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While The famed filmmakers’ early 20th century scary films brought to prominence a collection of legendary creatures, the original Frankenstein also followed its gothic-novel roots in clarifying that on occasion, the real wrongdoing isn't perpetrated by a terrifying entity of the night. Sometimes it’s the creation of a doctor who’s lost his sanity with macabre research ambition.

Two non-studio chilling pictures from this time serve as a notably entertaining double feature for fans of fiends and/or mad science: Doctor X from 1932, and Mad Love from 1935.

The 1932 Feature: Pre-Code Macabre and Vintage Hues

Doctor X — which gets a name-drop in the chorus of The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s opening number — assembled a several prominent film industry names before they did their best-known work.

Atwill went on to become a regular actor in the studio’s Frankenstein movies. Wray features in this film 24 months ahead of she earned her place as the screamingest horror heroines of all time in the original King Kong. They are overseen by Michael Curtiz, who went on to make The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce, and no less than Casablanca, plus various features.

Doctor X is not as refined as the director’s acclaimed masterpieces, but the audacity is magnificent: This movie was made prior to ratings and preceding the production codes that banned themes like human consumption, peeping scenes, organ theft, and brain-stabbing.

It was also produced in the early color method, an primitive version of filming in color which provides the movie otherworldly green and pink hues that imply a world familiar yet different, but intensified and distorted.

And seen today, after decades of the studio’s wolf-men, transparent entities, and more, Doctor X’s crime investigation plot comes across as like a clever monster-movie ruse. A sequence of grisly human-consuming killings happening under a bright night sky sounds like the doing of a dreadful creature. But potential culprits led by Dr. Xavier are nonetheless brought together for an inquiry, featuring macabre simulations of the murder scenes.

Mad Love: The Actor Peter Lorre and Macabre Strange Tales

Mad Love is hardly a mystery: Any feature featuring Peter Lorre makes it easy to deduce who the culprit might be. When lead Stephen Orlac loses his hands in an incident, he seeks help from Dr. Gogol, who regrettably develops a fixation on Stephen’s wife Yvonne.

Gogol performs a hand transplant on hapless Stephen, giving him the mitts of a knife-throwing psychopath, in an attempt to stealing Yvonne away.

Mad Love falls short of being as hyper as the human against appendage slapstick of Evil Dead 2, but it includes a bit of that wicked weirdness, gaining greatly from the large number of Lorre scenes. These two films are more bizarre and more unsettling than most of the Frankenstein sequels, and they shine in the identical realm as the top classic creature entries: obscuring the boundary between monster and person, in these cases with a doctor’s credentials added to the mix.

Viewing Options

Both movies are available to purchase or rental through major digital platforms. Mad Love is offered for watching for complimentary on certain commercial services, though fans should beware regarding possible screen format issues.