The Return of Doctor X (1939) is not a sequel to Doctor X (1932), nor does it have anything to do with the prior movie, though the title is accurate. This movie begins with the murder of an actress and the trials of the reporter who discovered her corpse after she turns up alive the next day with no one else having seen her dead, but him. In an attempt to clear his reputation and save his job, the reporter teams up with a young doctor friend and they follow a trail of murder victims with the same blood type, resurrected dead people, and a quest for synthetic blood. Humphrey Bogart is creepy in his small role as Dr. Quesne, a man with a disturbing past and an even stranger present status in this mystery.
I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but it turned out to be pretty entertaining, with some nice elements in it. As a mystery it was very satisfying. As a horror story, not as much, but the horror elements that were present were pretty effective. The dead people brought to life were visibly cold and pallid looking, like dead fish bellies, giving them an unnatural and unsettling presence.
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