“An objective surgeon cannot afford the luxury of feelings.”
Walter Garrett (Wayne Morris) is a newspaper reporter. He finds the body of a woman. He reports the death to his newspaper. Then he reports it to the police. When the police get there the woman’s body is missing. When the woman turns up alive, and ready to sue the paper, Garrett gets fired.
Thinking something is fishy he visits a doctor friend of his named Dr. Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan). He tells his friend that the woman was dead and when he saw her alive in the editor’s office she was white. Rhodes is in the middle of prepping for surgery. He tells Garrett he will check with his former mentor Dr. Francis Flegg (John Litel). Flegg isn’t very helpful.
After surgery Rhodes gets a call from the police. Garrett tags along. The dead person was a professional blood donor who had been expected that morning for surgery but never showed. Rhodes takes a sample of the dead man’s blood. At his lab he sees that something about it doesn’t look right. He goes to Dr. Flegg for his opinion. Garrett follows him and peeks in the window. There Rhodes meets Flegg’s assistant Marshall Quesne (Humphrey Bogart). Quesne looks death white.
Garrett starts nosing around and figures out that Marshall Quesne bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Maurice Xavier. Xavier was a doctor who was put to death for murdering a baby. To prove they are one and the same Garrett and Rhodes dig up Xavier’s grave. They find it empty. The two then confront Flegg. Flegg finally admits to using a new scientific method to bring Xavier back from the dead. The procedure uses a synthetic blood to sustain the person’s life. But it’s only temporary. The method requires that the person have transfusions. In order to do that Quesne must kill to get the blood he requires to stay alive.
“The Return of Doctor X” was released in1939 and was directed by Vincent Sherman. Although this is supposed to be a sequel to “Doctor X” it’s not. The only thing that is the same in both movies is the last name Xavier. This is the only time that Bogart was ever in a horror/science fiction film. He usually played hard boiled detectives or criminals.
Humphrey Bogart said of this film: "This is one of the pictures that made me march in to [Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner] and ask for more money again. You can't believe what this one was like. I had a part that somebody like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff should have played. I was this doctor, brought back to life, and the only thing that nourished this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner's blood or [Harry Warner's] or [Sam Warner's] maybe I wouldn't have minded as much. The trouble was, they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."
Apparently casting Bogart in this film was a punishment to bring him down a peg. A couple years later he did “Casablanca” which rocketed him to stardom. So, how did that work out for ya Warner Brothers? All in all Bogie was right. They should have gone with Lugosi or Karloff. It’s not a bad movie. It would have just been better if they had used a professional.