In The Time Of The Mad Monk Scientist-Edward G. Robinson’s The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, starring Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, 1938

 

No question, no question at all that Doctor Chitterhouse liked to play god, or rather play a god, for he willingly used his finely bourgeois discretion to leave the big chores, the rough-hewn stuff concerning the human clay that he had created to the big “G” God. And the good doctor would merely dabble on the side, a specialist, a guy trying to figure out a few of the human kinks. With a brilliant scientific mind, and some time on his hands, always a suspect combination for the world-beaters of this sorry old planet, the good doctor took a pretty good run at the title, at the godhead, for a mortal made of that same human clay.   Took a good run at peeking inside the human psyche until, fatal flaw if not to him then to somebody, he got caught up in his own hubris just like those gods of old, those Greek and Roman gods who raised hell on the planet and did not look back, and took the tumble back to cheap street, back down to the human muck. And the film under review, The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, details every step of how the good doctor ran off the rails, got caught up in his own undoing.

Doctor Clitterhouse, played somewhat mystifyingly by Edward G. Robinson who during this period was creating his own legend a badass screen gangster who had no time to worry about gods, or hubris. The mystifying part enhanced by the inability of this reviewer to credit Robinson with high society bourgeois sensibilities, like a lot of smart society guys got fed up with wearing tuxes and tossing down champagne for kicks, got fed up doing high-priced surgery on those New York City Mayfair swells and decided to take a walk on the wild side, see how the lesser mortals lived. And so just to prove that he could do it he staged a series of daring robberies of his pals and consorts, those self-same Mayfair swells, who squealed like crazy when they got taken for their jewelry, and demanded that a stop be put to those expensive  escapades. That the times, the Great Depression which passed them by fortunately called for a ruthless purge of those undesirables who would upset their gala seasons. So naturally they called in the cops, after all they paid good money in taxes to insure that their property is left intact except in these films the cops are either stupid or only half-wise otherwise there is not much of a plot-line for either a master criminal to outsmart them as here, or the usual case, for some stealthy private investigator to wrap up the case with a ribbon while they are scratching their heads. So the good doctor gets away with his exploits, for a while.

Of course half the fun of robberies for the good doctor, jewel thefts, is seeing how much cash you can get, and for that you need somebody to fence the stuff since you aren’t going to be able to show it in public. So working the fence angle got him in deeper. Not only that as he went along he got even more intrigued by the criminal mind. But finding out about the criminal mind by a lone lumpen-bourgeois, doctor or not, is not going to impress too many people in high society or the academy  so he also wanted to get a wider sample, get down and dirty with the mob, or a mob. And he does just that meeting the “fence” Jo, and her right hand man, Rocks (played pretty boy gangster tough by Humphrey Bogart). So the good doctor posed as “The Professor” and as such led Jo and Rock’s confederates on a series of high profile robberies. All the while grabbing physical data about how the lawless life affected a guy’s personality, checking pulse rates and heartbeats that kind of stuff. After a while though our good doctor has enough data and calls it quits.     

Or I should say tried to call it quits. What Doctor Critterhouse did not recognize was first that the “rush” that he got from criminal activity affected his own judgment beyond the science experiment he was supposedly conducting, and secondly that while he was happy to call it quits one hard-boiled career criminal, Rocks, wanted him to continue to plan the grand escapades. And since Rocks was a lot tougher than our good doctor he was caught between a rock and a hard place (no pun intended). But here is where that getting caught up in the criminal mindset played him false. He got so caught up in his own hubris, his own search for godliness that he decided that he had to murder Rocks to keep himself in the clear. And so he did, assisted by Jo who has taken a slight romantic interest in him, him a guy a lot different from the low-rent guys she had to put up with.

So our doctor hero necessarily had to take a fall, has to get caught by a friendly police officer. He thereafter was put on trial, put on trial for his life since even taken the life of a low-life guy like Rocks qualified you for the big step-off, qualified you to be hung high someplace. And since the good doctor had no interest in the big step-off he created an image of himself before the jury that called into question his sanity, seriously calls it into question. Just by running his mouth off about what he was doing with his experiments and in offing a bad guy like Rocks. What was that they said about guys who trifled with the gods? Enough said.