After career-defining monsters & horror for Universal, the mid-‘30s saw Boris Karloff at various studios, Columbia, Gainsborough, 20th/Fox and Warners for this unusually polished production. Technically a programmer (skimpy budget, 65" running time, no A-list players), it doesn’t play like one. Instead, a haunting, near poetic experiment with the kind of top behind-the-scenes talent Karloff rarely got at the studio: producer Hal Wallis, director Michael Curtiz (plus future director Irving Rapper assisting), Hal Mohr cinematography, etc. All bringing their A-game on a worthy story that has Karloff executed for a crime he didn’t commit (innocence revealed moments too late), returned to life by Prof. Edmund Gwenn (in the Lionel Atwill spot), then finding revenge on the real guilty parties in paranormal ways he apparently wills into happening. The two romantic leads add little, but other supporting players, most of them guilty as hell, are just the ticket (Ricardo Cortez*, Barton MacLane, Paul Harvey, Henry O’Neill). And the cunningly simple special effect deaths, combined with Hal Mohr’s atmospheric lensing are all you could want. Stellar work, with Karloff touchingly uncomprehending on his unlikely, unasked for ‘powers.’ The film a near classic.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *For a change, Ricardo Cortez’s relentlessly glib manner perfectly suits his character as an on-the-take lawyer. His clueless lack of fear or remorse when hearing about co-conspirators falling dead all around him perfectly judged.
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