather for an unorthodox experiment. Each member is being investigated except Wells, because the killer has two hands and Wells has but one. Each man is connected to an electrical system that records his heart rate. When a re-enactment of the murder of the cleaning woman appears before them, the detector will expose the guilty man. Dr. Xavier's butler and maid, Otto and Mamie, carry out the reenactment.

During the experiment, a blackout occurs. When power is regained, it is discovered that Rowitz, whose monitor supposedly revealed him as the guilty party just before the blackout, has been murdered by use of a scalpel to the brain. Later that night, it is discovered that Rowitz's body has been cannibalized.

The following evening, Xavier asks Otto and Mamie to re-enact another of the murders. Mamie is too frightened to play her part, so Joanne takes her place. All of the men, save for Wells, are this time handcuffed to their seats, and the doors locked to keep Wells at the recording cabinet.

During the experiment, Wells sneaks into a secret laboratory where he transforms himself with "synthetic flesh" into the monstrous Moon Killer. After strangling Otto, Wells reveals to his horrified colleagues that he has been committing the murders to collect living samples of human flesh for his experiments. He declares his intention to collect Joanne as his victim.

As Wells is about to strangle Joanne, Taylor – concealed among a series of wax figures representing the killer's victims – jumps Wells. After an extended fight, Taylor hurls a kerosene lamp at Wells, setting him on fire. Wells crashes through a window and falls down a cliff in flames to the ocean shore below. Reporting his story into the paper, Taylor tells his editor to make space in the marriage section for Joanne and himself.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Movie - Bastille Day | The Take (2016)

  My views Plot On the eve of  Bastille Day  in  Paris , American drifter and  pickpocket  Michael Mason steals a woman's handbag, not knowing that it contains  explosives . After taking the cash from the bag, he discards it, caught unwittingly on  CCTV  as he does so. The bag then detonates and kills four people. Upon being captured by  CIA  agent Sean Briar, who is being reprimanded for irresponsible conduct on the job, Mason protests that he is not a  terrorist  and tells Briar that the bag contained a cellphone owned by a woman named Zoé. The bomb was set up by a group of  corrupt policemen , all of them members in the  French special police RAPID unit  led by Rafi Bertrand, who intend to pull a robbery at the  Bank of France . Zoé was told to plant the bomb at the office of the  French Nationalist Party  (as part of a diversion for the heist), but after seeing the night cleaning crew arri...

Movie - Se7en (1995)

  My views Plot In an unnamed city overcome with violent crime and corruption, disillusioned police Detective Lieutenant William Somerset is one week from retirement. He is partnered with David Mills, a young, short-tempered, idealistic detective who recently relocated to the city with his wife, Tracy. On Monday, Somerset and Mills investigate an obese man who was forced to eat until his stomach burst, killing him. The detectives find the word " gluttony " written on a wall. Somerset, considering the case too extreme for his last investigation, asks to be reassigned, but his request is denied. The following day, another victim, who had been forced to cut one pound (0.45 kg) of flesh from his body, is found; the crime scene is marked " greed ." Clues at the scene lead Somerset and Mills to the  sloth  victim, a drug-dealing  pederast  whom they find emaciated and restrained to a bed. Photographs reveal the victim was restrained for precisely one year. Somers...

Movie - The Gray Man (2022)

  My views Plot In 2003, senior  CIA  official Donald Fitzroy visits a prisoner named Courtland Gentry in Florida. Eight years earlier, Courtland was a minor convicted of killing his abusive father to protect his brother. Fitzroy offers him his freedom in exchange for working as an assassin in the CIA's  Sierra  program, an elite black ops unit, which will allow him to exist in the gray. In 2021, Courtland, now known as  Sierra Six , is working with fellow CIA agent Dani Miranda to assassinate a target named Dining Car suspected of selling off  national security  secrets in  Bangkok  during the national  Songkran  festival. Unable to do so stealthily without harming civilians, he attacks Dining Car directly, mortally wounding him. Before dying, he reveals he was also in the Sierra program as Sierra Four. He hands Six an encrypted drive detailing the corruption of CIA official Denny Carmichael, the lead agent on the assassinatio...