Although on its surface this post-Code crime thriller might seem like your average one-dimensional mannered production with all the conservative hallmarks of its time, the 1940s The Mad Doctor, starring the dashing Basil Rathbone—most known at the time for his seminal portrayal of Sherlock Holmes—here plays a psycho physician, Dr. George Sebastian. The doctor has a penchant for marrying wealthy women who all seem to mysteriously die of pneumonia: it’s an odd serial nuptial arrangement that has made him quite wealthy.
But when Sebastian courts society beauty Linda Boothe (Ellen Drew), he gets more than he bargains for: namely, Boothe’s bitter ex-fiance (John Howard) who also happens to be a sleazy beat reporter for the local fish wrap tabloids who’s always looking for a juicy scandal.
Things begin to get weird when we meet Sebastian’s shifty Teutonic live-in assistant who we find out is something of an on-call body snatcher: he digs up the bodies of his ex-wives and removes any dodgy forensic evidence on their corpses that might link their demise to his boss. The script is as dark as it is witty and intelligent (in fact, early drafts of it were supposedly penned by one of Hollywood’s most distinguished scriptwriters, Ben Hecht).
Rathbone’s character keeps a calm face despite all his dastardly deeds until the façade begins to finally slip. And the more desperate Sebastian and his associate evade justice, the more we see just how ruthless the pair of them really are when they work together. One scene in the subway where they collaborate to send a potential stool pigeon to his death in front of a train is a fairly brutal trick, even up against our modernized collective de-sensitization to cinema violence.
In the end, the way the film so casually and unflinchingly deals with murder (uxoricide specifically) and suicide must have been quite shocking to prewar American movie audiences in 1941. Recommended as a unique addition to classic film collections in public libraries.