Robert J. Maxwell It's a quickie B movie that has much of 20th-Century Fox's talents hard at work on this story of a mad scientist, George Zucco, who has captured an ape in Java, performed some "nerve graft" surgery on him, and has brought him back to France to live with him and his niece in a château. The nerve grafts don't quite work.Oh, J. Carrol Naish is usually passive enough and he looks human, if only barely, but he's sensitive about being part simian and he's devoted to Zucco's niece. When he hears insults directed at monkeys, apes, or Madelon, even if they're meant as jokes, he gets hijacked by his amygdala and starts murdering people in the little French village. I mean, his pathetic in his devotion to Madelon and in his shame at his Pongid nature, but he goes too far when he starts throwing bodies out of closed windows and strangling Mike Mazurki. Enough is enough. Before the police and the clean-cut Shepperd Strudwick can nail Naish, he's shot mortally by Mazurki and dies with tears in his eyes.That reminds me. J. Carrol Naish was born into an Irish family in New York. He's played men of every conceivable ethnicity on screen and, earlier, on radio. He's been an Indian (both American and Asian), an Arab, and mostly an Italian. Every once in a while, Luigi, The Little Immigrant sneaks out in Naish's Tarzan-level speech. Let me think. The requisite police inspector is Arthur Shields, brother of Barry Fitzgerald, a bred-in-the-bone Irishman. That's two Irishmen. And Mike Mazurki is of Ukranian descent. Zucco is Italian-American. Roberts and Strudwick are both WASPS. If there was a French actor in the cast, I missed him or her.It's not a complicated movie and it's tempo is quick. Events follow one another like the ticking of a clock. The secret isn't a secret for very long. But there are a couple of good scenes. In the village, one of the men who insulted monkeys is a barber. The barber enters his shop during a festival, only to find a sullen Naish sitting in the chair. "I want shave." The barber, having just seen the dead body of the other scurrilous man who insulted monkeys, gulps, and says, "It's a little late for a shave, don't you think, Noel?" "I want shave." Naish is fiercely jealous of Madelon, to whom he is devoted in his apish fashion, and he hates Strudwick for wanting to marry her and take her away to America. At night, when Strudwick is sitting in a chair reading some abstruse scientific material, a conveniently placed sliding panel silently opens in the wall behind him and a dark hand clutching a knife emerges. Something calls Strudwick away just before the knife can plunge into his quivering neck.A promising beginning, with a truck pulling up in front of a French saloon, with rain and gaiety providing atmosphere. Then it collapses. The studio must have been jealous of all the money being made at Universal Studios with cheap crap like "Frankenstein Meets The Seven Dwarfs" and tried to imitate it. You know, monkey see, monkey do?No, no, wait, Noel! I didn't mean that as an insult to monkeys. No, please! ARGHHH.

bensonmum2 While I enjoyed watching Dr. Renault's Secret, the movie has one serious flaw that keeps it from being a real winner. The problem with Dr. Renault's Secret is that there really isn't much of a secret. Anyone with half a brain would be hard pressed not to guess what's going on within the first ten minutes of the movie. I have a hard time believing that even the less jaded horror fans of 1942 would have been shocked by the revelations made toward the end of the film about Dr. Renault and his assistant, Noel. The movie all but beats you over the head with its supposed "secret".But even with this flaw, there's still a lot to enjoy here for fans of classic horror. To start with, J. Carrol Naish gives one of those wonderful performances that I'll remember long after having watched the movie. He's awesome as the strange Noel. The way he changes his body language as the movie goes on and his more animalistic tendencies start to come out is perfect. George Zucco gives his usual nice performance even though his role is limited. The film also very nicely shot. Dr. Renault's Secret features some top-notch cinematography, set design, lighting, and everything else that goes into make a movie look "good". It might have been a "B" film, but it doesn't look like it. Fox didn't make many horror films, but when they did, they did it right.One final note – it's odd to me that the movie is supposed to be set in France. While I don't necessarily have a problem with some of the British and American actors in the movie, there's just no way Arthur Shields could have ever been a French police inspector. He's way too Irish to ever be anything but Irish.

MARIO GAUCI Although I've been aware of the existence of this film for years, the sheer fact that I found next to no reading material on it in my father's books on my favorite genre (which I devoured as I was growing up) has led me to believe that it was merely just another ordinary escapist wartime horror programmer. Until it was surprisingly given a recent DVD release – as part of the second entry in the "Fox Horror Classics" collection along with the higher-profile CHANDU THE MAGICIAN (1932; featuring Bela Lugosi) and DRAGONWYCK (1946; with Vincent Price) – I had no previous opportunity to watch it and, now that I have, it's safe to say that it's been one of the most pleasant surprises I've had during this year's bumpy Halloween Challenge.Unlike Universal, Paramount, RKO and even MGM, 20th Century Fox was hesitant to jump onto the Horror bandwagon and seemed to do so only half-heartedly – as evidenced by John Brahm's all-style-but-no-substance werewolf picture THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942) which, incidentally, was actually paired with DR. RENAULT'S SECRET on original release as the upper half of a double-bill. I'm not sure if it's because I thought the Brahm film suffered in comparison to Universal's THE WOLF MAN that I've found RENAULT to be more satisfactory or merely because I haven't yet watched any of the latter's own progenitors – the Silent French Gaston Leroux adaptation BALAOO (1913), Fox's own intriguing Silent foray into the genre THE WIZARD (1927) and Paramount's well-cast THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (1941) – or perhaps because it's undoubtedly superior to a similarly-themed contemporaneous Bela Lugosi vehicle THE APE MAN (1943) – which wasn't really all that bad to begin with – but, ultimately, I now consider DR. RENAULT'S SECRET to be an unjustly forgotten vintage gem of this most prolific, beloved and yet maligned of genres.In essence, the story set in France is typical 'mad scientist' fodder with the titular ultra-Darwinian medico/part-time jungle explorer (George Zucco) attempting to prove conclusively his idol's controversial evolution theories by surgically turning an ape into a man. The cast of characters is supplemented by the doctor's lovely niece (Lynne Roberts), her fiancée who also happens to be a doctor (Shepperd Strudwick – billed here as John Shepperd!), Renault's ex-con gardener (Mike Mazurki) and equally shady butler (Jean De Val), a suspicious Police Inspector (Arthur Shields) and, best of all, J. Carrol Naish as Roberts' enigmatic and highly sensitive protector Noel. The ensemble cast is generally good and sympathetic to the material at hand, but it's clearly Naish's show here in a very poignant performance as the result of Zucco's questionable experiments: a soft-spoken, love-struck handyman, subtly but effectively made to look simian in appearance via a shaggy wig and enlarged nostrils (incidentally, he would play a variation on the role as a hunchback in Universal's HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN [1944] – in which Zucco also appears, by the way). Although Zucco made a slew of similarly ghoulish potboilers around this time (and so did Naish, as already mentioned), I've only watched a couple of them myself so far; seeing him turn from a suave gentleman by day into a whip-wielding sadist with the poor, unfortunate Naish at the receiving end of it, one can't blame producers for simply offering him more of the same in subsequent years! Being the product of a major studio (albeit a low-budgeted one and running a trim 58 minutes), the solid production values were to be expected but one other aspect that impressed me about DR. RENAULT'S SECRET was the intermittent stylishness of Harry Lachman's direction, all tinted angles (down to the very last shot of the film with Naish's lifeless body practically falling onto the camera!) and evocative chiaroscuro lighting (Zucco's own come-uppance is simply depicted as a shadowy struggle between him and the finally-rebellious Naish). I'm not about to assign auteur status to Lachman (whose last film this proved to be despite going on to live for another 33 years!) or anything, but it's a well-known fact that his version of DANTE'S INFERNO (1935) starring Spencer Tracy (also for Fox) is highlighted by a memorable nightmare sequence set in Hades and also that OUR RELATIONS (1936) was Laurel and Hardy's most polished production and one of their most satisfactory vehicles overall.

dbdumonteil Why does the story take place in France?The atmosphere of the inn where Larry enters at the beginning of the film is more that of an English pub : a customer playing darts in a French café?The same goes for the Bastille Day celebration : the dances are closer to American country and western than to French Valses Musette ;and where are the fireworks?the firecrackers?This is minor quibble;only a French can notice such things.J.Caroll Naish 's part is not unlike Peter Lorre's tormented characters.The script is some cross between "Frankenstein" and "Beauty and the Beast" ,and is thus rather derivative.But as the movie is short (less than an hour ,probably part of a double-feature at the time) ,we are not bored at all.