Famous Mad Doctors

[Lokke Heiss]

Thinking about the subgenre of Mad Doctors and how many films have used him for plot material. The Mad Doctor is usually the Great Thinker plot, most famous being Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, and of course we have Dr. Moureau. Does anyone have a list of favorite Mad Doctor movies? The line gets a little blurry over the definition of 'doctor.' Frankenstein himself, as I remember, was only a gifted student who dropped out of school...perhaps we should call him 'student doctor Frankenstein.' I was focusing more on characters who are or were clearly physicians at one point before they found, let's say, a 'higher calling.

Fu Manchu would be a classic Mad Doctor, with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins.

[Frederica]

Thinking about the subgenre of Mad Doctors and how many films have used him for plot material. The Mad Doctor is usually the Great Thinker plot, most famous being Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, and of course we have Dr. Moureau. Does anyone have a list of favorite Mad Doctor movies? The line gets a little blurry over the definition of 'doctor.' Frankenstein himself, as I remember, was only a gifted student who dropped out of school...perhaps we should call him 'student doctor.' I was focusing more on characters who are or were clearly physicians at one point before they found, let's say, a 'higher calling.

Fu Manchu would be a classic Mad Doctor, with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins.

Are you distinguishing between "Mad Doctor" and "Mad Scientist?" There must be an M.D., rather than a Ph.D. (or other doctor flavors)?

[telical]

I just got done watching, "The Devil Doll" (1936) with Barrymore. There
was a great Mad Doctor in that one. He was so kindhearted....he just wanted
to shrink everyone so that they would use up less food. It's great that there
are such simple solutions to world problems.

[greta de groat]

So, you are only wanting credentials people? The typical characters of a Mad Doctor/Scientist movie are often ill-defined so that may be unnecessarily limiting yourself, unless you are trying to make a particular point about MDs. Would you exclude a film like The Magician (1926) because the character is a "magician/alchemist"? But include The Monster (1925) because the character's name is "Dr."? Do we know the credentials of Dr. Caligari? (or are we assuming he really is the shrink?). Alraune looks like it qualifies, though. Wegener seems to be a major figure in this genre, especially since the Golem is a related concept.

greta

[entredeuxguerres]

The line gets a little blurry over the definition of 'doctor.' Frankenstein himself, as I remember, was only a gifted student who dropped out of school...perhaps we should call him 'student doctor Frankenstein.'

Wasn't he being called Doctor Frankenstein by the time of Bride of Frankenstein? Correspondence course, perhaps...?

[Daniel Eagan]

Will Rogers gets pretty angry at times in Dr. Bull. So does Barry Fitzgerald in Welcome Stranger.

Not that kind of mad?

[filmnotdigital]

One of the pleasures of these films is the moment when someone accuses the scientist or doctor of being mad and
then they make a speech to the effect of, "Mad? Of course I'm mad!" and then go on to defend what they've been
doing. Someone should make a compilation of these. I'll add "Dr Cyclops" with Albert Dekker and a memorable tiny
horse named Pinto.

[Brooksie]

One of the pleasures of these films is the moment when someone accuses the scientist or doctor of being mad and
then they make a speech to the effect of, "Mad? Of course I'm mad!" and then go on to defend what they've been
doing. Someone should make a compilation of these. I'll add "Dr Cyclops" with Albert Dekker and a memorable tiny
horse named Pinto.

A perfect example: "Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" - Bela Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955).

This is straying outside Nitrateville's ambit somewhat, but if you've ever seen the music video for Kate Bush's 'Cloudbusting', it's based on a the story of a real-life 'mad' scientist, Wilhelm Reich.

[entredeuxguerres]

One of the pleasures of these films is the moment when someone accuses the scientist or doctor of being mad and
then they make a speech to the effect of, "Mad? Of course I'm mad!" and then go on to defend what they've been
doing.

Just for the record, does that charge usually come before or after the other customary accusation, "Trying to play God!" (The most apt response to which would be, I've always thought, "Indeed, yes...as the condition of the universe proves that post has long been vacant!" )

[Richard M Roberts]

You'd have to stretch the list to include "mad inventors" as well, and my favorite there is Henry B. Walthall, who in both CHANDU THE MAGICIAN and THE DEVIL DOLL invents some catastrophically dangerous thing like a death ray or a way to shrink people, but is always indignantly protesting, " it must only be used for good!" as Bela Lugosi or Lionel Barrymore takes it away from him.

The Mad Inventor/Doctor/Scientist is a constant in serials, where they're always creating some Deadly Maguffin that "must only be used for good!", and everyone spends 10-15 chapters taking it away from each other. The latest one we saw was William Desmond's "Contra-Grav"machine that creates it's own gravity and flies airplanes without a pilot in Universal's PHANTOM OF THE AIR (1933) with Tom Tyler.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[greta de groat]

Yeah, that is kind of every other Lugosi movie. I just finished S.O.S. Coast Guard where he invents a disintegrating gas (which melts the image on the film--techies out there, how do they do that?). However, he appears to have no interest in it being used for good.

My fave, though, is Lugosi's bat-attracting aftershave in The Devil Bat.

greta

[Richard M Roberts]

Yeah, that is kind of every other Lugosi movie. I just finished S.O.S. Coast Guard where he invents a disintegrating gas (which melts the image on the film--techies out there, how do they do that?). However, he appears to have no interest in it being used for good.

My fave, though, is Lugosi's bat-attracting aftershave in The Devil Bat.

greta

My favorite Lugosi invention is the dyspeptic-looking robot whose too tall for the doorway in THE PHANTOM CREEPS (1939). Lugosi spends the entire serial scaring and threatening folk with this robot, but when he unleases it on the World to do destruction, it barely makes it out the door before the Cops blow it to smithereens.

Mascot and then Republic loved the melting image trick, basically takes a transparency of a particular shot and puts an open flame to it and melts it. You see that in THE PHANTOM EMPIRE (1935), SOS COASTGUARD (1937), ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941) and many others.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[bobfells]

I haven't made a tally but Lionel Atwill racked up a considerable number of his films where he was a mad doctor, including the aptly titled, MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET. My favorite characterization is his Dr. Boehmer in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942) where he plays not so much of a "mad" doctor as a vengeful one.

Re Lugosi, his mad doctor in THE RAVEN (1935) has a great line. After describing his reconstruction of torture chambers from various EA Poe stories, a hapless newspaper reporter comments that he has an interesting hobby. Throwing underplaying out the window, Lugosi responds darkly, "It's MORE than a ...hobby." Lugosi could create chills by reading the phone book.

[Frederica]

You'd have to stretch the list to include "mad inventors" as well, and my favorite there is Henry B. Walthall, who in both CHANDU THE MAGICIAN and THE DEVIL DOLL invents some catastrophically dangerous thing like a death ray or a way to shrink people, but is always indignantly protesting, " it must only be used for good!" as Bela Lugosi or Lionel Barrymore takes it away from him.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

They are closely related to the many elderly Japanese scientists (exemplified by Takashi Shimura in Godzilla) who always splutter "But it must be studied! Think how much we can learn!" while the monster-du-jour stomps another city flat as a pancake.

[Richard M Roberts]

Of course, Basil Rathbone literally plays a Mad Doctor in THE MAD DOCTOR (Paramount 1940), but he's really nothing more than a cranky psychologist who likes to murder his wives and carry on the most blatantly-gay relationship in a post-code movie with Martin Kosleck.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Frederica]

My favorite Lugosi invention is the dyspeptic-looking robot whose too tall for the doorway in THE PHANTOM CREEPS (1939). Lugosi spends the entire serial scaring and threatening folk with this robot, but when he unleases it on the World to do destruction, it barely makes it out the door before the Cops blow it to smithereens.
RICHARD M ROBERTS

Ooo! How about Mad Guy Lee Van Cleef, conspiring with the menacing Pickle from Venus to take over the world, in It Conquered the World? Not sure if he's a Mad Doctor or just your garden variety Mad Scientist, though.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

Edward Van Sloan in Air Hawks?

Karloff and/or Lugosi in The Black Cat (1934 edition)?

[odinthor]

Not the usual "mad doctor"; but isn't Max von Sydow's character Vogler in Bergman's excellent Ansiktet (alias The Magician; 1958) Dr. Vogler? He's a bit mad, certainly in the angry sense, arguably in the mentally unstable sense.

[telical]

I'm always amazed at how these mad doctors always seem to perceive
the most complex scientific problems as something solvable,
and then they accomplish it. They are light years ahead of their peers. Kind
of like inverse inspiration for their audience. Maybe there is a twisted lesson
in there somewhere, but I don't want to spend the time to figure out what it is.

[Lokke Heiss]

Yes, I agree the definition of 'doctor' gets murky quickly, I still love the idea that since Frankenstein didn't matriculate from an institution of higher learning, he's still 'student doctor Frankenstein.'

So while my first sweep of this list would include mad doctors with real bona fides, like Fu Manchu, realistically you'd have to include any mad scientist with a 'Dr' in front of his name, even though a few phD types might sneak in with these lax parameters.

[Frederica]

Yes, I agree the definition of 'doctor' gets murky quickly, I still love the idea that since Frankenstein didn't matriculate from an institution of higher learning, he's still 'student doctor Frankenstein.'

So while my first sweep of this list would include mad doctors with real bona fides, like Fu Manchu, realistically you'd have to include any mad scientist with a 'Dr' in front of his name, even though a few phD types might sneak in with these lax parameters.

Isn't Dr. Moriarty an M.D.? Even if he is, does he qualify as Mad?

[JFK]

[Jim Reid]

Edward Van Sloan in Air Hawks

Loved Air Hawks!

[greta de groat]

Yes, I agree the definition of 'doctor' gets murky quickly, I still love the idea that since Frankenstein didn't matriculate from an institution of higher learning, he's still 'student doctor Frankenstein.'

So while my first sweep of this list would include mad doctors with real bona fides, like Fu Manchu, realistically you'd have to include any mad scientist with a 'Dr' in front of his name, even though a few phD types might sneak in with these lax parameters.

Isn't Dr. Moriarty an M.D.? Even if he is, does he qualify as Mad?

Professor of Mathematics, i believe, author of Dynamics of an Asteroid.

greta

[Mitch Farish]

Let's hear it for the maddest of the mad MDs of the golden age of horror, Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol in Mad Love.

[barry byrne]

There is the most excellent Dr Phibes, played twice by the most sophisticated Vincent Price. Well worth watching.

His qualifications may be somewhat dubious, cant recall ever seeing his paperwork, but you certainly cant fault his madness. It is coupled with a dislike of doctors, who he blames for the death of his wife.
(Ancient hoary film plot used a million times?).

[Lokke Heiss]

Trying to keep this on the same thread, besides Jekyll and Hyde, can anyone think of the first silent 'mad doctor' role, and then the first 'mad scientist' part in the silent era?

In particular the mad MD role, I agree that Mad Love's Gogol is the winner for that era in that he clearly is a surgeon with a few issues.

In the Hammer 60's era, Peter Cushing's Frankenstein is the only character I know to take the MD doctor and build a series out of it. I always enjoy that for many of these films, he has to find time to care for the sick...it really does put another layer into his personality.

This might slide back into the phD category, but one of my favorite 'mad scientists' was Michael Gough's role as Dr. Decker in 1961's Konga. He so clearly loves what he does that you have to root for him even though the character's actions are despicable and depraved. A great actor who understood that sometimes the best way to play the part is to really ham it up.

[Richard M Roberts]

Trying to keep this on the same thread, besides Jekyll and Hyde, can anyone think of the first silent 'mad doctor' role, and then the first 'mad scientist' part in the silent era?

In particular the mad MD role, I agree that Mad Love's Gogol is the winner for that era in that he clearly is a surgeon with a few issues.

In the Hammer 60's era, Peter Cushing's Frankenstein is the only character I know to take the MD doctor and build a series out of it. I always enjoy that for many of these films, he has to find time to care for the sick...it really does put another layer into his personality.

This might slide back into the phD category, but one of my favorite 'mad scientists' was Michael Gough's role as Dr. Decker in 1961's Konga. He so clearly loves what he does that you have to root for him even though the character's actions are despicable and depraved. A great actor who understood that sometimes the best way to play the part is to really ham it up.

You've got Mad Doctors going back to Melies, even Melies blowing up and enlarging his own head was basically a Mad Doctor part.

After this, we need to discuss a popular variation on the Mad Doctor, the Mad Musician! Dr. Phibes may slide more into that category than the Mad Doctor, as would Erik, the Phantom of the Opera.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Jim Gettys]

Humphrey Bogart as Doctor X.

Jim Gettys

[telical]

There could be a sub-genre: good scientist gone bad through no fault of their own.
You could put "The Fly" (1958) in this category.