The Mad Doctor w/ Brian Kirst

Queer Horror: A Film Guide creator/co-editor Sean Abley and "Big Gay Horror Fan's" Brian Kirst suss out the super-gay subtext of The Mad Doctor (1941).

Support the ongoing production of this podcast - CLICK HERE! 

Queer Horror: A Film Guide - The Podcast is a 30 minute deep(ish) dive into a classic (or not-so-classic) horror film found in the 500-page encyclopedia of genre films with LGBTQ content, Queer Horror: A Film Guide. Each episode Sean Abley, creator/co-editor of Queer Horror: A Film Guide, asks one of the contributors to pick a film they wrote about for the book that deserves even more queer analysis. Guests include co-editor Tyler Doupé, contributors Calpernia Addams, Daniel W. Kelly, Brian Kirst, Michael Varrati, and special guest Heather O. Petrocelli, PhD.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hi, and welcome back to Queer Horror of Film Guide, the podcast, where the editors and the contributors to Queer Horror of Film Guide pick one film that they wrote about for the book and do a little bit of a deeper dive for your entertainment. And all of that uh lasts about 30 minutes in and out. We believe in bite-sized podcasts here. Uh my name is Sean Abley. I am the creator of the book and the co-editor. And with me today is Brian Kirst, one of our contributors. Hi, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hey, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I'm well. Brian and I have a very long history that starts in theater a million years ago in Chicago, um, where my I guess now ex-boyfriend was directing a play that you had written, correct? Wasn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Parish. Happy title. And I was in it too. I was trying to find something funny to say that didn't it didn't happen. It's too early, folks. The Sunday morning afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So right, we're doing this on a Sunday. That's crazy. But you know, podcast wait for no man. I'm going to, as our guarantee, you know, 30 minutes. I'm going to set our 30-minute timer. So this was just a sort of a bonus couple of minutes. Brian, what film did you choose to talk about today? The Mad Doctor.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Of all the films I wrote about for the book, it's probably if not my number one, close to. It's got a soft place in my heart. I just think it's a really, really cool film. So interesting. I actually didn't know that about this film. Yeah. For you. Yeah, there we go. No, when we did the book signing at uh Dark Galaxies, I was next to the amazing Calpurnia Adams, and we were just getting to know each other. And she was like, What films did you know find the most fascinating? And this was the first film out of my mouth.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

So that's perfect. It's interesting that some um of the writers I remember Molly pushed the old dark house on me. And everybody seemed to have a favorite of these old, old films. And this I will admit was a borderline for me until I looked at it. And I'll explain why it was borderline after you uh tell us what it's all about. And I and just a quick warning um as I say every episode, we absolutely spoil movies. So if the the ending of The Mad Doctor is important for you to be a surprise, uh it's probably best to uh self-deport right now. Otherwise, um, Brian, uh, feel free to take it away. Let us know what this movie's about.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

As the movie opens, we happen upon a distraught, or is he, Dr. George Sebastian, his wife has just died unexpectedly. We soon learn that Dr. George Sebastian and his cohort, Maurice, have been going around killing women. Uh, Dr. George, who's very suave, played by Basil Rothbone, has been uh marrying women and uh killing them off for their money. And this is a small town, I'm assuming someplace, you know, it's reachable by New York City because the next place that they go to, once it's revealed, and it is revealed pretty quickly after uh the funeral of poor Ida, who is talked about a lot but never seen, she dies off camera and and and never appears. They they head up to New York, where Dr. George becomes his uh kind of establishes himself as the psychiatrist to go to and is introduced to the very distraught, very moody uh Linda Booth society g gal who is got a suicide complex, according to the Dear Doctor. And as he is uh curing her, they actually fall in love, which is a sore point for Maurice because it it's pretty apparent though they've never done done with with with embracing or touching or you know, anything like that. That there's some kind of relationship going on between Maurice and the doctors. And there's little little clues, you know, like the apartment they're starting in in New York City, it looks like there's only one bedroom in the apartment. Maurice is always doing something very artistic, arranging flowers, or drawing a cat, or spraying himself with cologne very liberally after murdering someone. So, um, so so Maurice is very upset that that the doctor has actually fallen in love with with Miss Linda and is planning to go off with her to Ecuador. But but Gil Sawyer is a newspaper man who was in love with Miss Booth and he starts to investigate the doctor and goes back to the small town where Ida died, and the old town physician there has had some suspicions about the good doctor, and has decided to exhume Ida's body. The uh old school physician comes to New York to meet with Gil and winds up bumping into the doctor who kills him. Meanwhile, Linda has found out about the doctor not being such a good person. So the doctor goes to confront her and is going to kill them both because his love for Linda is so profound, they must die together. And of course, good old Gil Sawyer, newspaper man, comes in to save the day, and the doctor jumps off the building and kills himself. Right. There's so much here. I know. I was describing it, I was like, my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

But it boils down to basically, you know, gay dudes killing women for money, and then love ruins the plan, supposedly. The first thing I noticed about this film, we'll certainly talk about the queer stuff, obviously, but was the scope of it. I didn't really know this film before you brought it up. You know, there, you know, when Hollywood was in its heyday and uh during uh World War I and World War II, and they were just cranking out movies, you know, they were so prolific. There was so much content from back then, it's easy to like not have an encyclopedic knowledge of film of that time. Um, and not every film was, you know, promoted back then as like the big blockbuster tent pole, like we think about today. But for a film that sort of was under my radar, the scope of this, I mean, there's a million different locations. There's, you know, these giant ballroom scenes, and everybody's home is like a huge penthouse or a huge house, and you know, exteriors and train shots. And and one thing that I really thought was amazing for the time was the mat shots and the process shots there where Linda tries to kill herself um in the beginning, where she's just about to jump off the building, and where he, the doctor, the evil, the mad, the titular mad doctor, uh jumps. They have a mat shot of you know the the streets of New York from the top of that building that actually looks really convincing. And then of particular note was when Linda's soon-to-be ex-fiance, the reporter who who you know blows the lid off the whole thing, um, he's trying to convince her that she does she doesn't need psychiatry, she just needs a good time. And so he takes her to Coney Island, and there's a shot on the roller coaster that I'm like, that's really good. Obviously, they're not really really on a roller coaster, but it's like it's actually pretty, pretty decent.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

That's one of the reasons why I love this film as well. It it just the um the optics and how they frame things, you know. She's you know, at one point in time, Linda's, you know, next to a vase of roses and the that kind of matches what she's wearing, you know. There's there's there's like flower hues in her dress, just that the title credits, like the first 10 or 15 minutes has happened with this continual rain going on, and the title credits, there's rain dripping down from the title credits. I'm like, that's so cool! It's just so cool. I mean, they really seem to care about this, and and I know that it got fairly decent reviews when it when it opened, was called the best of this kind of genre. It wasn't a fly by night, you know, B movie companies grinding out movies that during that time period either. It was definitely a Paramount picture.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

So yeah, you mentioned the rain. That's right. I remember watching it and thinking there's no reason for it to be rainy, like it doesn't have to be rainy, they don't didn't have to put themselves in the position of making it rain inside uh you know a sound stage, and yet so many scenes at the beginning of this movie, everybody's soaking wet. It's mood, it's mood, you know, because you have dark and rainy nights, you've got an evil doctor. The bulk of the movie does take place in New York City, but the beginning scenes in that in a what is sold as a small town, it's interesting if you think about it too hard. Like, wait, where how did he find this woman with money in a small town?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Oh, yeah, I mean, like, like you said, there's so many plot points. Well, first they were in Vienna, and then they were doing this, and then but how but you're like, like, how do they wind up in this small town? And yeah, you know, and how does he just happen to latch onto these women? You know, move to New York, and of the millions and millions of people in New York, you're you're gonna meet the rich suicide obsessed society girl with money.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Just happen to, right? Because the the connection is the woman who introduces the mad doctor to Linda is her sister. Also, the woman who introduces the mad doctor to Linda is the wife of the publisher of the newspaper where Linda's fiance works and is going to investigate the whole thing. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. Um are there other sort of high points of this film that you evangelize about?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, yeah. Well, the like I mentioned the visual aspects, which I just think are spectacular. And I and I love mood that can sell me on something right away. It's just the mood and and to kind of get drenched in that old atmosphere. I just think they they knew how to light and they knew how to have someone stuff going on in the foreground and someone in the background, and then there's a ballroom behind them in the background, you know. It just just it I just think it's a feast like uh for your eyes visually. Um, but also just I just think it it takes you a moment to realize, you know, and you might not automatically think that this is a queer drenched film or a gay drenched film because there's no physical contact, there's no embrace. But that was the era, like he doesn't really embrace, you know, the doctor doesn't really embrace Linda, who he's supposedly passionately in love with. I mean, I mean you don't see many passionate clinches between any of the romantic duos, whether whether it's Gil and Linda or the Doctor and Linda, you know, that there isn't a lot of that going on. But I just love the Maurice character. I mean, he's so devoted to the doctor. And there's never talk of money. I mean, there's talk of them going off and spending the rest of their lives together, you know, which is which would be a motivating factor if you're in love with someone, if you're in a relationship with someone, that's gonna be enough. But there's never like, oh, here's your cut, here's your 10% of you know, us us killing Ida. There's never like a financial like exchanging of hands. Once you get into the heart of the story, you you realize the doctor has been telling Maurice they're gonna kill one last rich widow, and then they'll have enough money to go off and live together. The way they layered it, and and some of it's stereotypical. Like I mentioned earlier, like Maurice is always doing something very artistic, playing with flowers or drawing in a sketch thing. You know, he murders um the the graveyard worker and comes back and is just like you know, dousing himself with cologne to get rid of the sense. The clues are there, and in their relationship is just so the way they're lit and the way they interact with each other, and the way Martin Kozlik, who's the actor who plays Maurice, looks at Basil Rothbone. You know, you can you know he's in love with him. He's definitely 100% in love with him and and planning a future with him. And there's other just little subtle things like after they kill Ida, the doctor has this great line, and I think Maurice is trying to be kind about Ida. And the doctor goes, I can never forgive her this eight months spent in this cave of romance. So he obviously, until he met Linda, he's pretty hateful towards women.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

If you haven't seen the film, what you don't realize is that when the mad doctor and Maurice are together in their home, Maurice is sold to the world of the film as his assistant, basically. But he's not dressed like that when they're at home. He's like in an ascot, he's in casual clothes. Their body language and how they're positioned in the scenes makes them equals. And for the time, you know, it's always important to like think about the historical context of when these films were made and released. The things that we look at today and roll our eyes, like the flower arranging, for the time that was a flashing light. Like these guys are gay. And as much as we're like, uh, you know, representation terrible, in that context, plus all the other stuff, this is the moment where supposedly the man of the doctor is actually falling in love with Linda. And that's a little murky in the film, like, because again, he's such a cool cucumber that you you don't know if he's also like trying to get out of his relationship with Maurice as well and then gonna kill Linda for her money. Like you, you know, you really don't know. But for Maurice, that's it. Like, that is it. And he says the line feel they're so clever until you meet a woman, right? I mean, so in you know, 1940 audience, it would this was made to tell an audience that these two men were, you know, deviants that equaling gay. And there probably I would guess there probably wasn't a lot of question marks over this film then. But I think we should probably assume that people in the 1940s had the same intelligence that we do about you know what it meant to be gay. They cast a British lead. And if you look at films of the time and they want somebody to to seem like perhaps they're gay, you know, they'll find they'll find a British actor. Um, and then Maurice is sort of non-exactly, and Maurice is sort of nondescript, not British, but not standard American accent. And at one point, uh Basil Rothmone refers to him as aboriginal. So I'm not sure what his nationality is supposed to be. But again, it's like these people that are other, they're not from here, they're to be suspected. So the reason why I said that uh this was a borderline for me is my intention with the book was not to do subtext, it was to only do content. You know, because if we if we were to have a book full of movies that were about othering, it would literally be every horror mover ever made. Like it would our book would be it's 500 pages now, it would be 2,000 pages long. And so a couple of these films were pitched to me, and I'm like, no, we want content. But then I looked at this one and it's like, oh, even though this one is, you know, subtext, it is text. It's right there in front of us. Um my question is, why do they have a black cat? What's the deal with this cat? So there's a cat is in like three or four different scenes, and you know, Basil Ratherwin has a a very loves the cat, he feeds the cat at some point. Maurice is painting a picture of this black cat. And I was hoping that was gonna pay off in a way that meant something, but it doesn't really trip over the cat and fall to his death as opposed to doing it himself or something, right? Or like maybe the cat like symbolized you know the harbinger of death or some something to that effect, but it was just and I wonder if maybe confirmed bachelors enjoying having a cat. Maybe that was another 1940s like yeah, signpost of like this guy gay.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Is it another thing? Because also, so many people still uh from what I understand, like you know, you hear, you know, if it's a black hat, sometimes if it's in a shelter, people don't want to adopt a black cat. So um, just because if it's superstitious and evil and all that kind of stuff. So maybe it was just another coloring of deviance, you know, they have the black hat, or or could have just been because there were so many horror films feature black hats, or in Halloween art, there's a black cat, the witches have black hats, so it might have just been another like layering on of the horror motif. What, like, you know, it's a horror movie, you need a black cat.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

And as a black cat owner, we have a black kitty. I can I can attest they're weird. Black cats are weird, they act different. It's just it's very strange. What can we point to in this movie that is not optimal? Um, I mean, there's a big one, right? Caveat that we love these movies, and you know, we're not trying to put any movie in movie jail, but if we're like looking for things in this film that were not positive representation, um, what what would you point to?

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Maybe it's just some of that that it that it is so vague, yeah, you know, that it's not, and you know, I think we all like clear show them kissing, you know, show them holding hands, show them something doing something concrete, concrete, because it there's a lot of vagary in the film, even about psychiatry. Obviously, mental health is so important, and going to a psychologist or psychiatrist or or taking care of your mental health is very, very important to us. There's a way you could read this film as being very you know anti-psychiatry because you know the the reporter Gil Sawyer, it talks about you know, a lot of psychiatrists is just quacks who are trying to get your money, and and obviously, you know, here your your prime character is playing a psychiatrist, and he's not a good guy. You know, he's he's he's he's he's a wife murdering, closeted you know, gay man.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

It's interesting. I actually never thought about the you know the mental health industry in the context of this movie, but truly, this well, first of all, he's all he's a an MD, a general practitioner, and also a psychiatrist. And I just think about how much time that would have taken to become those things.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Well, yeah, Rothbard, you could do anything, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

He is old, incredible, but the fact that he uses psychiatry for evil, he uses it to manipulate these women, definitely a minus there. But but also, yeah, like you said, the reporter um, you know, doing this expose on psychiatry. So basically, this film, I don't know if this film had if the filmmakers truly thought their position was psychiatry was bad. Certainly, uh Scientologists today would probably be on board with that. I believe they do not enjoy psychiatry. But the big one, I think, is that it's gay murderers. If we had the big, like the big minus about this movie, which unfortunately would be a big minus about a lot of movies in this book, it's you know, the gay murderers, which is an obvious one to point to. But I would, I would say, you know, it's it's tough because you don't want to necessarily analyze all of these films through the filter of today. But as you said, our mad doctor does go dancing with Linda and touches her, you know, affectionately. Yeah. But we're to believe that a homosexual's life is two men in a house always 10 feet away from each other and you know, full exploded from like neck to ankles. And you know, like even in the the again, the the scene we keep pointing to, which is the one that you know, the flower arranging scene, they're not facing each other. Yeah right. And there was, and there was there's no reason why they shouldn't be facing each other, except that you know, the direction of the film put distance between them. But I will point to those negatives as sort of the fun part of the film, frankly. Because it is fun to like discover these little to to watch a film where it is the subtext, and then have that subtext break the surface a little bit. And and when he like says the line about, you know, clever you're clever until you find a a good woman, and then be like, oh, there's one. You know what I mean? Like it's almost like a drinking game.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

But I think they did what they could almost, yeah, yeah. You know, they did what they could in the time to indicate. And I just love this, you know, we we talked about how the psychology might be looked upon badly in this film, but I just love the psychology of it. You don't want to be gay sometimes, especially in that era. Yeah, you know, and and the doctor, you know, kind of he and there is a little backstory about him finding his wife with another man and killing them both, and just the context of him maybe hating some women so much that he's entered into a gay relationship. Maurice is uh obviously full in, but maybe the doctor's not. Maybe the doctor's bisexual, you know, obviously has feelings for women too. So he's bisexual, you know, and and if he can live in 1941 as a straight man, happily, you know, why wouldn't you? Especially in that era, you know. So I think just to try to think like what is going on in their heads and their motivations, and yeah, what exactly is that relationship? I think there's just something fascinating about that to me with this movie.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I I also think there's a case to be made uh for a lot of films of this era that the Mad Doctor is actually asexual, and I know we have a lot more like within the last 10 years, we have a lot more understanding of that, and so I'm just using that as sort of an umbrella term. So for my friends out there that are on the asexual spectrum, you know, forgive me for not being more specific about what he would be, but I think that's also sort of the coded gay of the time, right? Like just doomed to be alone, but also having, you know, no no no attraction to women means no attraction to anything. Yeah, and so it's opportunistic his relationship with Maurice could be opportun seen as opportunistic, and then suddenly Linda breaks through and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Who knows? Yeah, just uh we'll never know because he jumped off a building.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah, yeah. Or just I would think also if you're pathological, you know, if you are really a warped. Human being. You sleep with anything. You kill anyone. You sleep with this one because he's helping you out. It's not really you're just doing stuff because you're worse. It'll get you to your end game, which is the money or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Right. There's like multiple pathologies. It could be you could be, you know, a psychopath and you know that kind of thing. I guess we'd probably have to label him ultimately like a psychopath, right? Because he has he treats people like objects. Yep. We're actually, you know, I don't know if you heard that little um alarm in the background, but that's our our 30 minutes are basically up. I my last, you know, question for you that I like to ask all of the all of the contributors that come on is does this film need to be seen more? Does it need to be in heavy rotation? Is it, you know, such poor representation that it needs to be in film jail or a museum? Like, where do you think this film falls? Maybe in in the context of people that want an education about uh queer horror in general?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

I I I think it should be much better known. It should be in heavy rotation. Um, I think this is something that everyone should should see. Just because look at what we're talking about. Like, you know, that there's so much. They I I think they ultimately did such a great job that there are so many scenarios you can come up with in your head about what these characters are doing and and and thinking, and how did they get together and why are they together, and what exactly is this relationship? And at the very least, you you know, I think you could say Maurice is definitely in love with the doctor and would do anything for him, whether those feelings are returned by the doctor or not. I mean that there's definitely a very significant, you know, LGBTQIA character in in the film. But yeah, I I just I just think it deserves to be seen. And I think it's it's like I said, you you we were talking about the visuals and and uh just the mood they kind of put together, and it's just this time capsule of a film that gets you thinking. Yeah, yeah, in in in in a variety of ways, just like like like we've been doing over the last 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Agreed. Uh, you know, the great thing about this film and a lot of old films is they're readily available. I watched uh the version of this that I watched on YouTube, and it appears to be a legal version on YouTube for free. So definitely go and check it out. So that's it for today. Brian, thank you so much. I love talking movies with you uh and reading your entries in the book. Tell people where they can find you on social media, if anywhere.

unknown 24:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Um, just big gay horror fan right now. Um, I haven't done any of the changeover yet to Blue Sky or anything like that, but uh, I'm still on Instagram and Facebook as Big Gay Horror Fan or Brian Kirst. You know, if you want to check out the Windy City Times website, um, which I always recommend, it's one of the big LGBTQIA, you know, Midwest gay publications that's still around. I I'm I'm I still do theater views reviews for them, and I'm just proud of that. You know, I just think there's so few options for journalism, kind of uh especially of a queer variety now, and the fact that I, you know, can still say after a couple decades that I'm still writing for a queer press out here is pretty important too. And I think they're important as well. So great.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Uh well I'm Sean Abley, aka Gay of the Dead, which I'm everywhere as Gay of the Dead. So, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, I have a Patreon. I'm hanging out on still hanging on to Twitter against all odds. And of course, our book, Queer Horror, a film guide, is available from McFarlandBooks.com. And we really encourage you to get the book directly from the publisher. Skip all those giant mega online superstores and spend your money uh with the folks that need it most. Uh so McFarlaneBooks.com, Queer Horror of Film Guide. And they also have a lot of other great genre books there as well. Um thank you all for hanging out with us for 30 minutes to talk about movies. And I hope you will join us again. And until then, this has been Queer Horror of Film Guide, the podcast. Thanks, everybody.