The Mad Doctor of Market Street(1942): What the Fuck did I just watch?
They say that a great movie is one which transcends all genres, what they didn't say is that a movie can cover all genres and not be great.
This belief of mine is reflected best by this obscure little programmer for Universal. This utterly mad little movie can't decide just what it wants to be. This can be considered a good thing or a bad thing, but the sudden shift in tone and settings definitely makes this one worth a watch.
The film begins like a noir thriller, as a man in a trench coat and fedora enters into a shadowy room in a shadowy building as lightning flashes and rain pours like a scene from a Will Eisner story. Then it shifts into horror mode as we meet mad doctor Ralph Benson( A delightfully deranged Lionel Atwill), who fouls up his experiment with suspended animation and accidentally kills his patient. Then it turns into a crime thriller as the police pursue Benson, then it becomes a murder mystery set aboard a ship where Benson kills a detective, then a romantic comedy, then a disaster movie, then a shipwreck adventure, then a redux of The Man Who Would Be King with overtones of Hawaii & the much later Gilligan's Island.
Insanity, thy name is Mad Doctor of Market Street.
That said, the film is fun to watch. The film's romantic lead initially starts out as yet another comedy relief character, then becomes a typical stolid hero after being upstaged by the heroine's obnoxious Aunt (Una Merkel, annoying as hell, but at least not as annoying as that other Una; 'O Connor.)and a rather likable big lug named Red(Nat Pendleton)in the comedy department. Such lines like "I just love the chinese, they're so--oriental" abound, it's either charmingly cringe inducing, or infuriating depending on your point of view.
That said, Atwill gives a suitably creepy performance despite all the comedy, knowing when to ham it up and when to keep quietly restrained. An especially creepy moment is when he comes close to pointlessly murdering a curious native only to be narrowly stopped. There are some genuinely suspenseful moment as well, and when Benson is exposed by the natives it actually is a clever plot device. For such a stylistically disjointed film, it is amazingly cohesive, plot wise.
See this mad little movie to believe it.~
''Juuust, sit right back and hear a tale, a tale of great big ship''