I was in the mood for a movie, and lurking in the depths of my DV-R was this 1939 horror flick.
And ... what in pie?? Is that Humphrey Bogart???
Wow -- there were some interesting casting choices under the old studio system.
A potboiler of a thriller that interestingly enough has *absolutely* nothing to do with Dr. X, Return follows another wisecracking reporter, this time chasing the story of an actress who may or may not be mysteriously deceased.
But this film needs serious suspension of disbelief to make it watchable. In the early part of the film, the police respond to the death of the actress after reading about it in the newspaper! Then the reporter greets the cops outside the hotel room of the actress, but the body is gone!
The time structure of this sequence is completely unexplainable, and adds to the nutty flavor of this film.
The plot of murders, vampirism and synthetic blood has sci-fi overtones and even a shootout -- but it's pretty much unimportant. This is for fun, not fright.
It's terribly amusing to watch Bogie in heavy makeup, stroking his pet bunny and laying on the camp. It's obvious he didn't want this role, but being stuck with it, he does his best Karloff imitation.
Props to the art direction -- Warner's New York street set is creeped up nicely, and the maze of tubes dripping dark liquid that fill the mad doctor's laboratory are evocative of a circulatory system.
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