Just two years before his star-making turn in The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart made his sole foray into science fiction-horror in Vincent Sherman's directorial debut, The Return of Doctor X. The film provided an unusual turning point in Bogart’s career — although he had spent his first decade in the movies largely playing gangsters, heavies, and other sundry supporting roles, this role as a blood-thirsty mad scientist would prove to be the moment he realized he needed to make a big change in order to achieve his career goals.
Based on a story in Detective Fiction Weekly by William J. Makin, the decidedly B-picture cheapie The Return of Doctor X follows reporter Walter Garrett, aka Wichita (Wayne Morris), who is investigating a series of bizarre murders in which victims are drained of their rare “Type One” blood type. His investigation takes him first to a friend Dr. Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan), then to hematologist Dr. Francis Flegg (John Litel), whose weird assistant Marshall Quesne (Bogart) bares a remarkable resemblance to the late Dr. Maurice Xavier, who had been executed via electric chair a few years back for murder. It's soon revealed that Quesne really is the mysterious Doctor X brought back to life, surviving on a synthetic blood made from those with the rare “Type One” blood type.
The plot is as convoluted as it sounds, and its title confusingly suggests that it could be related to Michael Curtiz's 1931 pre-code horror film Doctor X (it does not: The two films do not share any similarities apart from their titles and the use of synthetic bodily materials as key plot points). Instead, The Return of Doctor X spends far too much time trying to be a buddy comedy between Morris and Morgan as they play sleuths. But Bogart still manages to run away with the movie due to his singularly strange performance.
When first introduced, Sherman frames him in a far doorway, almost out of focus. A single beam of a light illuminates his pale face. In the foreground, Morgan examines some bottles in the lab. "Looking for something?" Bogart asks as an eerie music queue intensifies and the camera cuts to a moving close-up as he walks towards Morgan, a single white bunny in his hand. Sporting a Mallen streaked black Frankenstein flattop, tiny wire-rim glasses, and far-too shiny face, Bogart's physical appearance is deeply unsettling. He also speaks with a staccato that adds a sense of unease to the signature timbre of voice. Unfortunately, in later scenes the make-up is piled on so thick it becomes almost comical, effectively undermining the off-kilter stoicism of Bogart's performance.
Bogart made seven films in 1939 alone, including memorable turns opposite Bette Davis in Edmund Goulding's weepie Dark Victory and against James Cagney in Raoul Walsh's gangster picture The Roaring Twenties, ending the year with this much-detested sci-fi tinged horror programmer. While The Return of Doctor X certainly doesn't rank amongst Bogart's best films, this outlier offers a peek into the kind of twisted energy he would bring to darker roles later in his career like Dixon Steele in In A Lonely Place and Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.
It also served as a turning point for the actor in terms of demanding roles that fit his talent. After appearing on Broadway for most of the 1920s, Bogart signed his first film contract with Fox in 1929, declaring, "I'm going to become the biggest movie star Hollywood's ever seen." Ten years and far-too many supporting roles later, his discontent with The Return of Doctor X was a breaking point.
In his 1965 biography "Bogart," Richard Gehman alleges that the star told him, "This is one of the pictures that made me march in to Jack Warner and ask for more money again. You can’t believe what this one was like. I had a part that somebody like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff should have played. I was this doctor, brought back to life, and the only thing that nourished this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner’s blood, or Harry’s, or Pop’s, maybe I wouldn’t have minded as much. The trouble was, they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."
The following year Bogart began to hit his stride, re-teaming with director Raoul Walsh for the noir They Drive by Night and again in 1941 for the hit High Sierra, before appearing as the iconic sleuth Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, a role that shot him into the stratosphere. Maybe he would have gotten there regardless, but pouring his all into a magnificent misfire like The Return of Doctor X certainly helped light the way.
