Dr. Renault's Secret

Nice play on the topics of mind control and re animations of the sort that Noel received from the Doctor. Left standing at the end is the paradox of who actually killed the man in the hotel in the film's early scenes. And the depraved acting of the human who abducts the girl contrasts nicely with the animal instincts of Noel. In the 1940's with science advancing quickly on the workings of the mind the dichotomy between man and animal is revealed. Who are the real animals in the movie? Movies of this genre who leave you smiling through the horror of it all are fun fill in for our contemporary modern day culture. (with all of its' incipient horrors...)

I have been watching horror movies for well over forty years but until very recently I had not been aware of this gem of a B-movie. Prolific and versatile actor J Carrol Naish made what I believe to be his horror debut with this, he plays an odd looking man "from Java", in actual fact he was once an ape but has been "humanised" by mad scientist George Zucco. This may sound ridiculous but I am happy to say that they made this concept quite convincing, helped no doubt by Naish giving a truly superb performance. The rest of the cast is also very good but one problem is that the film is set in France yet most of the accents are North American. Would have been more convincing to set it in Canada instead. With a modest 58 minutes running time the movie packs in quite a lot and moves along quickly, the camerawork is very good and the finale, set in a water mill, is excellent. Highly recommended.

Dr. Renault's Secret (1942)

** (out of 4)

Dull horror film about Dr. Renault (George Zucco) and his little secrets including his mentally challenged assistant (J. Carrol Naish). For some reason this is a rather well known film among horror fans but I can't see why because the big "secret" is easy to see within the first five minutes and the rest of the film is slow and boring. The movie is somewhat hard to find so perhaps that's a reason for its cult following. Zucco and Naish are mildly entertaining but the film goes no where in the end and winds up wasting their talent.

Although I've been aware of the existence of this film for years, the sheer fact that I found next to no reading material on it in my father's books on my favorite genre (which I devoured as I was growing up) has led me to believe that it was merely just another ordinary escapist wartime horror programmer. Until it was surprisingly given a recent DVD release – as part of the second entry in the "Fox Horror Classics" collection along with the higher-profile CHANDU THE MAGICIAN (1932; featuring Bela Lugosi) and DRAGONWYCK (1946; with Vincent Price) – I had no previous opportunity to watch it and, now that I have, it's safe to say that it's been one of the most pleasant surprises I've had during this year's bumpy Halloween Challenge.

Unlike Universal, Paramount, RKO and even MGM, 20th Century Fox was hesitant to jump onto the Horror bandwagon and seemed to do so only half-heartedly – as evidenced by John Brahm's all-style-but-no-substance werewolf picture THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942) which, incidentally, was actually paired with DR. RENAULT'S SECRET on original release as the upper half of a double-bill. I'm not sure if it's because I thought the Brahm film suffered in comparison to Universal's THE WOLF MAN that I've found RENAULT to be more satisfactory or merely because I haven't yet watched any of the latter's own progenitors – the Silent French Gaston Leroux adaptation BALAOO (1913), Fox's own intriguing Silent foray into the genre THE WIZARD (1927) and Paramount's well-cast THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (1941) – or perhaps because it's undoubtedly superior to a similarly-themed contemporaneous Bela Lugosi vehicle THE APE MAN (1943) – which wasn't really all that bad to begin with – but, ultimately, I now consider DR. RENAULT'S SECRET to be an unjustly forgotten vintage gem of this most prolific, beloved and yet maligned of genres.

In essence, the story set in France is typical 'mad scientist' fodder with the titular ultra-Darwinian medico/part-time jungle explorer (George Zucco) attempting to prove conclusively his idol's controversial evolution theories by surgically turning an ape into a man. The cast of characters is supplemented by the doctor's lovely niece (Lynne Roberts), her fiancée who also happens to be a doctor (Shepperd Strudwick – billed here as John Shepperd!), Renault's ex-con gardener (Mike Mazurki) and equally shady butler (Jean De Val), a suspicious Police Inspector (Arthur Shields) and, best of all, J. Carrol Naish as Roberts' enigmatic and highly sensitive protector Noel. The ensemble cast is generally good and sympathetic to the material at hand, but it's clearly Naish's show here in a very poignant performance as the result of Zucco's questionable experiments: a soft-spoken, love-struck handyman, subtly but effectively made to look simian in appearance via a shaggy wig and enlarged nostrils (incidentally, he would play a variation on the role as a hunchback in Universal's HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN [1944] – in which Zucco also appears, by the way). Although Zucco made a slew of similarly ghoulish potboilers around this time (and so did Naish, as already mentioned), I've only watched a couple of them myself so far; seeing him turn from a suave gentleman by day into a whip-wielding sadist with the poor, unfortunate Naish at the receiving end of it, one can't blame producers for simply offering him more of the same in subsequent years!

Being the product of a major studio (albeit a low-budgeted one and running a trim 58 minutes), the solid production values were to be expected but one other aspect that impressed me about DR. RENAULT'S SECRET was the intermittent stylishness of Harry Lachman's direction, all tinted angles (down to the very last shot of the film with Naish's lifeless body practically falling onto the camera!) and evocative chiaroscuro lighting (Zucco's own come-uppance is simply depicted as a shadowy struggle between him and the finally-rebellious Naish). I'm not about to assign auteur status to Lachman (whose last film this proved to be despite going on to live for another 33 years!) or anything, but it's a well-known fact that his version of DANTE'S INFERNO (1935) starring Spencer Tracy (also for Fox) is highlighted by a memorable nightmare sequence set in Hades and also that OUR RELATIONS (1936) was Laurel and Hardy's most polished production and one of their most satisfactory vehicles overall.

I don't know if it was the spectacle (for me anyways) of seeing J. Carroll Naish in something that wasn't "Frankenstein vs. Dracula" (my all-time favorite so-bad-its-good film), Naish's decent "pitiable villain" or the rather flimsy "Island of Dr. Moreau" reworking, but somehow this movie really held my intention. It's mercifully short (any longer would've been far too much), and fairly typical of horror films of its day. Definitely takes a page out of Wells' book, although the action this time has been relocated to France. There are definite signs of its era and its budget-very set bound, french accents that come and go, random Euro-sounding accents instead of french accents, the "monster" that redeems himself in the end, the odd (and racist, if we want to get all PC, which I don't usually bother for a film of this era that isn't being deliberate about it's racism) notion that a man from Java and an ape made to look like a man would be indistinguishable. Leaving all of these criticisms aside, if you're a fan of horror films, whose interested in the history of the genre and not just in the latestest "Scream" knock-off or still hoping they'll come out with a tenth Friday the 13th or a similar sequel machine, I say check it out. If you're into B-pictures of the era, check it out. It shows the general qualtity of studio horror films of the era, and its got a little something extra I can't put my finger on.