All posts filed under: The Mad Doctor (1941)

Review: The Mad Doctor (1941)

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Thanks to Lolita at Lolita’s Classics I am now the proud owner of The Mad Doctor. And a few days ago I watched it for the first time. So, here’s what I think of it…. It’s a very strange film indeed. Imagine it’s 1940 and a director working inside the Hollywood studio system goes insane and decides to try and intercut the B-thriller he’s making with a European arthouse study of disturbed psychology with a gay/straight “love triangle” in the middle of it, and the studio, not only lets him do it but ships the resulting chimera into the movie houses without anyone seeming to notice. What you’d get would be something very like THE MAD DOCTOR It’s actually two completely different films spliced together. One standard issue 40s “thriller”… …one bizarrely taboo-busting psychological study… John Howard and pretty much everyone else is in the first of these; Basil Rathbone and Martin Kosleck are in the taboo-buster, and playing it to the hilt, while luckless Ellen Drew has to be in both, and try to …

The Mad Doctor (1941)

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THE MAD DOCTOR (aka A Date with Destiny) has to be the best Basil Rathbone movie I’ve never seen. The Baz playing gorgeous but insane serial wife-killer, with the amazing Martin Kosleck as his heavily implied gay lover, John Howard as Ellen Drew’s nice but boring rescuer, Tim Whelan directing and a script partially written (or possibly) by Ben Hecht! – Who wouldn’t crawl over broken glass to see this film? So, why is it almost impossible to find?!! I’ve looked everywhere:even Youtube (where I’m informed by Scarlett-Streeters only the depraved go to watch movies) – but it’s just not out there! and the more I can’t find it the more I wants it, my preciousss! See…seee the gorgeousness of it all…… From TCM.com: “In the middle of a rainy night, Midbury physician Dr. Charles Downer is awakened and summoned to the home of psychologist George Sebastien to treat Sebastien’s wife. When he arrives, however, Sebastien tells Downer that his wife has already died of pneumonia. Downer returns home sadly and considers ordering an autopsy …