(1932)
Dir - Michael Curtiz
Overall: MEH
The first of three pairings with Lionel Atwill and original scream queen Fay Wray, (as well as the English thespian's first time working under Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz), was the curious Doctor X. As a pre-code, old dark house, mad scientist mash-up that also fuses clumsy comedy and was shot in two-color Technicolor, it has many of the early trappings of mystery thrillers of the day, namely German Expressionism inspired cinematics, no thematic music, a forced monster make-up design, nonsensical scientific gobbledygook, a damsel in distress, a clumsy, wise-ass hero, and more adult oriented themes that would quickly be done away with once the Motion Picture Production Code got enforced. It is occasionally fun yes, but that is primarily due to its ridiculousness. The humor is more dated than funny, the dialog rather preposterous, the details surrounding Atwill's title character's experiments are laughably implausible yet taken very seriously, as is the final murderer reveal. Curtiz' stylized direction and use of Polish art director Anton Grot's sets give the film an interesting look though that is made all the more so by it being in color, as the medium would resort back to standard black and white for most B-movie type fare for the next several decades.
(1933)
Dir - A. Edward Sutherland
Overall: MEH
Not one of the more noteworthy 1930's efforts from Paramount that was convincingly enough billed as a horror film, Murders in the Zoo is tonally, rather a mess. Though it is not always necessary, any sort of horror movie star power is pretty nil here with just Lionel Atwill, (Mystery of the Wax Museum, Son of Frankenstein), on board and not even given top billing at that. That title goes to Charles Ruggles who is about as funny as he is menacing and he tries not at all to be the latter while trying far too hard to be the former. This provides Zoo with its biggest blunder as half of the screen time is dedicated to Ruggles stumbling around like a buffoon while Atwill enacts his jealousy in the most grisly of manners. There are a few still startling moments here that deserve some recognition, (the best of which is found in the movie's opening scene), but overall the very pedestrian plot does not lend itself well to the clashes in comedy and the thriller aspects at play. It is certainly not all together forgettable though, but it is a botched effort all the same.
(1936)
Dir - Victor Halperin
Overall: WOOF
This borderline terrible, quasi-sequel to White Zombie, (with director Victor Halperin returning), is as dull and dumbed down a follow-up as has ever been produced. With Bela Lugosi nowhere to be found, (and in all honestly, there hardly would have been anything engaging for him to do here anyway), we are left with B-level actors, B-level directing, and a sub-par script with embarrassing dialog. Revolt of the Zombies does live up to its title by the end, but the zombies in question are just normal looking foreigners who stand motionless except for one that kills a single secondary character, (Roy D'Arcy making as poor a Lugosi stand-in as any). In fact there are no macabre visuals at all save leftover footage of Lugosi's eyes from White Zombie and the most "memorable" shot in the film is a never-ending one where two characters walk through a swamp with laughably bad rear projection behind them. It is all too easy to check out of the lame story where somebody uses mind control because he is in love with a woman who married someone else and the lack of any remote chemistry anywhere on set could not be more noticeable.
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