It’s part film noir, part haunted house movie and a 100% atmospheric triumph for director Bernard Vorhaus and cameraman John Alton. Eagle-Lion’s spooky tale of a spiritualist conning a widow and her daring younger sister works up a nice charge of suspense. Turhan Bey stars as the smooth soothsayer, and Lynn Bari and Cathy O’Donnell are the women he mesmerizes. Did the producers recognize the story concept as a good mix of The Uninvited and Nightmare Alley? This PD restoration plays very well.
The Amazing Mr. X
Blu-ray
Film Masters
1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date August 19, 2025 / The Spiritualist / Available from Amazon / 21.99
Starring: Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, Richard Carlson, Donald Curtis, Virginia Gregg, Norma Varden.
Cinematography: John Alton
Art Director: Frank Durlauf
Visual Effects: Jack Rabin, George J. Teague
Film Editor: Norman Colbert
Composer: Alexander Laszlo
Screenplay by Muriel Roy Bolton, Ian McLellan Hunter story by Crane Wilbur
Produced by Benjamin Stoloff
Directed by Bernard Vorhaus
The entertaining The Amazing Mr. X is most often listed as a film noir, simply because of the way it looks. It’s actually a romantic thriller more in line with a haunted house story. The main attraction is some excellent cinematography by the famed John Alton, a wizard who created stylized lighting setups for noir greats by Anthony Mann, John Sturges, and Joseph H. Lewis. Originally released with the title The Spiritualist, the show is so visually compelling that we willingly overlook a few convenient coincidences and plot twists. Director Bernard Vorhaus was no slouch either. Swept up in the first wave of HUAC blacklisting, his directing career came to an immediate finish after this picture. But his reputation was such that he continued working in Italy under a different name, assisting on some of the biggest American movies filmed there in the 1950s, by William Wyler, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, King Vidor, and Fred Zinnemann.
The Spiritualist was produced at Eagle-Lion, a tiny company which nevertheless attracted an impressive cast. Lynn Bari and Cathy O’Donnell were already well-known to their fans. Turhan Bey had a reputation as a romantic idol, despite having been seen mostly in Universal genre pictures.
The story came from Crane Wilbur, who had been in pictures since the ‘teens and was doing well with scripts for other independent crime thrillers — Canon City, He Walked by Night. Screenwriter Muriel Roy Bolton may have been hired because of her work on the sleeper hit My Name Is Julia Ross. It shares with The Spiritualist a focus on intelligent women.
Wealthy widow Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) is about to become engaged to attorney Martin Abbott (Richard Carlson), who lives just down the coastline from her clifftop mansion. While walking on the beach she’s convinced that she hears the voice of her dead husband Paul, and then she meets Alexis (Turhan Bey), a handsome man who says that he’s a spiritualist. He knows all about her — he knows about Martin and advises against the wedding. Christine stays engaged but visits Alexis for more counseling, which alerts Martin and Christine’s vivacious younger sister Janet Burke (Cathy O’Donnell). They hire a detective, while Janet takes a session with Alexis hoping to get his fingerprints. Meanwhile, Christine’s feeling of being ‘haunted’ increases. Beckoned by Paul’s voice, she almost tumbles down the ocean cliff outside her house.
Is there is or is there ain’t a supernatural haunting going on here? Alexis is indeed a conman angling to tap into some of Christine Faber’s money … he has a girl friend (Virginia Gregg) who helps with the research so he’ll know ‘secrets’ about the Faber family. The goal is a fast cash-in with fake voices and visual illusions, but two things get in the way. Alexis begins to fall in love with young Janet … and then a ‘ghost’ appears without any of the spiritualist’s trickery.
Perhaps the great-looking The Amazing Dr. X should be listed as a film noir, on account of the characterization of Alexis. Quite a few core noirs focus on partly-sympathetic villains, thieves or swindlers torn by unexpected romantic tensions. At the conclusion they’ll make a gesture of atonement, often in the form of a self-sacrifice. When ‘good’ prevails the films can feel like noirs gone soft: Jeff Chandler in Deported, John Payne in Larceny. Turhan Bey is surprisingly effective as an uncomplicated crook who quietly rebels against his own nature.
Seeing lighting cameraman John Alton’s name on the credits we go into Mr. X expecting weird lighting or crazy camera angles. Alton’s selective source lighting merely provides the mood to enhance Bernard Vorhaus’s intelligent direction. The evening beach scenes never look like flat day-for-night, and we’re always aware of the sparkles on the water. The images are so handsome, we accept the situational theatricality. We don’t question why, dressed for a night on the town, Christine chooses to walk in heels down a steep cliff and then hike down the beach. What will her hair look like at the society gathering, after being blown by the ocean breeze?
Parts of Christine’s house are brightly lit. But the lavish boudoir where she tosses in bed and hears haunted voices is lit more selectively, separating her bright dresses from the dark walls and letting the moonlight from the ocean make its effect. Some scenes are carefully filtered, to diffuse the light and flatter the actresses. And Alexis’s house of course has its dark séance room with its secret ports for projecting cheap ‘spiritual’ illusions.
When the weird effects do come, they’re handled with great care — phantom sights ‘helped’ by the optical work of Jack Rabin and associates. But Vorhaus and Alton are careful to first establish an everyday normality, so we can judge the supernatural effects for ourselves. Old rich lady Norma Varden shows up on normal daytime streets, before she enters Alexis’s parlor of magician’s tricks.
The story resolution is decent, if not a mind-blower — what keeps us tuned in are the likable actors and the moody atmosphere. Turhan Bey was perhaps never superstar material, but he was noted for generating a flood of admiring fan mail when playing opposite Maria Montez, or Lon Chaney Jr. for Universal. He carries the picture well. We know the smart-looking Lynn Bari from a great many Fox pictures. She got some career attraction when the war began, playing an especially effective villainess in the swing musical Orchestra Wives. But the big roles didn’t come — when she was top-billed, it was for a minor show like 1946’s Shock. Cathy O’Donnell had already attracted attention in The Best Years of Our Lives, an achievement she’d never top, at least in films. She does well in her semi-romantic conclusion with Turhan Bey. Her best noir They Live By Night was filmed before The Spiritualist but held up for release until 1949.
For a couple of years, the tiny Eagle-Lion studio made good commercial choices in the films they backed. Did this show get launched because somebody thought Fox’s picture Nightmare Alley would become a trend, with Tyrone Power playing a corrupt spiritualist? Perhaps they also thought that the elements of a ghost haunting might appeal — a couple of scenes play much like the well-remembered The Uninvited.
The slightly weird atmosphere is still the best aspect of The Amazing Mr. X. At the satisfying conclusion, the writers and Vorhaus tip their hat to spiritual values by having O’Donnell’s Janet release Alexis’s pet raven over the ocean. The gesture reminds us of the ‘spiritual’ finale of Georges Franju’s Judex, where it is poetically implied that a morally-compromised woman is reincarnated — as a dog.
Film Masters’ Blu-ray of The Amazing Mr. X is one of their ‘Archive Collection Releases’, a line of Public Domain films remastered as good as can be without pre-print materials. This picture clearly had an excellent film source to work with, as the very good encoding improves on what we’ve seen before. The image is cleaned up and stabilized and the audio optimized, and the result does not disappoint. It’s more than good enough to evaluate John Alton’s work, and the (so far) best way to see the picture.
The busy music track mixes with the noise of the surf under the titles, launching the show in a supernatural direction. We’re told that it premiered as The Spiritualist but shifted to the final title not long thereafter; it was trade-reviewed with the first title. They re-rolled a new title sequence for the show, rather than chop in an altered title card.
It’s a solid plain-wrap disc, with removable subtitles but no extras.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Amazing Mr. X
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Good +
Sound: Very Good
Supplements: none
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: October 15, 2025
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