Doctor X is a weird, colorful mess I kind of loved

Is this worth a watch?

If you enjoy 1930s horror that doesn't quite know if it wants to be a murder mystery or a creature feature, yeah, give Doctor X a spin. It’s got that specific, clunky charm of early talkies where everyone is shouting their lines just to make sure the microphone picks it up. If you hate movies where the “comic relief” reporter is genuinely irritating, you might want to steer clear. He really doesn't stop talking.

The whole thing feels like a fever dream, mostly because it was filmed in that early, experimental two-strip Technicolor. Everything looks like a bruise. The blues and oranges are so thick they feel like they’re leaking off the screen.

There’s this scene in the laboratory where they’re trying to reconstruct a murder using a machine that looks like it was built from spare parts of a toaster and a radio. It makes absolutely no sense. I couldn't stop looking at the wires.

Fay Wray is in this, obviously. She spends a lot of time looking terrified, which she basically invented. She’s great at it, but you do feel a bit bad that she’s stuck in these roles where her main job is to just scream at shadows.

The killer’s mask is... something else. It’s not exactly subtle. It looks like someone took a piece of chewed-up bubblegum and stretched it over a human skull. It’s effective in a really gross, low-budget way.

Some thoughts while watching:

• That reporter character? Honestly, he makes me miss the quiet intensity of something like The Middle Watch.
• The lighting is bizarrely moody. It hides the sets well, but it also hides the actors' faces half the time.
• There is a moment where a character talks about “synthetic flesh” and I’m pretty sure the scriptwriter just gave up on science halfway through the afternoon.
• I think the movie gets noticeably better once the lights go out and the chase starts. It stops trying to explain the plot and just lets the weirdness happen.

The pacing is a bit of a rollercoaster, but not in a good way. It’s more like a car with a loose wheel. It just kinda wobbles along until the ending, which feels like it was tacked on because someone realized they hit their runtime limit. 🤷‍♂️

It’s not as polished as the big studio stuff, but it has a pulse. Sometimes that’s enough.