VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, [5], 6, 7 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 20:55:48 05/09/09 Sat
Author: Tim
Subject: The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942)

A man stands outside on a Market Street corner on a rainy night before entering the office of Doctor Ralph Benson (Lionel Atwill in a sinister looking beard), a chemist and self-appointed Professor of Research. Benson's experiments involve bringing the dead back to life. The man on the street is a paid guinea pig, and when the experiment fails Benson finds himself a fugitive from justice.

Benson shaves his beard off and boards a ship bound for New Zealand and Australia, posing as an antique dealer named Graham. A detective (Byron Shores) is on his trail, but Benson murders him. Other passengers on the ship include Patricia Wentworth (Claire Dodd) and her ditzy Aunt Margaret Wentworth (Una Merkel), as well as boxer Red Hogan (Nat Pendleton). One of the ship stewarts (Richard Davies) has eyes for young Patricia.

The ship has a fire and a group of passengers end up marooned on a South Sea island populated by natives. When Benson appears to bring one of the natives back to life he is elevated to their "God of Life". Benson uses his revered status with the natives to control the other survivors and continue his experiments, while the captive passengers try to find a way to escape the island and the brilliant but mad Doctor Benson.

Atwill does an excellent job with his mad doctor role, and the rest of the cast is fine as well. One effective cinematic device is used whenever Benson is about to put one of his victims to sleep; we see him from the victim's point of view as he draws closer and closer, accompanied by appropriately suspenseful Universal music.

Some interesting trivia; for some reason the credits list Atwill's character as Graham, his alias while on the ship, rather than Ralph Benson, the name used for most of the film.

Noble Johnson plays Elan, the Native Chief of the island. A decade earlier Johnson had been in King Kong (1933), also playing the Native Chief of an exotic island.

Tim

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.