The Revenge of Dr X (1970)

As with all the best bad z-grade movies, a degree of confusion surrounds The Revenge of Dr X (1970).  For one thing, I sat down to watch this thinking that it had been made in the Philippines.  After all, not only did the streaming channel where I watch it list it as such, but the opening credits seemed to confirm this, crediting direction to Eddie Romero, a prolific producer and director of Philippines horror movies.  But it quickly became apparent that it was actually a US-Japanese co-production, with cast and locations from both countries.  To add to the confusion, there was no 'Dr X' in the film and nobody was actually taking revenge on anyone else.  In reality, The Revenge of Dr X was actually originally titled Venus Flytrap and directed by Norman Earl Thompson.  The Philippines 'connection' actually derives from the fact that when the film was released to video, the only available print was allegedly missing its opening credits, so the distributor added a new title and the credits from Eddie Romero's Mad Doctor of Blood Island, which he presumably had to hand.  Just to add to the confusion, some sources have also, wrongly, credited direction to Kenneth G Crane, who had directed another US/Japanese monster movie, The Manster (1959).  Watching The Revenge of Dr X, I was left feeling that it might have been a whole lot more entertaining if it had been shot in the Philippines by Eddie Romero and starring the likes of John Ashley and Vic Diaz.

As it stands, though, The Revenge of Dr X is basically a rather clunkily made mad scientist film, with shaky production values and performances.  The plot involves a stressed out NASA scientist taking up a Japanese colleague's offer to unwind at the latter's family's former hotel in Japan, but becoming obsessed with a Venus fly trap plant he finds in Florida while waiting for his broken down car to be fixed.  Once in Japan, assisted by the Japanese colleague's lady scientist cousin, he starts experimenting with the plant, eventually cross breeding it with a native Japanese carnivorous marine species to create a humanoid shaped monster.  The detail of this process incorporates as many exploitable elements and horror movie tropes as it possibly can:  the former hotel has a hunchbacked gardener who plays the organ, the creature is animated by being lifted up on a cradle during a thunder storm to use the electricity from the lightning, the marine plant is found for the scientist by a group of topless girl divers (to ensure some gratuitous nudity) and so on.  Some of this detail is utterly ludicrous - why, for instance, does the scientist have to use lightning when the hotel is clearly connected to mains electricity?  The monster itself is utterly ludicrous looking, initially having its feet planted in a flower pot and with arms that end in fly trap heads.  Obviously, it eats flesh and eventually uproots itself and becomes ambulatory, preying on the local villagers.  

A major problem for the film - aside from poor production values and unspeakable dialogue - lies in the performances of the main players.  Leading lady Ako Kami had never acted before and is clearly ill at ease speaking English, (if the dialogue provided by the script can be described as English), while leading man James Craig, who had been a popular leading man, mainly in Westerns, in the 1940s, shouts his way through his performance.  Indeed, Craig's shouty performance undermines the notion that the scientist is gradually losing his sanity, as he seems to spend the entire film bad temperedly shouting at everyone, even when he is meant to be stressed, but still sane.  His volume and behaviour don't change even as he starts making a monster.  The only clue to his incipient madness being his increasing habit of delivering aggrieved monologues to his monster as to how underappreciated his scientific genius has been.  He's especially annoyed that his theories that animals evolved from plants was dismissed by colleagues. (which is hardly surprising as it flies in the face of scientific fact and he's a rocket scientist, not an evolutionary biologist).  Still, Craig was nearing the end of his acting career - he gave up a couple of years later and went into real estate - so it isn't surprising that he just seems to not care here.  The film inevitably ends with him wandering the slopes of the local volcano, a goat in his arms, trying to lure out his escaped monster.  Inevitably, they both go over the edge of the volcano's crater, (but the goat escapes).  Which brings us back to The Manster, which also ended with its monster falling into a Japanese volcano.  

While The Revenge of Dr X is a truly awful film, like many schlock movies, it has that fever dream quality which makes it quite fascinating to watch.  The monster alone is bizarre and ludicrous looking enough to make the film worth watching, but when combined with Craig's ranting monologues when he is on screen with it, it becomes quite compelling.