GUIDE | ORIGINS

Dr. Renault’s Secret

(Harry Lachman, USA, 1942)

BY JOSÉ TEODORO | October 29, 2024
SHARE:

An American doctor arrives in a French village. He’s come to wed the niece of renowned local scientist Dr. Renault, but a storm forces him to delay the final leg of his journey and spend the night at an inn. There, by chance, he meets two men under Renault’s employ: Rogell, Renault’s gardener and an ex-convict, and Noel, Renault’s Javanese handyman. Both men are physically imposing: Rogell is nearly six and a half feet tall, while Noel is broad, muscular, and possesses immense hands that, at times, he regards as though they were objects separate from his body. As for temperament, the men could not be more different: Rogell is furtive, arrogant, and short-tempered, while Noel is modest, melancholy, and almost childlike in his gentleness—until, that is, he hears someone at the bar crack wise about Renault’s niece, a transgression that triggers a violent reaction in this loyal servant. Later that night, someone slips into the wisecracker’s room and breaks his neck. Who did it? Rogell? Noel? Or someone else?

I’m taking a moment to describe the opening of Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942) in part because it is an engrossingly efficient setup of the film’s core mystery and in part because it introduces Rogell and Noel’s similarities and distinctions with an elegance particular to well-crafted B-movies. Directed by Harry Lachman, Dr. Renault’s Secret is a propulsive, good-looking, 58-minute horror programmer marred only by terrible accents and milquetoast young lovers. The script is credited exclusively to William Bruckner and Robert F. Metzler, though it’s common knowledge that it was loosely based on the novel Balaoo by Gaston Leroux, who also wrote a little something called The Phantom of the Opera. To say anything further, I’d need to compromise aspects of the titular secret: the sensationalistic story circles around juicy themes like genetic predisposition and Darwinism, which is arguably as controversial a topic in digital-age American discourse as it was 80 years ago. It’s the ways that Dr. Renault’s Secret adheres to these themes, and most especially the ways its two finest performances embody these themes, that keep me revisiting it.

The story climaxes on Bastille Day, and as France celebrates the anniversary of its first claims toward modern nationhood, Rogell and Noel will come to represent man at his most primitive: the former seems content to surrender to the aberrant dictates of his gene pool—he comes from a long line of criminals—while the latter is discovered to be the recipient of Dr. Renault’s most radical genetic experiments. Rogell is played by the terrific wrestler turned character actor Mike Mazurki, whose face, physique, and stiff yet earnest delivery will be familiar to lovers of classic films noir like Murder, My Sweet and Night and the City. Noel is played by J. Carrol Naish, who is convincingly bestial with only minimal makeup. Naish’s wide, expressive eyes and careful gestures convey a profoundly conflicted inner life, divided by a desire to ascend to human-level repression and an unassailable urge to regress to his animal roots. Naish was not exactly undervalued—during his life he received two Best Supporting Actor nominations—yet his legacy seems, at this point, unjustly obscure: he is the primary author of one of the most deeply sympathetic monsters in all of 1940s horror. 🩸

JOSÉ TEODORO

is a freelance critic and playwright.

X: @chiminomatic

How to see Dr. Renault’s Secret

The film can be found on DVD and YouTube. The Wizard, an earlier, silent version based on the same source material, is considered lost.
RELATED CONTENT
    FRESH BLOOD
GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS
(Claire Denis, France/Japan/Germany, 2001)

Trouble Every Day (2001) opens with Tindersticks’ swooning, doomy song of the same name enveloping the image of two figures—neither of whom are seen again—making out in the back seat of a car...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  October 20, 2024

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(A. Edward Sutherland, USA, 1933)

After a curiously cutesy opening-credits sequence featuring Murders in the Zoo’s cast members mirrored with similarly posed animals, a quick tonal shift occurs, transitioning to perhaps the most gruesome film scene of its day.

BY LAURA KERN  | April 19, 2022

GUIDE | ORIGINS
(Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1943)

A nurse leads a catatonic through an expanse of moonlit cane. They pass displays of sacrificed animals before encountering the towering, shirtless, dead-eyed Black man who grants them entry...

BY JOSÉ TEODORO  |  March 17, 2023

RECOMMENDED
    RAVENOUS
GUIDE | ORIGINS

Supernatural

(Victor Halperin, USA, 1933)

This pre-Code offering packs a lot of story into its typically brisk running time, with several plot threads weaving together a (not always successful) tapestry of spooky and criminal doings.

READ MORE >

BY  ANN OLSSON  |  Month 00, 2021

REVIEW

The Keep

(Michael Mann, USA, 1983)

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape revenge movie, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on Ida, the young woman who doesn't return his affections, during a party over Labor Day.

READ MORE >

BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

REVIEW

We Need To Do Something

(Sean King O'Grady, USA, 2021)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

READ MORE >

BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

🖨 📄