It's interesting to muse about the similarities and differences between "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" and Fritz Lang's "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse". In both, medical doctors become underworld bosses, and both main characters are mentally unbalanced.
Although they are vastly different films -- "Mabuse" is dark, almost noirish, with a stylistic debt to German Expressionism, while "Clitterhouse" is more straightforward and less stylistically defined -- it's almost as if "Clitterhouse" was intended to be the lighter, comic, Americanized version of "Mabuse", which predated it by 5 years. At the very least, I wonder if "Mabuse" was the initial inspiration for writing "Clitterhouse."
I found "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" to be entertaining, if not among the best of the period's films.
Although they are vastly different films -- "Mabuse" is dark, almost noirish, with a stylistic debt to German Expressionism, while "Clitterhouse" is more straightforward and less stylistically defined -- it's almost as if "Clitterhouse" was intended to be the lighter, comic, Americanized version of "Mabuse", which predated it by 5 years. At the very least, I wonder if "Mabuse" was the initial inspiration for writing "Clitterhouse."
I found "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse" to be entertaining, if not among the best of the period's films.