KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Ehirerapp Waste of time

Steineded How sad is this?

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Hitchcoc I can't help but imagine these "Old House" movies weren't decidedly tongue in cheek. Bela Lugosi, in typical fashion, is given a role that doesn't stretch him at all. The poor guy was barely making enough to live. He had one of the best marquee presences in the film world, but once Dracula was made he was sort of cast as a mere threat. There are greats scenes of secret doorways and people sneaking around in the gardens outside the house. We have a fellow who is stabbing people who goes by the name of The Maniac. In the house is a scientist who is trying to find a way to put people in suspended animation. And, of course, at the center is a young, sort of obnoxious man who is taken with the fiancee of the scientist. This is actually better than most of these kinds of movies.

Leofwine_draca NIGHT OF TERROR is an early entry in the creaky 'old dark house' genre which was all the rage in the 1930s. It has all of the right ingredients in pretty much the right order, and at just an hour in length it doesn't drag on too much. A familial home is the setting for a night of murders and mysterious disappearances as the police struggle to investigate. You get mad scientists, a maniac killer prowling the countryside and knifing his victims, a mystic, comedy relief from a frightened black servant, a shifty servant, secret passages, plotting, hidden motives, and gloomy old locales. Bela Lugosi headlines the production, riding high on the big success of DRACULA, and is fantastically creepy. The rest is dated but nonetheless a lot of fun.

mark.waltz On the heels of "The Old Dark House" comes one of its dozens of imitators, a decent B feature starring Bela Lugosi on loan to Columbia from Universal. It starts off by showing "the menace", a grinning killer straight out of silent films, then shows two young people meeting their fate thanks to the obvious mad man. It's off to the Rhinehart house where scientist Tully Marshall is being stalked by the menace and eventually struck down. More members of the family follow, leaving reporter heroine Sally Gray in jeopardy with boyfriend Wallace Ford and two darkly clad servants (Lugosi and Mary Frey) to look after her. Other greedy relatives arrive, adding suspects and victims up, but it's done at a very slow pace, often as creaky as old attic steps.A bit of comedy with Ford and stereotypical black chauffeur Oscar Smith who gets some funny, if cowardly revealing lines. As for Lugosi, he seems to be serving the same purpose he did in "The Gorilla", "Night Monster" and "One Body too Many", basically added for name value but no plot importance. At least here, he's given the same look he had in "Chandu the Magician" which gives hope to the fact that he'll contribute something to the story. But it's still fun to try to figure out, with plenty of twists and turns and plenty of moody atmosphere. Decent sets, shadowy photography and the homage to Lon Chaney make this a notch above the many others that came before and after. A seance by the Gale Sondergaard like Frey is the spooky highlight of the film.

MARIO GAUCI This Columbia "B" thriller features many of the typical 'old dark house' trappings (which proliferated throughout the late 20s up till the mid-30s) and is therefore quite predictable; still, the denouement is rather effective – and it's all capped by an amusing (if hammy) interpolation by the maniac killer of the main narrative, which sees him coming back to life to warn cinema patrons not to reveal the twist ending! A mere two years after his runaway success with Dracula (1931), the film already sees Bela Lugosi reduced to playing thankless roles because, even though he receives sole above-the-title billing here, the horror icon's presence constitutes a red herring and nothing more (the way he's made to intimidate his spiritualist wife during a séance proves especially pointless) and is further hindered by the unflattering Hindu attire (turban, gypsy earrings) he is saddled with throughout. Frankly, after having seen several films of Lugosi's (and with a handful more coming up), I still can't make up my mind whether his unique (i.e. sluggish and heavily-accented) delivery of lines is an asset or a liability! To get back to the 'monster' of the film, again, his involvement results to be irrelevant to the central mystery (with an inheritance at stake, members of a wealthy family are getting bumped off one by one): familiar heavy-set character actor Edwin Maxwell is credited with playing the role, but he was unrecognizable behind the make-up. Lovely Sally Blane (who happens to be Loretta Young's sister!) and Wallace Ford (insufferable as the fast-talking reporter hero, a role he virtually reprised in a later Lugosi cheapie – THE APE MAN [1943]) provide the obligatory romantic interest; another requisite – and equally resistible – is the politically incorrect comedy relief supplied by the household's 'scaredy cat' black chauffeur. Given a somewhat harsh BOMB rating by Leonard Maltin, I knew not to expect much from the film – but, ultimately, it's a harmless way to kill 60 minutes or so…and, in any case, the script does come up with a handful of undeniably hilarious lines: when a delegation of scientists arrives at the mansion to assist to a dangerous experiment, the chauffeur remarks that they look like undertakers – later, when he sees these same men transport a coffin in which his current master is about to be buried alive, he observes that he had been right all along!; driven as much by jealousy as the promise of a scoop, Ford bursts into the household to see Blane – noticing four other hats in the parlor (belonging to the illustrious guests), he asks her whether she had been entertaining the Marx Bros.; when the bodies start piling up and the police is called on the scene, Ford offers his help but is told off by the investigating officer – however, on asking for the generalities of all the persons in the room, the response of one of the scientists comes in the form of an unpronounceable foreign name and, so, the befuddled cop gladly relinquishes the writing duties to the newspaperman!; still, my favorite bit is when a hand-cuffed Lugosi asks the detective guarding him if he can smoke, and the latter – with quite unwarranted hostility – snaps back "I don't care if you burn!"