Actor and writer Vincent Sherman won his first directing assignment on the Humphrey Bogart picture The Return of Doctor X (1939), a bizarre thriller that barely qualifies as a horror picture. The film is not a sequel to the older Michael Curtiz horror hit Dr. X (1932), in which Preston Foster used 'synthetic flesh' to transform himself into a monster. The more light-hearted Return seems intended as a showcase for Warners' studio-bred hopefuls Wayne Morris and Dennis Morgan. Although writers Lee Katz and William J. Mahin's tale includes a doctor raising the dead and an ill-defined 'medical vampire,' nothing overly gruesome develops. A reporter (Morris) and a hospital intern (Morgan) instead investigate like overgrown Hardy Boys, at one point digging up a corpse to help solve the mystery. Humphrey Bogart took a break from second-banana gangsters to play surgeon's assistant Marshall Quesne, a role more suited to Boris Karloff. Bogart piles on the gimmicks: Quesne is a pasty-faced, staring zombie with a freakish white streak in his hair. He wears a pince-nez and enters petting a rabbit, speaking in a curious whisper. Two years after playing this Bogie-bogeyman, the actor would leap to top stardom with The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra (both 1941). When the war came Wayne Morris distinguished himself as a Navy flier, while Dennis Morgan became a popular homefront heartthrob, fighting the battle of the Warner back lot.

By Glenn Erickson