Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre, “Mad Love,” 1935)
A few years after playing doctor Frankenstein, Colin Clive became the patient of a mad medic himself. A concert pianist whose hands have been mangled in a train wreck, Clive’s wife turns to Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre, in his Hollywood debut), who promises to surgically reattach the musician’s hands. Unfortunately, Gogol is so obsessed with the wife, a star of gory stage shows, that he has created a wax figure of her. He schemes to win her in the flesh by attaching a murderer’s hands to Clive, then frame him for committing murder with those hands. Gogol utters the madman’s lament: “I have conquered science. Why can’t I conquer love?” A modern remake would surely have him asking, “Why do they swipe left?
Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, “Silence of the Lambs,” 1991)
The FBI, hunting for a serial killer, sends trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to seek insight into the murderer from the imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist with a penchant for murder — and a taste for the flesh of his victims. Lecter proves to be a menace from their first meeting; the bars and glass surrounding his cell offer Clarice no protection from his gaze and ability to read her mind. In his own way, the urbane, pathologically charming Lecter takes a shine to Clarice, helping with the case while embarking on another murderous spree against men who recently wronged her. When he escapes, his plans do not include dinner with – or of – Clarice, but others, well, they’re not so lucky.
Henry Jekyll (Fredric March, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” 1931)
Henry Jekyll (Fredric March) is a jumble of personalities. By day, he’s a kindly doctor in Victorian London with an American accent. But he is so determined to split good and evil personalities that he devises a potion to outsource his id. As he watches himself morph into Mr. Hyde – a hairy, cone-headed dude in serious need of an orthodontist – he exclaims, “Free! Free at last!” Free, that is, for his simian side to engage in debauchery, abuse, self-hatred, intimations of rape, and ultimately murder – all of which are explored in this pre-Code film, the first talkie version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story.
Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton, “Island of Lost Souls,” 1932)
“Strange-looking natives you have here,” shipwreck victim Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) tells his host, the white-suited, whip-wielding Dr Moreau. Before long, we learn that Moreau’s evil veterinary talents have created an island population of human/beast hybrids who are forced to follow his laws – especially one forbidding them from eating meat or walking on all fours. Lawbreakers get taken to the House of Pain, a medical setting which, as its name suggests, lacks adequate analgesia. Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando took on the Moreau role in later versions, but Laughton is the creepiest when he asks, “Do you know what it means to feel like God?” The film was banned for years in Britain, and H.G. Wells despised this take on his antivivisection tale.