THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET (1942)

Lionel Atwill needed 1942 to be a positive year so he could put behind him the awful tragedy of his son’s death and 1941’s distasteful court case in which he had testified - (See LIONEL ATWILL: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's 'Mad Doctor' - my article dated 21/4/2016). Though he had no involvement in the suspected rape of 16 year-old Sylvia Hamalaine, and the foreman of the jury acquitted the defendants on lack of evidence, Atwill knew he had lied about showing blue movies to guests at his house. As harmless as this is, even in the context of the Hamalaine trial, there was no getting around the fact that he had committed perjury. As he picked up his busy career and enjoyed the new year’s horror roles, his minor criminal act was to prove a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off…

The first genre role of his released during February 1942 was as The Mad Doctor of Market Street, a decent if unremarkable B-movie programmer for Universal directed by Joseph H. Lewis whom we last saw helming 1941’s haphazard The Invisible Ghost, co-written as here by Al Martin. Once again, Atwill is a white-coated whacko, (bearded pseudo-scientist Dr Ralph Benson), labouring in the hot-topic medical field of suspended animation. A literally poor chap volunteers to put himself through the madman’s experimental attempts in order to feed his family. “The span of human life will be prolonged inevitably”, Benson raves exultantly. Not for his subject, who dies on the operating table just as the man’s wife bursts in with the cops.

Benson bunks out the window in full surgical garb, and then promptly reappears, clean-shaven on board a luxury liner bound for New Zealand. He comfortable escapes his identity being rumbled even when a nosy detective snoops around the ship. Benson sends him overboard to a watery grave. Amongst the passengers and crew in blissful ignorance are Una Markel as a spirited and funny bride-to-be, Aunt Margaret, desperate to get to her awaiting wedding. Her niece Patricia, the lovely Claire Dodd, plays to her type as a bewitching magnet to the gentlemen. Pursuing her with vigour as Officer Jim is Richard Davies, a regular player of servicemen on screen, and John Eldredge as the shady Dwight (previously mentioned in 1941’s Horror Island and The Black Cat). For moral and muscle support comes Nat Pendleton as Red Hogan, a real-life Olympic wrestler who parlayed his imposing bulk and thick-ear lunk persona into many a comedy film - twice for the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers (1932) and 1939’s At the Circus. One of his last parts would be in the Bela Lugosi horror vehicle Scared to Death (1947).

Fear takes hold of all on-board here when a fire causes an abandon ship, washing up our cast on a tropical island. They land just as the loin-clothed tribe of natives are bemoaning the mortal-looking condition of Tanayo (Rosina Galli) wife of their chief, played by horror stalwart Noble Johnson. “White man bring evil spirits”, he grunts with the traditional Hollywood respect for sophisticated anthropology on confusing a link between the party’s arrival with his wife’s death-door status. This forces Benson into a quandary. Either he must reveal his scientific quackery to save her or the westerners end up on the tribal barbecue. Mercifully, he chooses the former, if only out of self-preservation. He injects her with Adrenaline (not revealing to the impressed islanders that she has only suffered a heart-attack).

On Tanayo’s recovery, such is the Chief’s gratitude that he intones “You God of Life. We your slaves”, which is music to the ears of the opportunistic Benson. He now lords it over the tribe and the shipwrecked party, ordering the destruction of the boat and holding everyone as virtual prisoners to his deranged, long-term research .

Patricia is propositioned by Benson after Tanayo’s appeal to his manly needs is misconstrued as “Maybe white wife necessary to my experiments”. Patricia is repulsed but plays along into marriage. She hopes that it will curry favour for their eventual release but Benson enjoys his place in the catbird seat, purring that he will take his pick of the three ‘more civilised’ western men when appropriate. That may be difficult as Dwight shows his true colour of yellow by trying in vain to row another boat to cowardly safety before the natives capture him and the more heroic Jim.

A twist comes when the Chief demands that Benson demonstrate his ability to revive an actually dead person,drowned tribal younster Barab (Ray Mala, who had once gained international fame as M-G-M’s Eskimo/Mala the Magnificient in 1933).  He is given until sun-up, which of course he stares at balefully out of the window since we know he really is only a master of hollow quackery. Sure enough, he winds up on the flames while our American friends run to a spotter-plane that flies in to the rescue.

All in all, The Mad Doctor of Market Street is a professional enough water-treader while better projects could be hoped for in the war years ahead.