(Directed by Michael Curtiz from a script by Robert Tasker and Earl Baldwin adapted from the stageplay TERROR, by Howard W. Comstock; starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster, Leila Bennett, and George Rosener. Released 03 August 1932; watched 2023w40 via Criterion Channel)

SYNTHETIC FLESH!

My passion for pre-code two-strip technicolor remains intact and, though I view DOCTOR X as the lesser of Curtiz's pre-code, Fay Wray-starring offerings (MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a masterpiece – and I prefer it to its 1953 remake), I can't help but love it. Will rewatch WAX MUSEUM before the month is out to cement that opinion – anticipate seeing DOCTOR X as trial run for things mastered in WAX: Atwill (one of my favorite actors) as the scientist; the globby makeup of the killer – SYNTHETIC FLESH!! –; Fay Wray screaming – no one was more luminous than she in two-strip technicolor; the newspaper reporter hero (barely Jimmy Olsen here in contrast to proto-Lois Lane in WAX); the fiery denouement in X being the inciting incident in WAX...

An entertaining romp that, if nothing else, kept me guessing and, unlike WAX MUSEUM, had a psychopath screaming SYNTHETIC FLESH! May revise my opinion accordingly.