I can be something of a dunce from time to time. Despite collecting and viewing with great relish the three flicks Doctor X, Mystery in the Wax Museum, and The Vampire Bat it never once occurred to me that all three feature the same leading duo of the original "Scream Queen" Fay Wray and one of my favorite Golden Age actors Lionel Atwill. I knew they were in these movies, but I'd never once considered (or at best had all but forgotten) that these three flicks are connected productions.
Both Doctor X and Mystery in the Wax Museum are two-strip color productions from Warner Brothers, both wonderfully lurid horror flicks directed with luster by Michael Curtiz, which are so raw that they are unpredictable. The conventions of horror are present, but they are not locked in to the point of destroying a sense of surprise. These movies have definite twists.
Doctor X tells the story of the "Moon Killer" a deranged cannibal who lurks in the night and kills all manner of folks and seems to be connected to Doctor Xavier's surgical research center. Atwill plays Doctor X and a ravishing Fay Wray plays Xavier's daughter with a loopy reporter-type in the male lead, such as it is. Xavier gets permission from the police to conduct some wacky investigation involving an outlandish lie detector he's concocted and it goes horribly awry. There's some outstanding action in this one and some truly strange images when the Moon Killer is revealed.
Mystery in the Wax Museum is the most famous of this trilogy and was the follow up to the reasonably successful Doctor X. It's a story most know of a sculptor played by Atwill who is disfigured and seeks revenge and a means to recreate his art in perhaps the most insane way possible. House of Wax starring Vincent Price is the more famous remake, but in my estimation I find the original infinitely more watchable. That's in no small part to the lovely Wray who is the chief victim in this one, if not the chief female character.The reporter role here goes to the wonderfully funny Glenda Farrell. The sets if anything are more bizarre than in Doctor X, and those were strange for sure.
Now apparently while the post-production of Mystery in the Wax Museum was underway, an independent company called Majestic hired Atwill and Wray and used the publicity of their familiar teaming to make The Vampire Bat. This is a movie that makes use of old Universal sets and adds Dwight Frye to the cast making it as near a Universal monster movie as it's possible to make without actually doing it. It features Atwill as the suspicious doctor in a typical vague European town plagued by a seeming vampire. Melvin Douglas is on board as the resident skeptic and inspector. This movie turns out to be a wonderful blend of Dracula by way of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Frankenstein.
This last movie was a quickie and all of these flicks were made and in the theatre before Fay Wray appeared in her defining role in King Kong. Her chemistry with Atwill is tremendous in these movies and even in the one where he plays her father there's no small amount of sexual tension, as unsettling as that seems. Atwill shows up in all three films with an urbane smoothness that can be quite creepy. Kong might've been her biggest co-star for sure, but Atwill was certainly a worthy contender.
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