The Return of Doctor X (Vincent Sherman, 1939)

A sequel in name only to 1932's Doctor X (both films have newspaper reporter characters, murders, and mad scientists named Dr. Xavier but are otherwise different stories about different people), The Return of Doctor X is infamous for its supposed miscasting of Humphrey Bogart a few years before he became a huge A-list movie star. Bogart didn't want the part but was under contract with Warner Brothers and couldn't turn it down. The behind-the-scenes legend is that the WB studio execs thought Bogart was getting a little too high and mighty and wanted to slap him back down by forcing him into an unsuitable role. (The execs were soon to lose this leverage after The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.) I have no idea if this is an apocryphal story or the truth, but whatever the facts, the conventional wisdom says that The Return of Doctor X contains one of Bogart's worst performances within a movie that isn't much better. I say the conventional wisdom can pound sand. It's no masterpiece, but it's much better than its reputation.

I'll admit that Bogart is a little miscast, but he's genuinely creepy and takes the part seriously, even though he didn't want it and never appeared in another horror film. The film itself is a solid, well-paced b-movie with likable characters and funny, zippy dialogue, and it gets the job done in just over an hour. It's a lot thinner than the decade's major horror masterpieces, but it has a lot more personality and substance than it's generally credited with possessing.

The movie begins with New York City newspaper reporter Walter Garrett (Wayne Morris) (frequently referred to as "Wichita" by his colleagues in honor/derision of his hometown) setting up an interview with theater actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys) in a nearby hotel. When Walter arrives at the hotel, he finds Angela dead, drained of blood, with a deep stab wound in her chest. Like a true journalist, he calls his paper first to get the scoop and then calls the police.

When homicide detectives arrive, the body has mysteriously disappeared, angering head detective Roy Kincaid (Charles C. Wilson), who thinks Walter's pulling a hoax. (I love his sarcastic parting line to Walter after they search the hotel room: "See ya later, braintrust.")  Angela surprisingly arrives at the police station a few days later pale but alive and ready to sue. Walter is fired by the exasperated editor-in-chief (Joseph Crehan).

Meanwhile, Walter's good friend, young doctor Michael Rhodes (Dennis Morgan) is preparing to assist hematologist and head surgeon Francis Flegg (John Litel) with an emergency blood transfusion, but their donor never shows up. A nurse with the same blood type, Joan Vance (Rosemary Lane), volunteers her services in place of the absent donor, and the transfusion is rescued. Michael hits on Joan after the procedure, which is highly unprofessional but it's 1939 so everybody's into it.

Walter visits Michael to tell him his wild story when the news hits that the absentee donor has been murdered. Michael is called in to be the medical examiner, and Walter tags along. The donor has the same blood drainage and stab wound that the mysteriously alive Angela did. Michael takes some blood samples of crime scene blood stains and is shocked to discover that not only do they not match the victim or a potential perpetrator, they don't even appear to be human or animal. He takes the strange blood to Dr. Flegg's apartment for his opinion and is greeted by Dr. Flegg's assistant, Marshall Quesne (Humphrey Bogart), a pale weirdo holding a rabbit who probably has a mysterious past (Quesne, not the rabbit, though now that I think about it, where the hell did that rabbit come from?). Flegg and Quesne act suspiciously. Much weirdness ensues.

This is all a reasonably pleasant time, professionally delivered. I especially enjoyed the dynamic between Walter, a boyishly unflappable Midwestern transplant who acquired his New York journalist street smarts without losing his heartland folksiness, and the unnamed editor, a constantly beleaguered East Coast hard-ass who gives Walter the exasperated business with colorful insults like "you cornfed wizard!" and "you Wichita Frankenstein!" Good stuff. Why don't people like this movie? Is it an Ishtar situation, where the majority of the naysayers haven't even seen it? Is it because Bogart hated it?

Vincent Sherman, an actor turned screenwriter turned journeyman filmmaker, acquits himself nicely in his first film as director. Nothing in the filmmaking tells you who Sherman is, but it's skillfully and competently dispatched. Sherman was one of those Hollywood directors for hire who got the job done efficiently and professionally but was never going to be a Hitchcock or a Hawks or a Ford. This is most obvious in 1957 noir The Garment Jungle, when creative and personal clashes between director Robert Aldrich and star Lee J. Cobb grew so intense that Cobb got Aldrich fired and replaced with Sherman midway through shooting. The obvious differences between the scenes shot by Aldrich, a director with a powerfully eye-catching visual style, and the more conventional scenes shot by Sherman make the movie a fascinatingly contradictory experience.

Bogart thought Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi should have played Quesne, and he was probably right, but he's too hard on himself and the movie. He seems visibly uncomfortable in the role, but I can't entirely dismiss the performance. Bogart's awkwardness creates an onscreen tension that humanizes the character and makes him even creepier. Lugosi and Karloff are so right for a part like this that they're almost too right. Bogart is a strange choice that makes the movie stranger, and I'm a proponent of the strange.