This little crime thriller (a double disappointment for RKO who must have been looking to start a franchise and set up a new star in Gwili Andre), something of a genre hodgepodge, with a bit of horror mixed in at the end, is no great shakes, but pretty good fun. Taken from a popular series in ‘American Weekly’ magazine, it’s a master-criminal police procedural with a bit of a comic edge, featuring Frank Morgan as Paris Chef de Police investigating a Russian con operation under the control of Gregory Ratoff* (making like Bela Lugosi), with a spiffy gang of thuggish Asian house servants. He’s got his eye on lovely Ms Gwili, a ringer for Princess Anastasia, who, with a little coaching & hypnotic suggestion, he hopes to pass off as genuine Romanoff, convince surviving relatives and then collect millions being held in reserve. (Yep, it’s the perennial ANASTASIA story, currently pulling them in on B’way as a sort of Y.A. musical.) Inspector Morgan sends out an army of investigators, but the main break comes from playboy (and petty thief) John Warburton, risking all to get inside the Ratoff mansion with its Dr. Frankenstein worthy dungeon. Yikes! Too bad, Warburton’s such a wet noodle on screen, and that Edward Sutherland’s direction drags, especially so in the days before wall-to-wall underscoring helped punch things up. But nicely produced, with cool sets & some startling camera tricks worth a look.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Morgan smokes like a chimney. You keep expecting him to contaminate one of his main clues . . . a sample of cigarette ash taken from the crime scene.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Something of a jack-of-all-Hollywood-trades (actor, director, producer), Ratoff had his best year as actor in ‘32. Six features, including SYMPHONY OF A MILLION and the very fine STAR IS BORN forerunner WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD, where he plays the studio chief, a role later de-ethnicized by Adolphe Menjou & Charles Bickford in ‘37 & ‘54.
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