With decidedly creepy concept, depth in casting, spooky/supernatural atmosphere and remarkably advanced film technique (director George Archainbaud abandoning Early Talkie style), along with a full background score from Max Steiner (years ahead of the pack), this occult-centered murder mystery is dandy nightmare material painfully sabotaged by missing footage. Down from 73 to 59 minutes! (A Pre-Code film trimmed for a later Production Code re-release?) Unusual horror on many fronts, including that big female cast, the premise picks up a group of well-to-do college grads ten years on, all receiving death threat letters from some swami they saw back in school days. And when a series of horrible personal events (divorce, the death of a child) starts them suiciding one-by-one, they all start taking the predictions seriously. But Swami has just died in a train accident (if it was an accident); he’s not responsible . . . so who is? Enter police detective Ricardo Cortez, who takes special interest in one of the women, Irene Dunne, and her adorable little boy. By now we know the culprit, it’s fellow student Myrna Loy, still in her ‘Oriental’ period, here as a ‘half-caste’ Indian. She’s developed the power of auto-suggestion, strong enough to make a woman shoot herself or to fall in front of a train. How many will die? Who’ll be next! The severe cuts mean we never do get all thirteen deaths, but what we do see is plenty grotesque, even shocking; with Loy in tremendous form as pure evil beauty, less exotic/whimsical than was norm for the period. If only those missing minutes could be found.
DOUBLE-BILL: Dunne and Cortez had just co-starred in Gregory La Cava’s fine adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s Rich Doc/Jewish Ghetto weepie SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION/’32. Magnificent & corny in equal measure.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Shortly after this film’s release, Peg Entwistle, suicided in real life, more extravagantly than she had in the film, jumping to her death off the ‘H’ of the famous HOLLYWOODLAND sign.
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